Coming to Terms with Genre Labels

I love to read all kinds of books, but primarily those “all kinds of books” do often tend to fall into the genre category, just different genres. Science Fiction was my first love, and still is one of my favorite reads and fantasy has become such a huge section of my shelves that it has pretty taken over one of my rooms (yes- I said rooms) of books.

But genre isn’t much respected outside of the halls of our own little sub-culture, even today with all the hoopla about fantasy and science fiction in films and all. Fangirl Unleashed, one of my favorite writers about genre, did a great bit about genre, especially fantasy and SyFy in one of my favorite blogs, unleashthefanboy.

I agree with so much of what she says – that it has always been in fantasy and science fiction that many women found a calling because it is in those genre fiction areas that women have been the most welcome. Even in a “boys club” like mystery, women writers have flourished and women characters have had the opportunity to be more than just eye candy.

Today’s fantasy, with the focus being now on vampires and their relatives like werewolves and faeries, have still done remarkably well in portraying women as characters of substance. Take our own in-house heroine, Sookie Stackhouse. Now there is a gal that does not wait for “the boys” to take care of her fighting or righting of wrongs. She rolls up her sleeves and demands to take care of it herself. And yet, without losing any of the nurturing female side to her, the side that cradles Erik or Bill when they are hurt or finds a solution to someone’s pain. Sookie is the kind of gal we all want to be.

So even if you have problems selling someone on a book because it has vampires in it, there is still always the fact that most of these books have great female characters in them. Yes, strong men and we all love that in the stories, and even vulnerable men who allow women into their lives. But in the end, for me at least, it is the fact that for all element of escape that so much fantasy can have, what really works for me is the real world values of women who take care of things, and men who appreciate that they do.