Interview with Kameron Hurley

This is the first interview I have ever conducted, which I hope will be followed by many more. I can’t speak for Kameron, but I had a great time doing this interview.

Kameron Hurley’s short fiction has appeared in Talebones, Strange Horizons, The Leading Edge, and Deep Outside. Her most recent story will appear in the SF war anthology From the Trenches in November. She’s lived in Alaska and South Africa, and currently resides in Chicago where she bides her time sending out novels and synopses to unsuspecting agents and publishers.

Eric: “Women of Our Occupation” is one of the most powerful stories I’ve read in a long time, up there with Harlan Ellison’s “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream”, Philip K. Dick’s “Faith in Our Fathers”, and John Kessel’s “Stories for Men”. What inspired you to write “Women of Our Occupation”?

Kameron: When I think of writing “Occupation” I tend to think of it as a part of series of stories I wrote within a few weeks of one another and
brainstormed at about the same time. In my head, they’re all linked,
though the characters, setting and circumstances are all very
different.

I sat down and wrote out a list of things that I was passionate about
or interested in writing about – political issues, relationship woes,
and disagreements I had with some of the fiction I’d been reading and
ideas expressed on some of the blogs I frequented. I started pairing
the ideas together, and as soon as something clicked, I started
writing.

The group of stories that came out of that brainstorming session were
“Two Girls” – which is basically a fancy mpreg story tackling issues
surrounding abortion and bodily integrity; “Wonder Maul Doll” a war
story that will be out in the anthology, “From the Trenches” in
November; and “Occupation.”

With “Occupation” I wanted to write a story that incorporated some of
my grandmother’s stories of growing up in France during the Nazi
occupation. Her father was part of the French underground. As I
recall, he was arrested a number of times, but the story I remember is
the one where two members of the SS came to the house after he was
arrested and searched the place.

I also wanted to include a bit of dialogue I’d heard from a colleague
while I was living in South Africa. A friend of a friend had killed
himself, and at the funeral, the Catholic priest delivering the eulogy
said, “We all battle dragons. There’s no shame in losing.”

Something about that particular phase really stuck with me, and I
wanted it to fall somewhere in the story. At the time I started
writing, I wasn’t sure where it’d end up. I just wrote.

A number of things happened unconsciously – the fact that no one has
names, the narrator’s assertion that marrying the women would somehow
tame them, the final line, “All the news was the same.”

I don’t think I consciously set out to say something about feminism,
either. I simply wanted to write a story with lots of women in it. I
realized what I was getting at only when I finished writing and went
back to look at how the story hung together, and I saw that I’d
written about something that had been bothering me for some time. It’s
one of the things that irritated me the most about reading “Egalia’s
Daughters”: there’s an assumption that, if only women were in charge
of the world, the world would be in balance (in Egalia’s Daughters,
the assumption was that women would take better care of the earth than
men, because they menstrated and were therefore closer to the earth).

I’ve seen some spaces where people believe that if women rule the
world, there will be only peace, because women are “naturally” loving
and nurturing and peaceful. Women have no violent tendencies, a
greater compassion than men could ever have, a greater oneness with
the universe and etc. etc. Which I’ve always seen as a more insidious
version of the virgin/whore or noble savage/violent heathen divide.
That is: overromanticising women is about as dangerous as the
assumption that all women are weak-willed and stupid. As somebody
who’s often been put on a pedastel by lovers, I’ve seen the danger of
what happens when somebody thinks your perfect, and then figures out
you are, in fact, a human being.

And real people can be violent, angry, sad, and yes, they can be
occupiers. It’s one of the dangers of that other flipside of feminism:
believing that in order for us to be equal, we must perform just like
men who are in power. We must learn to do all of the terrible things
that men in power do, because that’s how you get and keep power. And
that’s a dangerous place to fall into.

I think equality is only going to come when men are willing to change,
too; when we all feel free to express our identities based not on
expected gender roles, but on those that feel the truest to us. And we
can’t do that if we’re all running a race to see who can perform the
most monstrous of the behaviors we’ve designated “masculine.” That’s
not going to make anybody happy except the three people who slaughter
everybody on their way to the top.

Eric: Some of the goals for the story reminds me of what John Kessel tried to do in “Stories For Men” which features a society where males are repressed in a matriarchy, though its slightly more unconscious and under-the-surface. Your story, also, had moments that reminded me a lot of “When It All Changed” by Joanna Russ, especially your opening. Have you ever read these stories and if so what did you think of them?

Kameron: I have indeed read both. Russ’s story was certainly one that I had in mind when I wrote “Occupation.” One of the reasons I chose to write
“Occupation” with women as the invaders, from a male point of view, was that I figured Russ had pretty well covered the “male invaders from a female point of view” in “When it Changed” (in fact, if you regender “Occupation” you can see how easily it becomes a classic “men take over a matriarchy” story). I wrote an appreciation of Russ’s “When it Changed” for the Ed SF project, and it gave me an opportunity
to read it more closely than I had in the past, which probably affected the way I later went on to edit the final version of “Occupation.”

I liked Kessel’s story as well, though I read it some time ago. It very much deals with the “absolute power corrupts absolutely” problem that I see when people try and build a “utopia” that’s merely a gender swap. I think it was Matt Cheney who wrote that any society in which the sexes are not equal will inherently be an unbalanced society, and Kessel’s story not only does a good job portraying that, but also
illustrates a lot of the complexities of such a society.

I think Kessel’s story succeeded in several ways that I felt “Egalia’s Daughters” (which has the same basic premise) didn’t: I got more of the genuine sense of fear women felt when their power was threatened by men; the characters in Kessel’s story were far more likeable; and his narrative was much easier to follow. And, of course, Kessel’s story wasn’t satire, and so I could enjoy the ideas without getting
sidetracked by some of the over-the-top absurdity.

There’s also a cute little satire by William Tenn called, “The Masculinist Revolution” that could probably be lumped into the same category as “Egalia’s Daughters,” and that I’d recommend.

Eric: You said before, that you think equality is only going to come when men are willing to change, too; when we all feel free to express our identities based not on expected gender roles, but on those that feel the truest to us. However, doesn’t that present the same sort of paradox of protecting groups like neo-Nazis under the first amendment who preach abolishing that amendment even while it protects them? In other words, what if some people decided that “traditional” masculinity is what feels truest to them?

Kameron: I think that when you flip this idea – men believing that the best way to express themselves is to hide their emotions behind football – you
end up with the question: what about women who want to wear summer dresses and high heels and stay home with the kids and spend the vast majority of their time doing unpaid labor around the home?

There’s certainly nothing wrong with wanting to stay home and raise children – whether the person in question is male or female. And there’s certainly nothing wrong with wanting to watch football, no matter your sex.

We all have “masculine” and “feminine” traits. Suppressing those traits because you feel they make you “other” isn’t going to be great for anyone. Where we run into trouble is when people’s desires for violence, abuse, power, cause them to lash out and hurt others. When you insult the bodily and emotional integrity of another person so you can feel better about yourself, you cross the line from “expressing”
yourself to being abusive. You’re violating the human rights of others.

I think what I’d like to see is a diverse world where we’re all given many options, other models. It’s why history is constantly rewritten by the victors: if you can convince a conquered people that they’ve always been backward and incompetent, that those of their sex or race or class never did anything worthwhile, you can convince them that *they* are not worthwhile. You can make people believe things have *always* been this way, that they will always continue, as sure as sunrise. But when we challenge and break out of those boxes, we can give others a picture of the way things *could* be. In the end, that’s all you can do: show others what is possible. Because at the end of the day, they make their own decisions.

It certainly could turn out that, in the end, lots of men really would rather express their emotions through sports as opposed to long talks (a lot of women want to do this too – I’m terrible at expressing emotions verbally); or even a man who doesn’t want a partner (or several partners), but a servant. If you can pair people together who truly find that life satisfying, that’s great, but I’d like to know
the woman who performs the role of servant knows why she feels that way, and understands her other options. I’d like to think the man knows it’s possible to be the equal of the person he has sex with; that being with another strong person doesn’t make him any less of a person.

I’d like them to know what their options are. I want them to know that it hasn’t always been this way. There can be another life. Things can be really different.

Eric: I am going to presume a little bit about your work based on where your other stories have appeared since I haven’t read them all. What attracts you to genre fiction as opposed to writing “mainstream” realist stories?

Kameron: I think mainstream writing can be fun to write for some people, but it’s never been an interest of mine. I’ve peddled a few mainstream
stories, but I’m not as passionate about writing them as I am genre stories. There are things you can do with the fantastic that, I believe, can’t be done in mainstream stories. You can break rules, make new rules, go to impossible places. You can explore the impossible, and in a world that is so obsessed with scientific fact, with certainty, fantasy can bust through many of our assumptions, and force us to question what we regard as “fact.”

I also have a notorious weakness for reading and writing epic fantasy, which I’m certain will get me into trouble some day….

Eric: Ah, you’re an Epic Fantasy fan! Me too! I saw a debate once claiming Epic fantasy often lacks the thematic depth, variety, and richness of Urban Fantasy or Magic Realism, particularly in relation to the language it uses. The proponents of this claim said that Epic Fantasy lends itself towards “escapism” or obvious themes without nuance. They explained that this occurred because their is a remove that takes place in secondary-world stories compared to their Urban fantasies/Magic Realism counterparts that deal with more ‘real-life’ matters. What are your thoughts on this?

Kameron: I think they’re full of shit, basically.

First, there’s nothing wrong with escapism, which I’ll elaborate on in a moment.

Second, epic fantasy is no more escapist than mysteries, thrillers, romance novels, and anything by Toni Morrison or Isabel Allende. Allende and Morrison are certainly going to be a shade more talented than most epic fantasy writers, but then Allende and Morrison are more talented than most writers in general.

Epic fantasy can contain beautiful language. The fact that most doesn’t says more about the ways that epic fantasy is packaged than what it actually is or could be.

I’d call Peake’s Gormenghast trilogy an “epic” because the whole world *is* at stake – Gormenghast *is* the world, as far as its inhabitants are concerned. And I think the Gormenghast books, on the level of pure language, are haunting and creepy and beautiful. Are they escapist? Again, they’re about as escapist as a Toni Morrison novel. They’ll take you to a visually stimulating place you’ve never been to and can’t get to – often because it’s in the past, in the case of Morrison’s work – a bizarre place full of larger-than-life characters who feel and act in dramatic, passionate ways that we either don’t often see in real life or that we’ve become numb to.

Great fiction wakes us up.

As for the remove that takes place in epic, heroic, or just plain fantasy works, I’d argue that it’s the remove from the real world than comes closest to examining issues objectively. When you’re mired in your own world, familiar surroundings, you’re more numb to what you’d see as the everyday routines of life, the “normal,” the “expected,” the “natural.” When you remove these things from their settings you
can often see the absurdities of them, the injustice. Fantasy – good fantasy – can do that without feeling didactic.

As said above, I don’t see anything wrong with a beautiful book being “escapist.” I think that well-written books are, by their very definition, escapist. When we read them we become immersed in someplace else, someone else, something else. And I don’t think that’s a bad thing.

When we’re going through difficult times, it’s often comforting – even inspiring – to go somewhere else and watch someone who has so many more issues to deal with than we do, so many more problems, but who finds that strength within themselves to… well, save the world.

And if they can save the world with all that stacked against them, well.. just imagine what *we* could do.

Eric: If you could meet any person dead or alive who would it be and why?

Kameron: Well, you know, it would be a toss-up between Alexander the Great and Joanna Russ.

Alexander because I’d like to know what sort of person could conquer the known world by the age of 30.

Russ because she’s… well, she’s Joanna Russ. And I wouldn’t be the writer I am without having read her.

I think Russ would win because, you know, she speaks English – and though I have many talents, speaking ancient Macedonian isn’t one of them…

Eric: Thank you for your time.