[Bread-Baking Typewriter] Reflections on Women and Language from a Master of Fantasy Literature...

Dancing at the End of the World

"I want you to live not as prisoners ashamed of being women or captives who have consented to a psychopathic social system, but as the original inhabitants of that place. I want you to settle comfortably there, to have a home there, to be your own master, and to have your own room." Ursula K. Le Guin, a master of fantasy literature, said this at the 1983 graduation ceremony of Mills College, a cradle of women's education. Rather than wishing the graduates success, she spoke about the failures they might face. She hoped they could live even in those dark places, places that our rationalistic success culture denies as livable. Le Guin emphasized that hope lies not in blinding light but in nourishing darkness, where humans nurture the human soul.

Recently published Dancing at the Edge of the World includes this speech, which was selected among the top 100 greatest speeches in American Rhetoric, a collection of famous American speeches, as well as lecture manuscripts, essays, and book reviews Le Guin delivered from the late 1970s to the early 1980s. Except for the book reviews, each piece is marked with one of four symbols representing women, the world, literature, and travel according to its theme. For example, the "Graduation Speech for Left-Handers" given at Mills College carries the symbols for women and the world. In the preface, she explained her intention: "I hope it will be useful for readers who do not align with a particular tendency to avoid certain pieces."

Crossing these four themes, this book allows readers to glimpse the true nature of Le Guin, widely known for her SF and fantasy novels. Her representative work, the Earthsea series, is considered one of the world's top three fantasy novels alongside The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia. However, her writing did not remain confined to the fantasy world. The subjects she wrote about encompassed anthropology, feminism, anarchism, psychology, and sociology. She especially portrayed radical changes in gender roles. Addressing gender identity, social norms, and feminism, she posed questions to us. The wide-ranging essays in Dancing at the Edge of the World bring us closer to Le Guin’s unique philosophy and worldview, which we might not have fully grasped through her novels alone.

We can also glimpse her thought process in introducing feminist concepts into the male-centered SF genre. Her representative Earthsea saga did not end with the original trilogy featuring the wizard Ged but continued with the novel Tehanu, centered on female characters. In "Do We Need Gender? Rewriting," she wrote, "I think one of the core functions of SF is to ask these kinds of questions: to overturn habitual ways of thinking, to metaphorically express what our language has no words for yet, and to experiment with imagination."

Moreover, through her 1986 essay "The Prospects for Women in Writing," she predicted that by around the year 2000, women living consciously as active and creative forces in society for more than a generation would possess insight, ideas, and judgment. Now, more than 20 years past 2000, Le Guin’s prediction has already become reality. Yet, the realities surrounding women’s lives that she confronted at the 1983 Mills College graduation have not changed. This is why the resonance of Le Guin’s writing remains as powerful as ever.

(Dancing at the Edge of the World / Ursula K. Le Guin / Hwanggeumgaji / 18,000 KRW)