POC SoCal authors?

Names on my list:
- Bryan Thao Worra
- Nalo Hopkinson
- Sofia Samatar

There must be more.

ETA Of course there is:

- SL Huang (LA-based http://www.slhuang.com/books/)
- Lisa Bolekaja (San Diego-based; Octavia Butler scholar to Clarion)
- Marilyn Chin (SD also, mostly a poet but has some recent SF stuff)
- Steve Barnes
- Tananarive Due
- Neil Aitken (http://www.neil-aitken.com/ he's also UCR alumnus)
- Kenji Liu (http://www.kenjiliu.com/publication-history/)
- Kima Jones

things i talk about with friends

somehow i got to talking about homosexual stuff in imperial china with a department colleague (even i’m not sure where this comes from) and she tells me there is a book on homoeroticism in imperial china. it’s an antho of plays, novel excerpts and poetry translated into english. it has illustrations.

from there we start talking about the difference between homosexual and homoerotic and how some lovers are possibly bisexual and perhaps even trans

and then to discussion of terms for queer relationships. like “cut-sleeve” and “peach eating” (both having stories of different love dynamics between emperor and lover)

so I ask, is there one for lesbians?

and she says yes, it vaguely translates into “rubbing the mirror”

that is very interesting, i say, because the other terms imply a difference in status between the lovers, but rubbing the mirror sounds like the lovers are equal

and she says yes and in the pictures the bodies look the same too

there are pictures, say i

it even shows the sex tools being used! says she

sex tools, say i

and she kind of shows me an approximation using her hands and fingers and i’m befuddled and she tells me that there are totally museum exhibitions of these lesbian sex toys and finally i’m like OH you’re talking about double-ended dildos

what? asks she and then wait there’s someone approaching and when the someone passes she says what is it called? how do you spell it?

and i tell her and she says well these things were very advanced they were made out of all sorts of materials like wood and bronze and there is even one which is hollow so you can fill it with hot water

and i tell her about the ones which you can warm up or put in the freezer

and yeah

it was an edifying evening.

this has been a post.