Need a Recommendation? Got a recommendation?

[sanguinity]

It's been nearly a month since the last one -- let's have another recs post!

First, a reminder that book club is coming up -- next weekend, April 19th, we're going to discuss Octavia Butler's Kindred. (Much thanks to nightchik for organizing it!)

Second, we've been adding stuff to the 50books_poc del.icio.us. (Again. Still. More.) Here's a bunch of the new stuff:

• Booklists
  • Legal Defense Fund Book Corner -- book reviews and commentary from the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund. (Not all authors may be POC.)
    
  • The Root's Global Book List -- recommended recent books by black authors.
    
  • Mixedfolks.com Library -- Books about mixed-race people. Many authors are mixed-race POC, but not all.
    
  • Celebration of Women Writers -- both browsable and searchable by ethnicity and country. (They list "Muslim" as an ethnicity, which is kinda borked, but overall it's still got lots of good stuff.) Links to ebooks, too.
  
  
• POC-centric publishers:
  • Huia Publishers -- Māori books: novels, plays, histories, biographies, politics, and language; both adult and children.
    
  • Magabala Books -- Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, "Australia's oldest independent indigenous publishing house."
    
  • Indij Readers -- literacy materials for indigenous and non-indigenous Australian children learning to read and write.
    
  • African Writers Series -- UK publishing imprint
    
  • Peepal Tree Press -- Caribbean and Black British fiction, poetry, lit crit, memoirs, historical studies.
  
  
• Awards (children and young adult):
  • Baobab Prize -- African literature for children. Three categories: readers 8-11; readers 12-18; writers under 18.
    
  • Children's Africana Book Awards -- children's books about Africa published in the U.S. (Not all authors are POC.)
    
  • Noma Award for Publishing in Africa
    
  • Tomás Rivera Book Award -- for books that authentically depict the lives of Mexican-Americans in the United States. (Not all authors are POC.)
    
  • Américas Book Award -- "works of fiction, poetry, folklore, or selected non-fiction" that "authentically and engagingly portray Latin America, the Caribbean, or Latinos in the United States.""
    
  • Carter G. Woodson Book Award -- social science books that depict ethnicity and/or race relations in the United States
  
  
• Awards (adult):
  • Fonlon-Nichols Award -- given by the African Literature Association, for "excellence in creating writing and contributions to the struggle for human rights and freedom of expression"
    
  • Caine Prize for African Writing -- African literary prize for short stories. (Not all authors are POC.)
    
  • Booker Prize -- best novel published in the British Commonwealth. (Not all authors are POC).
    
  • Commonwealth Writers' Prize -- best book and best first book in the British Commonwealth. Finalists are selected by region, which makes the list of finalists for the past 20 years (pdf) pretty darn awesome. (Not all authors are POC.)
    
  • Noma Award for Publishing in Africa -- awards for scholarly/academic, children's, and literature.
  
  
• Online Literary Journals
  • Sable -- for new writers of color; international. Mostly print, but occasional full-text stories and articles are published on the website.
    
  • African Writing Online -- creative short fiction, essays, poetry, drama and art primarily from African writers and artists; published in the U.K.
    
  • Meskot -- Ethiopian online literary journal.
    
  • Kwani? -- Kenyan online literary magazine.
    
  • Sea Breeze -- Liberian online literary magazine.
    
  • One Ghana, One Voice -- blog for Ganaian poetry; new poem published every week.
  
  
• Other Resources for African Writers
  • BBC - Africa Beyond -- "African arts and culture in the UK and beyond." Includes regular features about writers and poets.
    
  • African Philosophy Resources -- "philosophy which focuses on Africa, philosophy done in Africa, and philosophy that is part of the traditional conversation among African philosophers."
    
  • African Children's Literature -- article about children's lit in Africa, includes bibliography (not all authors are POC)
    
  • Gambian Writers
  
  
• Publishing Industry
  • WriteBlack -- "Welcome to WriteBlack, where I write about the vagaries of the publishing industry and occasionally praise, occasionally criticize and always pick the nits of books written by black authors — with special attention paid to genre writers. "
    
  • GalleyCat - People of Color -- weekly column featuring people of color in the publishing industry: books, authors, agents, publicists, etc.
  
  
• Other Stuff
  • Literary Obama -- Books about the Obamas! Books by the Obamas! Books that inspire the Obamas! Books! Obamas! Books! (Not all authors are POC.)
    
  • Crossroads - Over the Road -- Korean science fiction stories online (!)
    
  • Color Online -- Blog focusing on young women of color. Book reviews, poetry, festivals, and more.
    
  • Interntional Romani Writers' Association
    
  • Destination: Salon Literary Guide to the World -- articles recommending books about various countries, takes a "virtual tourism" perspective. (At best, only half the authors in any given list are POC.)

In addition to the ebooks tag (which has new links as of April 3rd, not all of which are listed above), there's now an eshortworks tag. I added an academic tag because I know someone (sorry, I've forgotten who!) was looking for academic-voiced resources, and there's a poc-centric-booksellers tag for people who are trying to make conscious decisions about where they spend their money.

If you have a link to add, either drop it in the comments here or:

1. Add 50books_poc to your del.icio.us network.
2. Save the link to your account and tag it "for:50books_poc".

On to the recs! If you're looking books in a particular genre or on a particular topic -- or simply want to say, "Hey, I liked THIS book, what else would you recommend?" -- leave a comment. With luck, someone might have just the rec for you. ;-)

Serve the People: a stir-fried journey through China, by Jen Lin-Liu. 22.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Jen Lin-Liu is a Chinese-American food writer who moves to Beijing and goes to cooking school. Her appetite whetted by that, she proceeds to work first in a noodle stand and then in a gourmet restaurant in Shanghai.

Lin-Liu recounts the stories of the Cultural Revolution that she hears from her cooking mentors, looks into the background and myths surrounding MSG and the nature of Shanghainese cooking, and gets "noodle elbow" from sawing at a block of dough all day. It's informative, mouthwatering, and includes recipes - some of which sound easy enough for me to try.

Get it from Amazon: Serve the People: A Stir-Fried Journey Through China

Authorial Justice: Steven Barnes, Far Beyond the Stars

[sistermarysith.livejournal.com]

Cross-posting from my own LJ on the recommendation of kalmn:

So, I've been a Star Trek fan for much of my life, and yes, I occasionally pick up a Star Trek novelization, especially when some indicator of quality is there - say, a novelization or adaptation undertaken by an established author (the Star Trek novel How Much for Just the Planet? by John M. Ford comes to mind.)

One of my absolute favorites, one I re-read occasionally, is Steven Barnes' novelization of Far Beyond the Stars, the fifth season Deep Space Nine episode that depicted one of Captain Sisko's visions from the Prophets, wherein Sisko experiences the life of Benny Russell, a science-fiction writer in the 1950s, who works for a pulp SF mag. As Russell writes the story of Captain Benjamin Sisko, a black commander of a futuristic space station, we see Russell struggle with the institutionalized racism of that era. I consider it one of the best episodes of Trek ever done.

Barnes' adaptation of the screenplay for that episode is that rarity that matches or improves upon the quality of the source material. My spouse, a literary SF fan from childhood, says he got far more from Barnes' novelization than from the actual episode. He teaches English and special ed in a majority African-American high school, and he still uses Barnes' novelization to introduce his students (many of them reluctant or unskilled readers) to the genre of science fiction and to pop culture history.

In any case, the point I'm making is that Barnes, who has written several original genre novels, added to, and made something new out of the screenplay written by Ira Steven Behr and Hans Beimler, drawing upon his own experiences as a POC writing genre fiction. He is the author of the work for all intents and purposes - and besides that, Simon and Schuster says he is the author in their online catalog: http://books.simonandschuster.com/Far-Beyond-the-Stars/Steven-Barnes/Star-Trek-Deep-Space-Nine/9780743420846

But Amazon.com doesn't think so. They've listed Behr and Beimler as the authors of the novel: http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Stars-Star-Trek-Space/dp/0671024302

Now, I know that mass media novelizations are supposed to be the lowest literary lifeform on the planet, and their authors aren't supposed to get any respect, but still, they should be getting credit for their work, especially if they've actually crafted a good novel from the source screenplay. So a couple weeks ago I used the "update product info" to ask that Amazon at least add Barnes' name to the list of authors.

So far, no dice, and no update. Barnes is still invisible on Amazon. And it's rather ironic, given that the book's story centers on Benny Russell's struggle to win recognition as an African American SF author who writes about POCs living and working in a future without racism (Russell's editor won't run his photo in the pulp SF mag Russell works for, because he fears readers will reject the magazine.)

Thus, I'm asking my flist and anyone they want to share this post with to do a "update product info" bombing - go to Amazon's listing for the "Far Beyond the Stars" novelization and use the link in the Feedback box to ask that Amazon update the author info to give Steven Barnes his due. (You can use the Simon and Schuster catalog link as your reference material for the update request.) (ETA: the Feedback box is at the bottom of the page.) It will only take a few minutes, and I figure if Amazon gets a couple dozen requests, its editors might actually take a look at what they're doing. (And if someone can suggest a more effective way of reaching the powers-that-be at Amazon, I'd appreciate hearing about it.)

Feel free to share this.

ETA: Well, that was easy. Thanks, everyone! The Amazon page is now corrected. For those who want to see it in its original state, showing Behr and Beimler as the authors, here is the screen shot I made this morning:
http://pics.livejournal.com/sistermarysith/pic/0002d22t

19-24

[littlebutfierce]

Links go to my reading journal.

Black Gold of the Sun: Searching for Home in England & Africa - Ekow Eshun
Cereus Blooms at Night - Shani Mootoo
Crossing the Border: Voices of Refugee and Exiled Women - Edited by Jennifer Langer
A Little Too Much Is Enough - Kathleen Tyau
Ten Things I Hate about Me - Randa Abdel-Fattah
The Conversations of Cow - Suniti Namjoshi