1. Through writing positively about communism in “The Dispossessed” and “The Left Hand of Darkness” she offended the victims of Stalinism, Maoism and other regimes.
Well, if you read these books carefully, you’ll probably see that she’s been never positive about dictatorship-like communism. In The Dispossessed the state of Thu (based on the Soviet Union, after all) is approached rather sceptically. The same with Orgoreyn in The Left Hand of Darkness. The thing about Le Guin was positive is anarchism and cooperation, though. Her utopian Annares planet from The Dispossessed is anarchist-communist, not communist in the way of the Soviet Union or China. And even on Annares her characters are fully allowed to criticize its system. The question whether their society is utopian or dystopian remains open to the reader.
Not to mention that many of her Orsinia-set short stories are anti-Stalinist and anti-Soviet communism in their message, describing people discriminated or even pursued by that system.
What LeGuin often criticizes, though, is capitalism and the US’ politics. Maybe that’s the pain in the neck of her critics?
2. Her books are leftist abstraction far from the true life.
Why, really? Because her most two famous sci-fi novels are about hermaphrodites/anarchists? Because she often opposes freedom&diversity against submission&unity (Always Coming Home)? Because in Tehanu, Tenar and Ged are together out of wedlock and Tenar orders her ManlyMachoSon to make dishwashing? Or maybe because many of her books are far not from the true life but from the generic Epic Adventurous Adventures? Many of them—such as Malafrena, Tehanu, Always Coming Home, Annals of the Western Shore—blend great history with dailyness, focusing on family and friendly relations, on daily dynamics and duties—such as looking after kids, doing gardening or managing an estate—in the broader context of social changes. They aren’t only, or mainly, about intrigues and voyages. And the relations they present aren’t about any ideology—they vary depending on setting. Monogamous marriages thrive there as much as crossing-class friendships and non-heteronormative relationships, don’t worry.
And guess what? To me, daily things which LeGuin describes with such love are more true than all the intrigues of Belgariad’s Eddings or Zelazny’s Amber. Not to mention that her intrigues are well-thought as well, often showing that there is not just white and black, that answers to social problems are complex, and that progressive idealism isn’t enough to improve the politics and the society.
3. Her later books on Earthsea aren’t the same; she spoiled her setting and added too much of the social comment.
To some extend, I understand this accusation. After all, many of us read fantasy to chill out, not to ponder on social dynamics. Many of us are also used to male characters being default, their problems neutral. And many of us tend to treat fantasy realms as places which are somewhat better from our world—which Earthsea isn’t in the last two novels and in the collection of stories, not with sexual violence, abuse of power, and classist and sexist prejudice which all are hinted there.
Still, such a critic sometimes turn irrational to my mind. If you complain on feminism in the later two books, why don’t you mind The Tombs of Atuan which is centered on female experience and on the female community? If you complain that Earthsea turned “political” why don’t you care that leading PoC characters (almost all the islands there are inhabited with PoCs, damn!) and female protagonists had been there from the very beginning?
I think that the partial reason is that in her later Earthsea books, LeGuin turned metacritic and setting-aware. She did no different than the classics had been doing. After all, Les Miserables, Anna Karenina or Nort and South are full of political discussions and of characters who either examine or oppose the social structure of their world. Why, then, nobody says that North and South or Les Miserables are putting ideology everywhere and are doing it unnecessarily? Why Margaret Hale and Mr Thornton can talk of socialism while Ged and Tenar can’t talk of gender roles?
Well, it may be so because we expect fantasy to be about Great Things. Love, Magic and Adventure are great to our mind. Society and Contemporary Problems—not necessarily. Contemporary Problems, actually, are supposed to be either omitted or taken very metaphorically in the genre. When they aren’t, an author is usually accused of introducing some sinister agenda. Who cares that LeGuin writes about very daily things like dishwashing and child-rearing? Who cares that she introduces problems which women have been encountering for centuries, such as Mathilda’s Effect? She is a cultural Marxist conceited feminist who doesn’t know the true life! She’s spoiled her universe with unconvenient sociological discussion and strong-willed women opposing sexism, with uncanny unjustice and traumatized people bearing true scars. And we don’t want to see scarred people, just as we don’t want to see the tedious daily work which women do.
I know that the retold version of Earthsea isn’t easy indeed. But it doesn’t mean it is worse or more ideological. It is just as a retelling should be—provoking new themes and showing new perspectives.
Left Hand of Fiction 