![]() ![]() I have no time to dignify such shabby gender-essentialism with a rebuttal, so let’s move on. Why is this important to the narrative? Because, obviously Katherine is “only half a woman”! Because obviously giving birth to potato-looking fetuses is the True Test of womanhood. Typically feminine women can be strong, too. ![]() It’s the height of misogyny to think that a “strong” heroine has to possess “manly” attributes. ![]() She grew up sailing around the world with her father and brothers, and is headstrong and unladylike. She is a fiesty, independent woman-the reader knows this because she’s traveling alone, cross-country, in a very dangerous and volatile territory. ![]() The novel opens with Katherine Grant on a stagecoach. I acknowledge the long-steeped tradition of racism in the genre, but even if you accept from the get-go that Dancing on Coals hinges on a flawed, Anglo-centric worldview…it’s still not a good book. No matter how “respectful” a white author tries to be, romances of this sort are nevertheless still mired in problematic tropes such as the Noble Savage, Indian religion and way of life are usually mysticized and exoticized to the point of ridiculousness, and white heroines are usually kidnapped by the same Noble Savage Indian they will later have a romance with. For the most part, the time for Native American romances has come and gone. ![]()
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