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“Fix-it fiction is also about healing. For queer women, the stories they claim are more than just fiction; they are representations and manifestations of how they would like to see themselves in the world. So when women-loving-women stories go wrong, or don’t keep their promises, there’s a lot more than disappointment at stake.”
A fandom community rewrites the wrongs done to lesbian characters on TV.
“Bless Me, Ultima wasn’t like anything else that had come before. It inspired a generation of Chicano writers; Anaya was invited to speak at college and university campuses all over the country, and eventually started a creative writing program at the University of New Mexico. He branched out into mysteries and children’s books later in his career, but Ultima remains his best-known work.
It’s also his most challenged work — multiple school districts have attempted to ban the book for its non-Christian spirituality, sexuality, violence and explicit language. ‘What is it about literature that makes people fearful?’ he asked the Albuquerque Journal in 2013. But Ultima’s power endures; it was made into a movie in 2013.”
In sad news: Rudolfo Anaya has passed away.
“When Cincinnati’s Melanie Moore retired in 2017 after 25 years as a teacher, she wanted to pursue her dream of opening a brick and mortar bookstore. She did her research and even landed a lease on a space in 2018, but the night before she was to sign it, she had second thoughts about the high cost and overhead. She put her search on hold, and after reading the 1915 book Parnassus on Wheels by Christopher Morley, about a traveling, mobile bookstore, she decided to start her own with The Book Bus, in 2019, using her husband’s 1962 Volkswagon Transporter.”
Beep! Beep! Books!
Source : Fix-It Fiction, Where Queer Women Get Their Happy Endings: Critical Linking, July 6, 2020
