luch reviewed Searoad: Chronicles of Klatsand by Ursula K. Le Guin
LeGuin, Women, Generational Struggle
5 stars
I enjoyed this very much. A common criticism of Ursula LeGuin, at least in her early days, was that she wrote very little about women. Indeed, some of her most famous works (A Wizard of Earthsea, The Dispossessed, The Left Hand of Darkness) are more-or-less about men, or seem to center men, or men's priorities, etc. I have… mixed feelings about some of these critiques, but… anyway, for anyone who might have been wondering whether LeGuin thought explicitly about women etc.: yes. This book… gosh. In reading it, i sense some about the women who came before me, whose quiet and hidden lives i remain ignorant of, in no small part because i dared not ask, they did not tell, and now most of them are gone from my life. LeGuin had such a light touch, wrote so thoughtfully from so many perspectives, and these really shine here. It's clear …
I enjoyed this very much. A common criticism of Ursula LeGuin, at least in her early days, was that she wrote very little about women. Indeed, some of her most famous works (A Wizard of Earthsea, The Dispossessed, The Left Hand of Darkness) are more-or-less about men, or seem to center men, or men's priorities, etc. I have… mixed feelings about some of these critiques, but… anyway, for anyone who might have been wondering whether LeGuin thought explicitly about women etc.: yes. This book… gosh. In reading it, i sense some about the women who came before me, whose quiet and hidden lives i remain ignorant of, in no small part because i dared not ask, they did not tell, and now most of them are gone from my life. LeGuin had such a light touch, wrote so thoughtfully from so many perspectives, and these really shine here. It's clear in reading that she was a woman approaching retirement reflecting back on her own life and on the lives of both those who came before her and those who would follow. I dunno… it's a book about women. If you want to feel connected with other women for a bit, their struggles, their indignities, their resilience, their fires, their hopes, their passions, their needs, their kindnesses and cruelties… give this one a read. As someone who never did get to feel close to the women in its life in its youth, this certainly meant a lot to me.