I'm not sure his this happens, only that it does.

July 13, 2016 8:37 AM

The Forbidden Words Of Margaret A. is a science fiction story by L. Timmel Duchamp, first published in 1990, describing a journalist's heavily-vetted meeting with a woman whose words have been declared illegal by the American government.

"Though it was the most important event in my life (I was nineteen when it happened), I can't remember any of her words. I was too young and naive at the time to hold onto newspapers and the ad hoc ephemera figures like Margaret A. invariably generate. And like most people I never dreamed a person's words could become illegal."

posted by dng (26 comments total)

The typo I made in the title is obviously a clever allusion to the themes of the story and not in any way related to blithering incompetence.
posted by dng at 8:41 AM on July 13, 2016 [11 favorites]

Downloaded. I shall read on the train home later today.
posted by prepmonkey at 8:51 AM on July 13, 2016

Interesting. Thank you.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:55 AM on July 13, 2016

It's not about Margaret Atwood. If it's about anyone in particular it's most likely to be Nelson Mandela, given when it was published.
posted by dng at 9:12 AM on July 13, 2016

L. Timmel is the best! She is one of my favorite SF authors, and Aqueduct is one of my favorite presses.

Love's Body, Dancing In Time is one of my favorite short story collections, with "Dance At The Edge" and "The Heloise Archive" (which seems to me related to Joanna Russ's "Souls") being my favorites.

The stories in Never At Home are harder to parse for me, but they have really stayed with me.

If you are looking for a book that has some themes in common with Margaret A., "The Red Rose Rages, Bleeding" is a novella by DuChamp that deals with a similar activist figure and a very contemporary/near-future-dystopia liberal careceral regime. It's really gripping.

You may have to order her books from Aqueduct - not a lot of places stock them.
posted by Frowner at 9:33 AM on July 13, 2016 [3 favorites]

(I am told that people actually call her "Timmi" in person rather than "L.")
posted by Frowner at 9:33 AM on July 13, 2016

Human society would not be the same were privacy not considered a privilege.

This sentence in the story stopped me in my tracks. Thank you for sharing.
posted by sobell at 9:34 AM on July 13, 2016 [1 favorite]

Is this what every well paid journalist faces, to get and keep a job? A lifetime of saying nothing in order to get paid to say nothing. Is Margaret, reality, imprisoned in a military, totalitarian state? Bradshaw's alcoholic "no talk" rule sure used to run the military.
posted by Oyéah at 9:56 AM on July 13, 2016 [2 favorites]

All right. You've convinced me to finally pick up a copy of "Alanya to Alanya".
posted by kyrademon at 10:20 AM on July 13, 2016 [2 favorites]

I read this story recently in the awesome collection Sisters of the Revolution: A Feminist Speculative Fiction Anthology and it blew me away. I particularly appreciated that -- before the popularity of the Web surged -- the author correctly predicted the complacency people would feel, assuming that access once granted would always be present, that information only increases in discoverability. And the experience rings so true, in the way one can be nearly leaping out of one's skin to try to absorb and remember something, only to have the memories treacherously slip away.
posted by brainwane at 10:20 AM on July 13, 2016 [7 favorites]

People arrested in Detroit for criticizing cops on social media.

Any mechanism that tyrants can use, they will. That's the thing to remember. When it becomes possible to arrest people for words and thoughts, that's what they'll do.

When I first read the story linked in the OP, years ago now, I didn't think it was one of LTD's stronger stories.

What has science fiction done for me? It has provided a prophetic voice. DuChamp, John Brunner, Margaret Atwood, the conservative but prescient Birth of the People's Republic of Antarctica - because I read those, I was ready when they came true.
posted by Frowner at 10:21 AM on July 13, 2016 [8 favorites]

All right. You've convinced me to finally pick up a copy of "Alanya to Alanya".

Just a heads-up: I bought a copy, read the first couple of chapters, was like "eh, this is not especially brilliantly written" and put it aside for a year or so. Then I picked it up again, read it, got into it and became obsessed. These are early works of hers and frankly while the books improve over the series, I still find them clumsily written in places. But once you sink into the prose, they have tremendous power. I'm just now re-reading Blood In The Fruit because it has a long sequence about a lawyer who is imprisoned and tortured for her support of dissidents and once you start, it really grabs you.

They are really weird books and I think they require a little effort even for many science fiction fans. But once you get into them, they are totally immersive. I often, often think about them.

Be warned, also, that the second book is about a character's detention in a black site, and while there isn't direct physical violence, it is very hard to read. I don't usually re-read that one unless I'm ready for it.

I think that for me, those books serve as...I don't know, mental landmarks, maybe, about the state, its violence and how the state rationalizes itself to itself.

If you want a Timmi DuChamp book that is more accessible as a starting point, The Red Rose Rages, Bleeding deals with many of the same themes but is a product of her later writing and is structured differently.
posted by Frowner at 10:26 AM on July 13, 2016 [3 favorites]

Thank you for posting.
posted by cairnoflore at 11:05 AM on July 13, 2016

I've probably read some of her short fiction not knowing it, but I'd never noticed her name. Definitely going to seek her out, this was great.

She might have been thinking of Mandela, but there are many women who know that feeling of making a completely mundane observation about oppression, especially against women, and have it treated as a shocking and radically unacceptable thing to say that must be silenced immediately.
posted by emjaybee at 12:04 PM on July 13, 2016 [3 favorites]

I think that if she was thinking of Mandela, she was probably also thinking of Emma Goldman and women activists in Latin America. (I mean, if she were thinking only of Mandela, making Margaret a woman muddies the parable.) I know from her website that during the eighties she did a bunch of Latin America solidarity activism and was around that milieu (which you absolutely see in Alanya to Alanya and the rest of that series) and I know from the series that she is familiar with Goldman (who appears on the covers!).

She's the best! She really is. But I add that it is also worth checking out other authors published by Aqueduct - they have a very interesting approach.
posted by Frowner at 12:11 PM on July 13, 2016 [3 favorites]

People arrested in Detroit for criticizing cops on social media.

I realize you're just using that article's terrible headline, but I am not certain this is an accurate characterization of the relevant information in your link:

Last weekend in Connecticut, police arrested Kurt Vanzuuk after a tip for posts on Facebook that identified Johnson as a hero and called for police to be killed.
An Illinois woman, Jenesis Reynolds, was arrested for writing in a Facebook post that she would shoot an officer who would pull her over.
In New Jersey, Rolando Medina was arrested and charged with cyber harassment. He allegedly posted on an unidentified form of social media that he would destroy local police headquarters.
In Louisiana, Kemonte Gilmore was arrested for an online video where he allegedly threatened a police officer.

Threats to harm other people are not, and should not be, protected as "free speech".
posted by randomnity at 12:18 PM on July 13, 2016 [1 favorite]

Oh yeah sorry, I didn't mean it was singularly about Mandela, just more that that was more likely than it being about Margaret Atwood!

The parts where the journalist in the story starts thinking to herself how kind the Government have been to Margaret A. in allowing her a garden and a computer, etc, also reminded me of reaction to Aung San Suu Kyi's house arrest (which presumably was just beginning around about when this story was written, and so might well be a better parallel).
posted by dng at 12:20 PM on July 13, 2016 [2 favorites]

An Illinois woman, Jenesis Reynolds, was arrested for writing in a Facebook post that she would shoot an officer who would pull her over.

I don't think that's an accurate description.

An Illinois woman, Jenesis Reynolds, was arrested for writing in a Facebook post that she would shoot an officer who would pull her over. “I have no problem shooting a cop for simple traffic stop cuz they’d have no problem doing it to me,” she wrote, according to the police investigation. She was charged with disorderly conduct.

That's an expression of a moral view, not an expression of intent. And no matter what you think of that moral view, it's does not fall into any exception to free speech allowed by the US constitution.
posted by howfar at 1:07 PM on July 13, 2016 [4 favorites]

Threats to harm other people are not, and should not be, protected as "free speech".

I'd noticed that too, but isn't it amazing though how it suddenly becomes possible to track down and arrest people over such threats when they're directed towards police officers, and not someone unimportant like the average woman who says anything uppity on the internet.
posted by XMLicious at 1:39 PM on July 13, 2016 [9 favorites]

it suddenly becomes possible to track down and arrest people over such threats when they're directed towards police officers, and not someone unimportant like the average woman who says anything uppity on the internet

Obviously, the answer is for women to all become police officers. Then maybe someone will take the threats to us seriously.
posted by sobell at 1:48 PM on July 13, 2016 [3 favorites]

Frowner you are in for a wild ride. The Marq'ssan cycle is very shattering! (and great). There is so much about people working through the complex layers of how they are complicit in what's wrong in their society....

I agree with you about Red Rose Rages (Bleeding). I usually rec it to people who I don't think will have the patience for the long slow unfolding of the Marq'ssan books which are more operatic or symphonic. But it explores some of the same things about interrogation and power (especially from Blood in the Fruit)
posted by geeklizzard at 2:08 PM on July 13, 2016 [1 favorite]

Shameless plug: I have a book of poetry out with Aqueduct, Unruly Islands.
posted by geeklizzard at 2:11 PM on July 13, 2016 [1 favorite]

I have actually read the Marq'ssan Cycle a bunch of times - it is kyrademon who has all the excitement ahead of her

But how exciting that you have a book with Aqueduct! I will look out for it at our local Store That Stocks Aqueduct Books.
posted by Frowner at 2:23 PM on July 13, 2016 [1 favorite]

Everyone's imagining her as super-Mandela, super-Atwood, but whatever her super-dangerous government-defeating populist message was is elided. Possibly she's super-Trump.
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 4:07 PM on July 13, 2016

Isn't that one of the points of the story - that because the use of state power validates the use of state power, the assumption is that she must have done something to deserve this.

And yet there's the distinct possibility she said nor did anything remarkable at all, and her detention is completely arbitrary (see Guantanamo Bay, for example).
posted by dng at 4:48 PM on July 13, 2016 [3 favorites]

Wow. Just....wow.

Especially the part where she's not a charismatic lovable person at all, just....someone fierce.
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:36 PM on July 13, 2016