Guest Post: Debbie Lynn Smith Daughetee on Rediscovering the Voices of Woman Horror Writers

This essay has three parts. The first tells you about who I am and why I find ways to put Jews and Judaism in my fiction. The second tells you about my novels and the Jewishness of them. The third is the good bit. When I build worlds for my novels, I make sure that there is food in the world. I will talk about some of that food and, of course, there will be recipes. Recipes are worth waiting for. If you want to start on the fiction before you read the first post, then my most recent novel is The Green Children Help Out. I explore what a superhero looks like when created by a Jewish Australian woman with disabilities. Hint: there’s no Superman. And now, on with the posts.

Part One

I’m Jewish Australian. It used to take courage to say this in front of strangers, and it still takes a moment and a deep breath. Things are different in Australia. It’s not just the big spiders and curious streetlife. I’d rather talk about the curious streetlife, because kangaroos are a traffic hazard where I live and our magpies attack people. Also, it’s easier than talking about being Jewish.

Officially, I’m classified as CALD (Culturally And Linguistically Diverse), but until recently I was NESB (from a Non-English Speaking Background). Unofficially, I’m called many things. I often call myself a giraffe (an exceedingly short one).

Why a giraffe? Strangers tell me after panels or papers or talks,  “I’ve never met anyone Jewish before” or “You speak very good English for someone Jewish.” People with more worldly knowledge ask when I left New York or Israel or, if they’re less tolerant tell me, “You should go back to where you came from.”

I usually ask, “Do you mean Melbourne in general, or specifically Hawthorn?” Melbourne is my home city and Hawthorn my home suburb. I’ve been away for nearly forty years.

The conversation continues, “Go to where your parents came from.”

“That’s difficult, because my father lived in country Victoria and my mother in Melbourne””you need to choose.”

The conversation seldom stops there. Most of these people expect me to turn into some mythical being from somewhere they never quite identify, and are very disconcerted when they find out my father’s mother’s mother’s mother was born in London, as was her mother, and her mother’s mother. The rest of me comes from all over Europe. My family has been in Australian for well over a century.

Most Australians expect Jewish Australians to be exotic. The most common terms are “Exotic White” or “Near White.” During the infamous White Australia policy, Jews were Honorary Black.

These days, I describe myself as “off-white.”Â It stops all the questions before they begin.

The writer I’m most often told about when people discover my profession is Arnold Zable. He wrote a fictionalised account of his family’s last days in BiaÅ‚ystock during the Holocaust. He was one of the last people to escape this far, you see. Another member of his family who escaped married a cousin of mine and a couple of years ago I finally met Zable.

“You know my mother,” I said, “And your cousin married one of my cousins.”

“Which cousin?”Â he asked.

“Feivel, the carnival guy.”

This tells you something else about Australian Jewry. Prior to World War II, we were few in number. Many of us are related in some way, if we come from an older family. Or our parents went to Sunday school together.

We are culturally different to Jews who arrived after the Shoah. I call us the scones-and-committee branch of Judaism. Our branch has writers and musicians and dentists and teachers and shopkeepers and lots of people who worked in the garment industry. I have a cousin who specialises in lipstick and a sister who specialises in wine. My great-aunts ran a shop that Phryne Fisher would have gone to for her haberdashery. My family fought in World War II. We are, in our way, quintessentially Melburnian.

And yet”¦ I’m off-white. It took until my third novel for strangers to stop telling me my English was very good for someone Jewish.

All these descriptions roll out as if I’ve said them a thousand times. I have. They’ve been my defence against bigots and those who assume there are no Jews in Australia and against all those people who don’t see me unless I shout.

My fiction helps me shout. I hold the pinpricks I face up to the light so that a picture shines through. I don’t write literary novels. I write science fiction and fantasy. Every now and then I stop and ask, “Why don’t I write like CS Lewis or “Doc” Smith or, in fact, any of the writers I grew up reading?” I have things to say about myself and my culture, I suspect, that don’t fit into a classic SF story. There are scones, there are committees, and there’s a lot more.

Next post: Meet the novels in which I say these things.

BIO: Dr Gillian Polack is a Jewish-Australian science fiction and fantasy writer, researcher and editor and is the winner of the 2020 A Bertram Chandler Award. The Green Children Help Out is her newest novel. The Year of the Fruit Cake won the 2020 Ditmar for best novel and was shortlisted for best SF novel in the Aurealis Awards. She wrote the first Australian Jewish fantasy novel (The Wizardry of Jewish Women). Gillian is a Medievalist/ethnohistorian, currently working on how novels transmit culture. Her work on how writers use history in their fiction (History and Fiction) was shortlisted for the William Atheling Jr Award for Criticism or Review.

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If you’re an author or other fantasy and science fiction creative, and want to do a guest blog post, please check out the guest blog post guidelines. Or if you’re looking for community from other F&SF writers, sign up for the Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers Critclub!

When I first buckled down to seriously try writing after graduating from college, I dreamed of crafting epic fantasy similar to books by George R.R. Martin and Joe Abercrombie. Their works were breaths of fresh air. Unlike the novels of Tolkien or Robert Jordan, these authors eschewed the black-and-white worldview of good versus evil for shades of gray. I wanted to write just like them.

Of course, I eventually discovered that there’s a reason Martin and Abercrombie are best-selling authors, and Martin takes many years between books. What they do is really, really hard.

Switching to Young Adult

Discovering that writing epic fantasy is a monumental task was the first step in finding my authorial voice. My critique group told me that my writing was more suited to a young adult audience. At first, I was dismissive of this observation, but I came around when I started reading more young adult fantasy and science fiction. I soon appreciated these books possess an intoxicating sense of adventure and discovery.

Eventually, I abandoned my quest to craft an epic fantasy for adults to attempt a young adult fantasy. A theme that fascinated me was the sense of estrangement and otherness that young people often feel at one time or another. At least, I recall feeling that way as an adolescent. My interest in this topic was enhanced by my experience traveling solo to Japan while a young man.

I have been fascinated with Asia, especially Japan, from a young age. My initial interest in Japan stems from the original Shogun miniseries and my father’s fascination with the country. Even now, close to twenty years later, I vividly recall visiting Japan’s ancient capitals, Kyoto and Nara, and traveling to Himeji to tour the majestic castle there. It was a fantastic trip that enhanced my interest in Asia and taught me a lesson about how people who find themselves in the minority for whatever reason feel.

Growing up in the Pacific Northwest in the 1980s and 1990s, I always found myself in the majority. Most of my classmates and friends looked like me and had similar upbringings. The struggles of minorities, either in race, gender identity, ideology, or social standing, always seemed distant. These people and their challenges were something I only experienced on the nightly news, never firsthand.

I can’t claim to know precisely what it’s like to be a minority because I’m not one. But in Japan, I came about as close as I probably ever will. Kyoto is a touristy city, but most tourists are Japanese. While meandering the grounds of ancient temples, I was often the only foreigner, a gaijin. I attracted attention wherever I went, especially from school children with assignments to speak English to a foreigner. None of these interactions were negative, but I was very aware that in this environment, I was in the minority, that I was the other. For someone who had never experienced that before and was naturally introverted, it was uncomfortable at the time. I look back at it now as a wonderful experience. It gave me an inkling of what it is like to be a minority and taught me firsthand that the Western view of the world is only one perspective among many.

Later, I would draw upon my experiences in Japan and Southeast Asia in my writing for young adults.

Weaving in Themes

Feeling like the other and being caught between two worlds are themes that come up time and again in my young adult fantasy series, The Allison Lee Chronicles. Being a fantasy series, in some ways, the themes are apparent. Allison discovers she is a shape-shifting monster. Eventually, everyone knows she’s different; some people are fans, and others are not. However, I wanted to express these ideas more subtly, too, and that proved a difficult task.

While working on Dragons Walk Among Us, the first novel in the series, I was fortunate enough to read Seraphina by Rachel Hartman and EXO by Fonda Lee. These authors explored themes similar to those I wanted to investigate. Their protagonists were caught between worlds with divided loyalties and experienced feeling like the other due to their heritage and outlooks, and the novels’ antagonists weren’t evil villains. In many ways, the books were as morally gray as George R.R. Martin’s and Joe Abercrombie’s works without being relentlessly grim.

Reading the novels of Hartman and Lee helped me express Allison’s internal struggles of feeling like the other and being trapped between two worlds more subtly than I would have otherwise. I owe these authors and their books a debt of gratitude. They helped open my eyes to how wonderfully imaginative and thoughtful the young adult genre can be.

Conclusion

If I’ve learned anything on my writing journey it’s that your authorial voice can differ from what you expect or want it to be. When I first started writing, I never anticipated ending up as a young adult author. I also didn’t think my travels as a young man to Japan would have a thematic impact on my writing. But it did.

As a writer, I have benefited from being open to new experiences and perspectives and willing to reinterpret old ones. It helped me craft my authorial voice and find success.

Author Bio

Dan Rice pens the young adult urban fantasy series The Allison Lee Chronicles in the wee hours of the morning. The Wrath of Monsters, the third installment in the series, will be out on June 19, 2024.

To discover more about Dan’s writing and keep tabs on his upcoming releases, check out his blog and join his newsletter.

If you’re an author or other fantasy and science fiction creative, and want to do a guest blog post, please check out the guest blog post guidelines. Or if you’re looking for community from other F&SF writers, sign up for the Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers Critclub!