Dark Agenda

The First Nations was the third group to show the most underrepresentation in wistfuljane's pie charts showing the breakdown by region of nominated fandoms qualifying for Chromatic Yuletide 2010. While First Nations is a term that is commonly applied to indigenous peoples in North and South America, for the purposes of this fest, we would like to expand the category to include other indigenous groups as well, such as Australian Aborigines, the Māori, and Native Hawaiians, to name a few examples.

Wikipedia defines indigenous peoples as "ethnic groups who are native to a land or region, especially before the arrival and intrusion of a foreign and possibly dominating culture." The unspoken corollary is that the First Nations have faced genocide by the invaders, and this systematic destruction continues to this day in the form of reservations, destruction of culturally important sites, assimilation, erasure, and appropriation of their traditions and heritage by the colonizing culture. We hope that the members of the community take these issues into account when exploring works by creators belonging to the First Nations and other indigenous peoples and that Kaleidoscope will provide an opportunity to bring more attention to these fandoms.

Starting Points

• Oyate
  
• American Indians in Children's Literature
  
• Conquest by Andrea Smith
  
• Native Appropriations
  
• First Nations Urban Survival
  
• Indigenous Peoples Issues & Resources
  
• Indigenous Peoples Literature

Brainstorming

Here are some First Nations sources that we think will make great fandom nominations for Kaleidoscope:

• Sherman Alexie (Spokane): young adult fiction, literary fiction, poetry, screenplays
  
• Drew Hayden Taylor (Ojibwa): plays, anthologies, SF/F fiction
  
• Louise Erdrich (Métis): literary fiction, poetry, children's fiction
  
• Witi Ihimaera (Māori): literary fiction
  
• Israel Kamakawiwo'ole (Native Hawaiian): music
  
• Yothu Yindi (Yolngu): music
  
• Atarnajuat | The Fast Runner (Inuit): film

Suggestions from commenters:

• sanguinity recommends Stephen Graham Jones (Blackfeet): speculative fiction, especially The Bird is Gone
  
• sanguinity recommends Cynthia Leitich Smith (Muskogee): children's fiction, YA fiction, speculative fiction, especially the Tantalize series
  
• sanguinity recommends Joseph Bruchac (Abenaki): speculative fiction, historical fiction
  
• sanguinity and thingswithwings recommend Thomas King (Cherokee): literary fiction, children's fiction, especially Medicine River, short stories, A Coyote Columbus Story and Green Grass, Running Water
  
• anenko mentions Rabbit Fall (Métis): Canadian TV series
  
• anenko recommends Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (Canada): broadcast network
  
• thingswithwings recommends Tomson Highway (Cree): plays, literary fiction, especially The Rez Sisters, Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing and Kiss of the Fur Queen
  
• thingswithwings recommends Eden Robinson (Haisla): literary fiction, especially Monkey Beach

Also check out the First Nations source fandoms mentioned in the comments to Chromatic fandom collecting!

Share your squee for these fandoms or give other fandom suggestions in the comments below!

This entry is posted at Dreamwidth and LiveJournal and you may comment at either journaling platform.

Hello again, doers of darkness! First of all, we apologize profusely for the delay in our promotions festival and our extended radio silence re: Kaleidoscope in general; an unfortunate confluence of offline situations pushed us quite far off our schedule. We are working to get back on course and will present you with an updated timeline as soon as possible. For now, we shall return to our original promotion programming.

To give a quick recap, last year, wistfuljane presented pie charts showing the breakdown by region of nominated fandoms qualifying for Chromatic Yuletide 2010. Latin American and Caribbean sources, along with those from Africa and the First Nations, were at the bottom of the list. We hope to do better this year by encouraging Kaleidoscope participants to brainstorm and discuss fandoms originating from these regions.

Latin America

Latin America is a vast and diverse region that includes Mexico in North America, Central and South America, and the Caribbean islands, which we will further discuss in the next section. Its cultural, ethnic, and linguistic makeup is tied to the history of European colonialism, and the social constructions and hierarchies of race within Latin America vary from nation to nation and are distinct from those experienced by the Latin@ diaspora. For example, within the United States, some white-identified Latin@s may experience similar discrimination to chromatic minorities, and some multiracial Latin Americans may pass as white.

We do not want to discount the experiences of Latin@s outside of Latin America or disregard the self-identification of members of the Latin@ community. However, we ask that you take the aforementioned issues into account when you consider the question of whether or not a character or creator counts as chromatic for the purposes of the Kaleidoscope challenge. We also welcome any input or perspectives that the Latin American members of the community might wish to provide.

Starting Points

• When Worlds Collide
  
• Latin American Studies
  
• Latin American Network Information Center
  
• Racial Classifications in Latin America
  
• Latin America and the Concept of Social Race

Brainstorming

Here are some Latin American sources that we think would be great fandom nominations for Kaleidoscope:

• Angélica Gorodischer (Argentina): speculative and crime fiction
  
• Antônia (Brazil): film
  
• Botineras (Argentina): telenovela
  
• Cidade de Deus | City Of God (Brazil): film
  
• Isabel Allende (Chile): literary/speculative fiction
  
• Leonera | Lion's Den (Argentina): film
  
• Liliana Bodoc (Argentina): speculative fiction
  
• Roberto Bolaño (Chile): literary fiction
  
• Somos lo que hay | We Are What We Are (Mexico): film
  
• Y tu mamá también (Mexico): film

The Caribbean

We would like to draw special attention to the Caribbean as a region that overlaps with Latin America but also has its own unique set of histories and cultures. Multiple European countries (Spain, France, England as well as others) have colonized the islands of the Caribbean in the past, and many, with the addition of the U.S., continue to do so today. The hybridity of Caribbean cultures does not merely draw influence from colonial powers, but also from the indigenous peoples who first inhabited the islands, the African diaspora brought originally as slaves, and later diasporic communities from East and South Asia. This multiethnic and multilingual environment has created so many brilliant works of media, whether it be new musical genres or award-winning literature. We would like to highlight creators who hail from Caribbean countries and encourage the community to explore their work.

Starting Points

• Caribbean Cultural Studies
  
• Truly Caribbean
  
• Digital Library of the Caribbean
  
• Silencing the Past by Michel-Rolph Trouillot

Brainstorming

Here are some Caribbean sources that we think would be great fandom nominations for Kaleidoscope:

• Tobias Buckell (Grenada): speculative fiction
  
• Junot Díaz (Dominican Republic): literary/speculative fiction
  
• Nalo Hopkinson (Jamaica): speculative fiction
  
• Jamaica Kincaid (Antigua): literary fiction
  
• Karen Lord (Barbados): speculative fiction
  
• Karin Lowachee (Guyana): speculative fiction

Also check out the Caribbean source fandoms mentioned in the comments to Chromatic fandom collecting!

Share your squee for these fandoms or give other Latin American/Caribbean fandom suggestions in the comments below!

This entry is posted at Dreamwidth and LiveJournal and you may comment at either journaling platform.

Last year, wistfuljane presented pie charts showing the breakdown by region of nominated fandoms qualifying for Chromatic Yuletide 2010. Africa, along with Latin America and First Nations, were at the bottom of the list. We hope that we can do better this year by encouraging Kaleidoscope participants to brainstorm and discuss fandoms that originate in Africa.

Like every world region, Africa is not a monolith: it’s the second-largest and second-most populous continent in the world, with 54 nations populated by hundreds of ethnicities speaking over a thousand languages. In light of this incredible diversity, we encourage participants to think carefully about cultural context and issues of representation when creating fanworks for these sources.

Starting Points

• How to Write About Africa by Binyavanga Wainaina (article in Granta)
• The danger of a single story by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (video of TED talk)
• 100 things that you didn’t know about Africa (page 2, 3, 4) by Robin Walker (excerpt from When We Ruled)
• This is Africa (Tumblr)

Brainstorming

Here are some African sources that we think would be great fandom nominations for Kaleidoscope:

• Awesome historical women: Nana Asma’u, Kimpa Vita, Queen Nandi, Yaa Asantewa (special thanks to eccentricyoruba, who wrote all of these interesting posts)
• Nollywood films (Nigeria): trailers at Nollywood.com, full movies licensed for streaming on Youtube
• Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Nigeria): literary fiction
• Willie Bester (South Africa): sculpture
• Toumani Diabaté (Mali): music at myspace
• Fela Kuti (Nigeria): music at last.fm
• Naguib Mahfouz (Egypt): literary fiction
• Nnedi Okorafor (Nigeria): speculative fiction
• Shailja Patel (Kenya): poetry and performance art
• Oumou Sangare (Mali): music at myspace
• Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (Kenya): literary fiction
• Ali Farka Touré (Mali): music at last.fm, World Circuit Records

Also check out the African source fandoms mentioned in the comments to Chromatic fandom collecting!

Suggestions from commenters:

• gloss recommends Uganda Skateboard Union (Uganda): official website, promotional video
  
• livrelibre and allchildren recommend Pumzi (Kenya): science fiction film available at Amazon, trailer
  
• livrelibre recommends Ben Okri (Nigeria): speculative/literary fiction, especially The Famished Road
  
• sophinisba recommends Marguerite Abouet and Clement Oubrerie (Ivory Coast): graphic novels especially Aya: The Series
  
• devilc recommends Luanda Magere (Luo peoples): folklore/mythology
  
• tree recommends 678 (Egypt): film
  
• troisroyaumes recommends Magdy El Shafee (Egypt): graphic novels at personal website and Words Without Borders
  
• troisroyaumes recommends Christophe-Ngalle Edimo and Simon-Pierre Mbumbo (Cameroon): graphic novels, especially Malamine, un africain à Paris
  
• troisroyaumes recommends Leo (Kenya): trailer

Share your squee for these fandoms or give other African fandom suggestions in the comments below!

This entry is posted at Dreamwidth and LiveJournal and you may comment at either journaling platform.

Hello, doers of darkness!

One of the primary goals for the Kaleidoscope Fanwork Exchange is to highlight and celebrate rare chromatic fandoms. From June 12 to July 9, we will be running a fandom promotion fest to discuss sources with chromatic creators and characters. We hope that this fest will not only allow you to share your enthusiasm for fandoms you’re thinking about nominating but also introduce you to new sources that may become your new fannish loves.

We invite all of you to participate by posting meta, picspams, primers, resource lists and other means of promoting Kaleidoscope-eligible fandoms during the fest. You are welcome to post directly to the community or post in your own journal and provide us with a link. We will compile a master list of all posts made for the fest.

We are especially interested in promotion posts for:

• sources featuring chromatic characters who intersect with other mis- and underrepresented identities (e.g. class, dis/ability, GLBTQI, religion, etc.)


• sources from mis- and underepresented regions (e.g. Africa, Latin America, Southeast Asia, West Asia, First Nations, etc.)

If you already have an idea for a promotion post, we invite you to sign up for one of the weeks during the fest:

( Timeline )

(Sign-ups are informal: you don’t need to sign up for a week in order to make a post for our fest nor is there any penalty for failing to make a post during your chosen week.)

This entry is posted at Dreamwidth and LiveJournal, but we accept promotion posts from any journaling platform.