Le Guin on Abortion

In my lost post I will be discussing the position that Ursula Le Guin would have on abortion. Being quite the feminist, she is of course pro-choice.

She believes that it should be the women's choice to have an abortion or not, not someone else. Having had an abortion herself, she knows what an abortion does for a woman, and knows how it can help a woman to finish their dreams, instead of having to care for a child. She has greatly supported abortion rights since the abortion she had in her youth, and will most likely continue supporting it to the grave. She has openly spoken that because of her abortion she has been able to meet her husband, go to college, and have children that she actually wanted. When she had her abortion, it was still illegal and she compared to living in the Dark Ages, without any way out of a possible desolate future, where she is not able to advance any further in her life because of the child. She also says how she would have to live with the shame of having a child when there is no possibility of an abortion. Also, in reference to this analogy, she says that there should no longer be any control over women and girls like it was in the Dark Ages. This is the reason why she has been one of the major players in the feminine movement for pro-choice. She even did an interview for Feminists for Choice, where she spoke her mind about abortion and the reasons why she supports.

As seen, she has had quite the influence over the pro-choice front. Even after she dies, her words will most likely keep people thoughtful of the rights of women and whether or not they can have an abortion at will.

Kimberly. "Women’s History Month: Ursula K. Le Guin." feministforchoice.com. N.p., 2011. Web. 27 Apr 2012. <http://feministsforchoice.com/womens-history-month-ursula-k-le-guin.htm>.



Welborn, Amy."Ursula Le Guin on motherhood." typepad.com. 2004. 27 April, 2012. <http://amywelborn.typepad.com/openbook/2004/01/ursula_le_guin_.html>

Le Guin's She Unnames Them

This post analyzes the short story "She Unnames Them" by Ursula K. Le Guin. The story focuses on the unnaming process that women take towards all the animals of the world.

The story starts off by saying how most of the animals accept this process with no contest. The first animal that they discuss which is against this process are the yaks. The main reason is that there is little variation in their name from one culture to another, which they like, so they do not mind the general name. But the council of women decides that the name is too redundant and takes it away.

Next it talks about the domestic animals. In this part, there is no argument among the animals about giving up their names. The horses say that they do not even care what they are called. In this part it references Jonathan Swifts Gulliver's Travels, when it says Swift tried to name them in their native tongue, in which he named them Houyhnhnms.

It then goes on to talk about the process that went on with the pets. Cats evidently denied any name but the one that they gave to themselves, so they had no issue with the unnaming process. Other pets, however, did. These pets include dogs and many types of birds. They had originally believed that they were losing any name that was given to them, but when they found out that it was just their general name, like dog or parrot, they willingly let go. The names they were not willing to let go was that of Polly or Rover.

All insects and fish of the sea were rid of their names quickly, so there is not much to write of them.

 In the paragraph after the unnaming process, the perspective switches to single person. At first it is not very evident who it is, but that it is most likely a woman. She discusses her new feelings towards the creatures now that they had no name. She discusses how she now feels much closer to the animals, and yet fears them all because it is no longer easily determined what is the hunter and what is the hunted. She said that this was the reason that she did this, and so does not entirely hate it.

She then goes to her husband, Adam, and gives back to him what she says was his and his father's. He dismissively tells her to put aside, and so she is not worried anymore about her initial fear of him being angry. Throughout the rest of the story she talks with Adam, but he seems to distracted to pay her much mind. She says by to him, and he does not pay much mind, and so leaves with no stress.

At the end of the story it is evident that it is a play on the book Genesis in the Bible. As the woman is married to Adam, it shows that she is most likely Eve, the woman who married to Adam in the Bible. Eve unravels what Adam had done in the Bible by taking away the names that he had given to them, partially to try to get his attention. It is also seen, though, how women are more attune with nature when Eve discusses her new feelings towards the animals, which was the other reason for unnaming them.

Looking at this through a feminist's eyes now, the story is about women undoing what man did. In the naming process that man took, the names were generally man centered, but the feminist goal is for gender-neutral language, which can be easily achieved if there was no name in the first place.

There also many other ways to take this story, but these are the ones that I saw most evidently in this story. Le Guin obviously showed her previously mentioned feminist ideals in this story, which probably drove her to write it.

Picture Source:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jennpelly/5425786446/in/photostream

Ursula K. Le Guin and New Wave Fiction

In my next post I am going discuss the literary movement that Le Guin is a part of. This movement is called New Wave Fiction.

New Wave Fiction focuses on a move towards a more mature version of science fiction. Unlike science fiction in the past that was geared towards teenage boys, these stories are aimed at adults. They drift away from the utopian ideas of past science fiction and distrust man's intelligence, lack a trust of science and technology, and do not believe in the pureness of the human race.

Her role in New Wave Fiction is quite large. She demonstrated much newer techniques in her writing as was seen in the works of the modernists before her. She used such techniques as fragmentation and multiple viewpoints. Another way in which she changed the view on science fiction was how she created her characters. These characters were well rounded, which was quite uncommon of previous science fiction works. She created rich environments in the world that painted massive portraits for readers and could be compared to other works to a much greater extent.

Another way she pushed forward in the New Wave was her feminist style of writing. In this style she put more of a focus on the role of women in these universes, which was uncommon before then. Her novel The Left Hand of Darkness is a great example of her movement into the feminist role. In this book, a man travels to a foreign planet to establish relations to them and his home planet. The people on this planet are sexless, which disorients and even makes him uncomfortable when he sees how feminine some of them act. In the end, though, it is proven that just because they have no gender that does not mean they are not brave, as seen when is rescued from a labor camp by one of the people that he befriended. This made the point that gender plays no role in the identity of a person.

Sources:
"Ursula K. Le Guin." gatech.edu. 2011. Adam Le Doux. 26 April 2012. <http://sciencefictionlab.lcc.gatech.edu/SFL/doku.php/ursula_k_le_guin>

"New Wave Science Fiction." gatech.edu. 2004. Anonymous. 26 April 2012. <http://sciencefictionlab.lcc.gatech.edu/SFL/doku.php/new_wave>

Bacon-Smith, Camille. Science Fiction Culture. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000. pg 103.

Picture Source:
<http://forbiddenplanet.com/57811-left-hand-of-darkness/>

Ursula's Life

As the first subject of this blog I will talk about the life of Ursula K. Le Guin and her success as an author. She was born in Berkeley, California in 1929. Her parents, Alfred Kroeber and Theodora Kroeber, were an anthropologist and a writer, respectively, which are who she gets much of her inspiration from. As an adult, she taught many writing courses, such as at Pacific University, Forest Grove (1971), Portland State University, Oregon (1974, 1977, 1979), and the University of Reading, England (1976). She now lives in Portland, Oregon and has had three children.

Her writings consist of poems and prose, and the types include realistic fiction, science fiction, fantasy, young children's books, books for young adults, screenplays, essays, verbal texts for musicians, and voicetexts. Her works often reflect Taoist principle mutuality, interdependence, and ordered wholeness.

She contributed much to literature,  namely to science fiction. At the start of her career, science fiction was considered to be more for middle aged nerds, then for the rest of the population. But, in her works she focused more on the strange human nature, then on the space exploration and battles between humans and aliens. She often depicts the future where people have different beliefs or are different in general, and therefore act quite different, like in The Left Hand of Darkness where all the people are hermaphrodites, and so live quiet different love lives.

She has won many awards for her works including Hugos (1970, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1988) and Gandalf Award (1979), Nebulas (1969, 1974, 1974, 1990, 1995, 2009), Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for fiction (1986), a Pushcart Prize (1991), a National Book Award (1973) for the novel The Farthest Shore (1972), part of Le Guin's Earthsea trilogy, a Newberry Silver Medal (1972), and Harold D. Vursell Award (1991).

Sources:
http://www.ursulakleguin.com/BiographicalSketch.html
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/leguin.htm
http://www.editoreric.com/greatlit/authors/LeGuin.html

Picture Source:
http://www.locusmag.com/2001/Issue09/LeGuin.html