Chapter 7, the Queen Susan in Liverpool (and Finchley)

[rthstewart]

So, Chapter 7 is up.  It's been a really rotten week, with Friday most definitely of the not fun variety for me especially.  So, here's a bit of very, very long distraction.  I have gone back and forth on whether to include the first of four encounters Susan has in Finchley.  I decided that as the chapter is entitled Queen Susan, I should just ignore the fact that the chapter clocks in at 11,000 words and include the first one so you actually have some Susan rather than just Peter.  The next one is very nearly done though based upon a review of my prior journal entries tagged "Going There" which I undertook in light of some recent yukiness, I'm going to expand it a bit.  (Hopefully without polemic, but I'm in an expansive mood at the moment). 

In any event, moving on, as you can see, I waded deep into racial territory and my thanks to those who aided in the research including Clio and autumnia  .  snacky  had the excellent suggestion of contacting a Liverpool library, and I shall do that when I get deeper into the story.  For now, sources include:

The Lascars --  sailors from the Indian subcontinent who sailed on European ships
Including, History of the Lascars
The Merchant Seaman's War -- Sons of Empire  28,000 Merchant seaman died during World War 2. The book notes that Europeans were “capable only of seeing Indians, Chinese, Africans and Arabs through the bizarre lens of racial cliché.”

The Chinese community of Liverpool comes from this site among others.  There is a lot more to go there and I'm still looking for this book and will probably have to order it from the UK.

As for Liverpool generally, I spent time at the city's Museum websites and various other sites about the Durning Road disaster including here and here and here

Here are some fabulous pictures of Liverpool bicyclists, including members of the Home Guard mentioned in the story.



Last, you may blame anastigmatfic  and snacky for the insertion of a 2 year old John Lennon into the story whose absent father was, in fact, a Merchant Marine.  Really.

I've tried really, really hard to get these racial issues right, early on, because I'm going somewhere with it.  I'm very cognizant of race fail in fandom.  If you think I've gotten it wrong, please speak up, and we'll see what might be done. 

In the next chapter, I'll go into the Caxton Hall rally and the issues of continuing apathy regarding awareness of the plight of Jews in occupied Europe.  My source is British Jewry and the Holocaust.  And huge thanks to autumnia  for the assistance there.

Also, again, a big thanks to the anonymous and unsigned reviewers.  I really appreciate you weighing in.  Thanks to everyone.  The story broke 200 reviews this week and I'm very grateful.

Comments

Re: Syrena lets her inner novelist write comments

[rthstewart.livejournal.com]

Welcome back and thank you! The whole first 2/3 of this chapter were done for a while and I cut and edited and massaged and thought, you know, people really aren't going to be that interested in this. Song_smith has just been beating me over the head about this, but there it is. Regardless. the reverse culture shock is exactly what is going on. Ultimately, it is not the Pevensies who will change, but that England will change around them. It will become the place it is today where chicken tikka masala is the favorite dish. The Empire Windrush will arrive in a few short years, the immigration and citizenship laws change and unlike the US, England never prohibited inter-racial marriage. Yes, there is prejudice there, and that colonial past is so wrong for so many reasons. But, there is also this amazing, wonderful side and the Pevensies are discovering that you do not have to go to or be Narnian to experience this.

As I'm working through Peter and Susan's discussions, the issue of beauty as a woman's weapon is coming up again -- in follow up to some of Susan's experiences in Washington. I had not thought of Lucy's dilemma in the way you pose it and it's very thoughtful and I thank you for it.