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Speculative Fictions of Race and Ethnicity - Coggle Diagram
Speculative Fictions of Race and Ethnicity
Fantasy
A Guide to The Fruits of Hawaii
The fantastical vampire society is used to explore the horrors of colonialism by having the vampires literally suck the life out of the people they have colonized after they have done exactly what the vampires want them to do, such as performing certain sex acts.
"he reaches for the other boy’s cock and squeezes...the pair of vampires pull the boys apart and dive for their respective shunts. The room goes quiet but for soft gurgles, like two minnows in a tide pool.Then a pair of clicks as the boys’ shunts turn gray, forcing the vampires to stop feeding."(Johnson)
Mongrels
The werewolves in the book are used as both an allegory to indigenous groups like the Native American while also dismantling the idea that Native Americans are somehow different than other groups of people because they are "one with nature". The following quote is said by a werewolf trying to convince someone they are not a werewolf, yet also symbolically shows that they hardly see themselves as just werewolves but more as people living their own lives.
"'...we're not werewolves,...we're not anything.'"(Jones, 81).
Shadowshaper
The magic system of the book, "shadowshaping", is used as an allegory for memorialization since it literally resurrects the dead through the art made by shadowshapers.
“The shadows come to me. They can't do much in the living world...But when I put their spirits into the painting-a form-they take on way more powers.” (Older, 93)
Litigation Master and the Monkey King
The mythological element of the Monkey King is used as a symbol of both confidence and trickery that Tian Holi idolizes both as a person and a lawyer. The Monkey King also tells Tian that he may become a powerful symbol to someone like the Monkey King has become a hero to Tian because Tian is also capable of incredible things like the Monkey King.
"'I'm mostly selfish and vain, but sometimes I even surprise myself. We're all just ordinary men-all, I'm an ordinary demon-faced with extraordinary choices. In those moments, sometimes heroic ideals demand that we become their avatars."(Liu,380)
Sci-Fi
Good Hunting
Sci-fi is used as a horrifying allegory for colonization as Yan's body is replaced bit by bit with robotic parts, as her body is replaced with a more "modern" one.
"I had let him do all this to me, to replace me part by part, mourning my loss"(Liu, 70)
Kindred
The book's version of time-travel is used to deromanticize the past, especially the periods of time where the atrocities of slavery and the seizure of the West were in full swing.
‘This could be a great time to live in…I keep thinking what an experience it would be to stay in it— go West and see the building of the country, see how much of the Old West Mythology is true’”(Butler 97), which is then followed by: "'West,...that's where their doing it to the Indians instead of the blacks!'"(Butler,97)
Children of Men
The soft sci-fi version of Britain presented by the film gives Cuaron the ability to explore the evils of both the U.K. and of some countries' immigration policies, including but not limited to the United States of America.
"Poor fugues. After escaping the worst atrocities and making it to England, our government hunts them down like cockroaches"( Cuaron).
The Man who Ended History
The sci-fi plot device is used to bring up the discussion of whether it would be better to do a full autopsy of history or just silently let the more horrifying facts die with it. The book itself sides with the idea that the past should be fully dissected in order to confront and do away with its evils.
“The silence of the victims of the past imposes a duty on the present to recover their voices, and we are most free when we willingly take up that duty.” (Liu,447)
Colonization
Good Hunting
Explores the evils of the British Colonialism through historical, fantastical, and even science-fictional lenses. There is a part of the story where Britain changes China for its benefit while destroying their culture and natural resources. This is shown through one British man's opinion of China as he is destroying the ley lines.
"'The trouble with you Chinese is your endless superstition...Remember the Hong Kong-Tientsin Railroad is a priority for Great Britain"(Liu,59)
The Man Who Ended History
The story explores the true horrors of Japan's colonization of China during WWII. One man describes what he sees as he time-travels to Unit 731 one to investigate what happens there.
"I remember in one of the room I saw a very tall jar in which one half of a person's body, cleaved vertically in half, was floating"(Liu,412)
Loneliness is in Your Blood
The Sukunyoa may stand as a symbol for the indigenous beliefs that the enslaved people of the Virgin Islands, which are harder to hold in the modern day since they were erased by their enslavers.This is shown through how the sukunyoa finds it harder to suck the blood of people in the modern day.
“The houses are different, larger, harder to get into…[and people] stay up all night staring at blinking screens”(Turnbull)
A Guide to The Fruits of Hawaii
The story explores the colonization Hawaii by showing the reader what it would be like to be colonized in a similar way that the native Hawaiians were colonized by the United States. The following quote is said when a vampire is explaining what vampires expect from humans, which is much like how we made Hawaiian culture into stereotypes we expect from Hawaiians.
"The vampires who pay so dearly for Grade Gold humans don’t merely want to feed from a shunt. They want to be entertained, talked to, cajoled. The boy who explained about Key’s uncanny resemblance juggles torches."(Johnson)
Monsters
Loneliness is In Your Blood
The Sukunyoa is possibly used as a symbol of the beliefs of the enslaved African people who were shipped over to the Virgin Islands, as it mostly thrives in the past while also drawing some blood from those very people.
"This is how you quell your hunger...You enter their wattle and daub slave huts in the dark of night, and they are alarmed at first. But then they see you. They see how you glow. They see your full lips and roll their eyes along your curves as you stand naked before them, and they cannot help themselves. They are under your spell. They touch you, marvel at your smoothness, at how your body gives under their touch."(Turnbull)
Mongrels
The Werewolves sort of stand in for the struggles of Native American people, as blood quantum is actualized through the mechanics of how werewolf blood manifests itself in werewolf children. The following quote is an explanation of what happens when two werewolves have children.
"Because the wolf blood, it's hungry. Even a quarter is enough to be half...But if a werewolf and a werewolf try to start a family, well...Being born half full of wolf blood, it's like being nearly all the way wolf.(Jones, 97).
The Shape Of Water
The fish-god-man is used as an allegory to represent people who do not "fit" into the ridiculous standards of society, people who do not fit the "average" model. This is used to show that these people are deserving of love like how it finds love through Elisa at the end of the film.
“You deserve better than this. You deserve people who value you. You deserve to go somewhere where you can be proud of who you are.”(Del Toro)
Good Hunting
The Huli Jings represent people in their natural culture, as their culture feels natural to them as instincts are natural to an animal.
“hulijing remained hunters who felt most free in their fox form”(Liu 57)
History/Historiography
Litigation Master and the Monkey King
The story is about a lawyer fighting the Chinese government to bring their genocidal war crimes to light, which explores the suppression of history in order to hide a government's sins to preserve itself politically and what that means for the people whose past is erased. The following quote is said by the Monkey King when the main character is being executed for releasing those secrets.
"the spark of truth will set this country aflame, and the people will awaken from their torpor. You have preserved the memories of the men and women of Yangzhou."(Liu, 387)
Kindred
The sci-fi premise of time-travel is used to show the horrors of slavery in more detail than a history book ever could, thus giving the reader a taste of just how evil slavery was. The following quote is causally said by a slave advising his son how to not die at the hands of his slavers.
"'Don’t argue with white folks,...Don’t tell them 'no.' Don’t let them see you mad. Just say 'yes, sir.' Then go 'head and do what you want to do. Might have to take a whippin' for it later on, but if you want it bad enough, the whippin' won't matter much.'"(Butler,96)
Shadowshaper
The book tackles the issue of how some academic approaches to studying cultures actually undermines those cultures, since the research is done by outsiders to that very culture while also pondering why others, like European cultures, are not studied in the exact same fashion.
"'Who gets to study and who gets studied, and why? Who makes the decisions, you know?"(Older, 51)
Jojo Rabbit
A boy's struggle in WWII between his Nazi ideology, represented through an imaginary-friend-Hitler, and his capacity for empathy, represented by a Jewish girl that his mother is hiding in the walls, is used to show that one can overcome their hate and let their empathy prevail despite even the worst of circumstances like Nazi Germany.
"Love is the strongest thing in the world"(Watiti)
