Held at a Distance by Haile, Samira and Samir by Shakib, Always and Forever by Jenkins

[pene.livejournal.com]

I don't remember the last time I reviewed a book. But anyway. Take a deep breath and start reviewing...

1. Held At A Distance, Rebecca Haile

In the wake of a military coup deposing the Emperor, Rebecca Haile moved with her family from Ethiopia to the United States. Twenty five years later Haile is the first in her family to return to Ethiopia. The book is a memoir of her extended family and a travelogue of that trip.

( excerpt and review with no real spoilers )

2. Samira and Samir, Siba Shakib

When Samira is born, she is not the son her commander father expected. Mortified, and wanting to save his position and protect his family, her father decides to bring Samira up as a boy.

( excerpt and review with no real spoilers )

3. Always and Forever, Beverly Jenkins

Our heroine, Grace Atwood, is a pulled-together banker leading a wagon train of potential brides to a town out West. Our hero, Jackson Blake, is rugged and charming and maddening, but perfect for the job of wagonmaster. So Grace commissions Jackson for the difficult journey.

( review with no real spoilers )

FAQ Update: Tags for Non-POC Authors

[sanguinity]

I just updated the FAQ. Most tweaks are minor, but I added one new question and made a major revision to another. For your convenience, the text of both questions are copied below:

( How can I find out if an author is a person of color? )

( Who tags posts? How do I tag posts? )

Notice, please, the change: we're now tagging POC authors, editors, and illustrators differently from white (co-)authors, editors, and illustrators. This is so that the "a: ", "ed: " and "i: " tags can act as a running list of POC authors, editors, and illustrators, and (hopefully) cut down on confusion about who is or isn't a person of color.

(If you want an action shot, take a look at the tags on this post, which includes one white-edited anthology and a book with a white co-author. [Erm, I could probably have made that far clearer in the reviews themselves.])

Where we need your help: If you've previously posted a book to the comm that has either a white co-author or a white editor, or if you've added a white illustrator to the tags list, would you please edit the tags on that post? I've already made a first pass through the list of editors, but there's no way I can go through that ginormous list of author names and confirm them all manually. So, if you've posted a white co-author, editor, or illustrator to the comm, would you please edit their tags? Or point them out to us, if you need help? Thanks!

And one more thing: a big thank you to everyone who's been conscientiously tagging their posts! It's been looking really good lately, and you've been making my mornings much simpler. :-)

Fanfic

[sanguinity]

A few days ago, annwfyn posted to ask whether fanfic counts.

The mod team has been talking about this, and it turns out that all three of us would rather that fic recs not be posted to this comm. Our reasons vary, but include the anticipation that fic recs could become heavy, and any particular rec is generally only of interest to people who follow that fandom. Fanfic also has a distinct culture, enough so that we feel it makes sense that fic appear on a different comm, one which could then be organized around the conventions of fic.

So our question for you: would anyone like to step up and create a sister comm for fanfiction?

#3) Langston Hughes Poetry ebook

[elf]

My quest for DRM-free ebooks by authors of color means that I expect to read a lot of public domain works, a lot of things written before 1923. Langston Hughes wrote poems that I remember reading in elementary school--although I don't remember hearing anything about the author; they were just short poems that caught my eye, random-seeming inclusions in the Literature Studies books.

A collection of 49 of his poems is available as a free PDF download from poemhunter.com. Actually, it's a few less than that, because a couple are accidentally duplicated under different names.

They're all good, and some have surprising resonance. "Dream" and "Dream Deferred" were the two I remembered from childhood--poignant and direct, without any mention of racial overtones, those are often put in poetry collections. (The cynical side of me thinks that it's so the textbook creators get credit for racial diversity without including any content that makes children think about race.)

( Excerpt inside, not spoiler-formatted )