The improvised note ... some weird territory of you and me

September 27, 2015 7:27 PM

Sofia Samatar's "Skin Feeling" evokes "What it is to be encountered as a surface, to be constantly exposed as something you are not." Samatar is an English professor, an SFF writer, and a person of color engaged in diversity work on her campus, and among other things, her essay reflects on multiple incidents of indecent exposure, Charlie Parker's "Relaxin' at Camarillo" and the university housed in what was once the largest mental hospital in the world, the book On Being Included, and being made a symbol of diversity (a topic that fellow SFF writer Kate Elliott recently addressed as well). [Samatar link via Savage Minds and Elliott link via N. K. Jemisin.]
posted by Monsieur Caution (4 comments total)

This is a really good essay, and I am glad it was posted here as an FPP because I probably wouldn't have seen it otherwise.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:39 PM on September 27, 2015 [1 favorite]

If you haven't read Sofia's World Fantasy Award-winning A Stranger In Olondria, do yourself a favor and start it right the heck now.
posted by RakDaddy at 8:45 PM on September 27, 2015 [1 favorite]

That was an incredible essay. Thanks for linking it!
posted by skye.dancer at 6:31 AM on September 28, 2015

Dang -- this is awesome, and as a native Californian (now in exile in N. Carolina) I had no idea that CS Channel Islands took over the "old" Camarillo hospital grounds.

That is some weird shit, I'll tell you.

Thanks.
posted by allthinky at 7:11 PM on September 28, 2015