Reading Broad Band by Claire L. Evans right after Where the Wizards Stay Up Late has been interesting so far. There’s a lot to of good things to be said about Broad Band, and I may do that once I’m through the book.
One of the most striking differences is how they chose their frames. Reading Where Wizards Stay Up Late, you get to know two groups of people: the mighty wizards and the powerful man. It’s as much the story of the powerful man who paved a way as it is about mighty wizards who marched the paved path in their own inspiring, awkward and adorable manner. You get to imagine an ARPA director providing millions of dollars of funding. You get to forget the literal army of people that made this possible.
Reading Broad Band, you get the taste of a different story. It’s a balancing act. There are pointers to existing histories of the wizards, but you’re reading a wider history. One in which women who had to persevere through sexism in some of its most hideous forms is at the center of the stage. You read stories of women who had to embrace a horrible kind of grind. Next to the very familiar kind of grind that makes things possible, that makes them happen.
It’s then disappointing a bit when you see other faces through lines that you were just allowed to forget. When efforts that helped commit one of the most horrorful atrocities of our history gets credited as “saving time and lives.”