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Review: No Man Born of Woman, Ana Mardoll
Jan. 19th, 2019 03:10 pmWhen I reviewed A Deceptive Alliance, I noted that it was not the book for you if you were looking for trans rep. No Man of Woman Born is quite possibly the book you want if you want adventure/fantasy trans rep, especially if you place a high priority on happy endings and lack of angst-about-gender. It might not be if, like me, you aren’t desperately hungering for that kind of escapism. I knew that going in, though. More disappointing was that I picked this book up for its possible interest as a collection of adaptations, and only one of the stories really delighted me in that respect.
First up: there are no surprises in this book. That, in itself, is unsurprising: if you know Ana Mardoll from their media criticism, you’d expect them to write a book that priorities safety in its representation. All the stories come with trigger warnings, few feature intra-diegetic misgendering (that is, few characters face misgendering from other characters), and narrator never explicitly or implicitly casts any question on the characters’ gender. The whole premise is that fate knows these character’s true gender, and that’s how they fulfil assorted prophecies.
That works! This may be exactly what you are looking for. It has the potential to be immensely validating.
The downside is, there are few to no surprises in any other aspect of the storytelling either. Only one story has a twist on the ‘but I am no man’ (/ both man and woman / neither man nor woman / etc) format, and that is one by far my favourite. In the title story ‘No Man Born of Woman’ I spent my time wondering ‘okay but how will this prophecy be fulfilled, when the pieces don’t even add up from the protagonist’s point of view?’ Most of the others provided only mechanical uncertainty: what steps will he/she/they/xie take to slay the dragon / lift the curse / etc, and in many cases even that was obvious.
By the nature of adaptation and remediation, these stories can be said to interrogate gendered structures, in that they lampshade the narrow assumptions on which prophecies like Macbeth’s ‘no man born of woman’ and the Witch-King’s ‘no man’ rely. The title story, ‘No Man Born of Woman’ features underground donjons of women, young boys, non-binary people, people born by caesarian, and crack animal trainers, all hoping to circumvent the prophecy and kill the tyrant. The stories also feature a range of worldbuilding and settings - some settings have pre-existing social structures allowing for gender self-determination, and some do not. I particularly liked setting wherein clan members are assigned a boy or girl’s name at birth, and at puberty choose either a man or woman’s name. It’s clear from the narration that some people who begin with boys’ names chose women’s names and likewise girls and men, but this is not presented as a huge shock - the important binary is that of child vs adult.
Being me, of course, I spent that particular story wondering what happened to people whose experience of their gender didn’t fit the timeline. What of someone who chose a name at puberty and found the role that goes with it didn’t fit them at twenty-five? I often have this problem with fantasy stories that set out to be queer-positive worldbuilding - recall my issues with Malinda Lo’s Ash - so we can conclude this is a ‘target audience’ problem.
First up: there are no surprises in this book. That, in itself, is unsurprising: if you know Ana Mardoll from their media criticism, you’d expect them to write a book that priorities safety in its representation. All the stories come with trigger warnings, few feature intra-diegetic misgendering (that is, few characters face misgendering from other characters), and narrator never explicitly or implicitly casts any question on the characters’ gender. The whole premise is that fate knows these character’s true gender, and that’s how they fulfil assorted prophecies.
That works! This may be exactly what you are looking for. It has the potential to be immensely validating.
The downside is, there are few to no surprises in any other aspect of the storytelling either. Only one story has a twist on the ‘but I am no man’ (/ both man and woman / neither man nor woman / etc) format, and that is one by far my favourite. In the title story ‘No Man Born of Woman’ I spent my time wondering ‘okay but how will this prophecy be fulfilled, when the pieces don’t even add up from the protagonist’s point of view?’ Most of the others provided only mechanical uncertainty: what steps will he/she/they/xie take to slay the dragon / lift the curse / etc, and in many cases even that was obvious.
By the nature of adaptation and remediation, these stories can be said to interrogate gendered structures, in that they lampshade the narrow assumptions on which prophecies like Macbeth’s ‘no man born of woman’ and the Witch-King’s ‘no man’ rely. The title story, ‘No Man Born of Woman’ features underground donjons of women, young boys, non-binary people, people born by caesarian, and crack animal trainers, all hoping to circumvent the prophecy and kill the tyrant. The stories also feature a range of worldbuilding and settings - some settings have pre-existing social structures allowing for gender self-determination, and some do not. I particularly liked setting wherein clan members are assigned a boy or girl’s name at birth, and at puberty choose either a man or woman’s name. It’s clear from the narration that some people who begin with boys’ names chose women’s names and likewise girls and men, but this is not presented as a huge shock - the important binary is that of child vs adult.
Being me, of course, I spent that particular story wondering what happened to people whose experience of their gender didn’t fit the timeline. What of someone who chose a name at puberty and found the role that goes with it didn’t fit them at twenty-five? I often have this problem with fantasy stories that set out to be queer-positive worldbuilding - recall my issues with Malinda Lo’s Ash - so we can conclude this is a ‘target audience’ problem.
