“A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it. Writers know words are their way towards truth and freedom, and so they use them with care, with thought, with fear, with delight. By using words well they strengthen their souls. Story-tellers and poets spend their lives learning that skill and art of using words well. And their words make the souls of their readers stronger, brighter, deeper.”

― Ursula K. Le Guin

I’m not just writing this because tonight PBS will be airing a documentary about the late science fiction writer and thinker of all things, Ursula K. Le Guin, and hope you’ll watch it. I’m writing this because I want to share her with you, like anything else that inspires me or tells me this is so fantastic I can’t keep this all to myself. True greatness whether its a book, a recipe, a song, a piece of artwork, comes with a requisite “share me” tag which can’t be ignored.

Like most of us, we discover authors because of recommendations either from friends, websites of other authors. We often hear them discuss their influences and if we’re really into their writing then chances are we’ll give those folks a whirl. And that’s how I came to know Ursula.

Even though science fiction is not the genre I naturally gravitate to, I’ve always considered myself a fan. Dune was an eye-opener for me and the way Frank Herbert had created a whole language (fremen) just blew my mind. (subakh ul kuhar – are you well? subakh un nar – I am well, and you? I’m giggling remembering how I had all this crazy stuff down pat). Robert Heinlein, Ray Bradbury, Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Arthur C. Clarke, yup … I read all these guys, too. But please take note I said “guys.” Back then it was like every other field that didn’t include running a household, a good ole boys club. Something to break into because that is what we must do: change the thinking, change the way the world works.

And nothing speaks to this better than her essay: Introducing Myself. Right there at the beginning of The Wave in the Mind, Ursula tells you upfront this was “written in the early nineties as a performance piece.” The first line reads: “I am a man.” From there she goes on to describe herself with the hope you’ll ignore the fact that “I own three bras, and I’ve been pregnant five times and other things like that that you might have noticed, little details.” I visualize this interesting, unpretentious older woman standing in front of an audience saying what I am is more than what you see. And what you see is only getting better. “Models like the Austen and the Bronte were too complicated,” she wrote, “and people just laughed at the Suffragette, and the Woolf was way too far ahead of its time.” “We have been told that there is only one kind of people and they are men.”

If I had to pick just one thing that taught me what it means to be a woman in a man’s world and how to navigate through, I’d have a difficult time. I’ve had so many experiences to pound that message in. But this piece … this brings it home.

In the span of some sixty years, Ursula wrote twenty-one novels, hundreds of essays, short stories, poetry, children’s books and influenced a generation of writers: Terry Pratchett, Salman Rushdie, Zadie Smith, Margaret Atwood, and Neil Gaiman. And it was through Neil that I soon found myself diving headfirst into, The Left Hand of Darkness. That was followed up by, No Time to Spare, her collection of essays, which I absolutely loved and related to. She’s such an easy read when those plain-as-paper thoughts pour out about anything and everything: getting older, her cat Pard, and why the phrase “you can’t have your cake and eat it too,” is grammatically a no-no.

“To light a candle is to cast a shadow…”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea

I was blown away when I found out that in 2010, at the age of eighty-one, she started a blog. A blog! Seriously? My mother at the age of eighty-one refused to buy any more shoes with shoelaces complaining that was beyond her scope. Can you imagine the clamor over a keyboard? A mouse? Throwing words out into the black void of Internet space? (Here’s her website where you can read those treasured archived blogs: www.ursulakleguin.com).

Among the many, many things I’ve learned by reading Ursula Le Guin, whether it’s a story, a poem, or an essay, she’s always trying to reach us on some other level. One deeper about those great issues which continue to chip away at our humanity. And that, my friends, is what makes for compelling reading from a most compelling person.

Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin premieres Friday, August 2 at 9 p.m. on PBS and will also be available for streaming at PBS.org/americanmasters.

 

 

2 Comments -Leave a Comment