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reviewed The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin (Hainish Cycle, #4)

Ursula K. Le Guin: The Left Hand of Darkness (Paperback, 2010, Ace Books)

On the planet Winter, there is no gender. The Gethenians can become male or female …

They was an option

Tales a bit to get into, but then a gripping read. I can see why it's a classic, but I wish the author had been less of an anthropologist, and less bioessentialist at a bunch of points. The main narrator is unfortunately misogynistic, and his narrative decisions and views get rarely challenged by the other narrators even tho it could very well have been

@chwiggy@books.theunseen.city it's deservedly a classic & this book means a lot to me, but you can def smell the 60ies sometimes (I am honestly unsure if Genly Ai is meant to be unsympathetic and weird about it (tm) sometimes, or just an everyman relatable to a culture which is thankfully no longer quite as bad)

(oh also, re the pronouns thing: Le Guin did write a follow-up story set in Karhide using a generic "she", and then first an essay defending her choice of non-they pronouns, and then ten years later a re-edited version of the same essay but with a complete reverse of her earlier opinion, including several sentences of the old version interrupted by her shouting "no!" at her younger self :D)

replied to stuebinm's status

@stuebinm@preprint.books.exposed it's not just smelling the 60s but it's definitely also me smelling some other weirdnesses. Like it's also very much a white woman writing a black character, whose blackness somehow does not manage to influence his views and perspective at all? Idk it just feels suspect to have a character who says he grew up in basically the global south on earth and is black have no other experience of gender and culture as a white man from a 60s suburb in the US.

And idk the pronouns just feels like a missed opportunity to have at least the sections ostensibly narrated by Estraven not contradict Genly's pronoun choices. Right Estraven would have not called other Genthians "he" unless in kemmer. and idk thats honestly the thing that bothers me the least.

The weird and completely unchallenged assertions about progress of civilisation, the weird space EU and …