Another Newbie :)

[vash137.livejournal.com]

I was recommended to this community by a friend, and I'm very excited to enjoy such a wealth of recommendations of books by people of color as well as share about the books I'm reading. Though I'm excited to read 50 more books by people of color, I'll probably also share some reviews of previous books that I've read and loved.

Currently, I'm in the middle of The Brief And Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz. It was recommended to me by a number of friends and I'm really enjoying it. The book employs a lovely mix of comic tone and seriousness, and I feel as though I am being given a glimpse into Dominican culture that is both new to me and wildly interesting. I also love the high degree of nerdiness that permeates the book (as someone who is highly nerdy myself) 

I'm also reading a manga called Nana by Ai Yazawa. (do we talk about manga here?)  It's entertaining in a highly girly way.  I'm usually not really into shoujo (for girls in Japanese) but I wanted to try something new and it looked interesting.

I'm looking forward to getting to know everyone and participating in this community.

Love and hugs :-)
Vash

FAQ Update

[sanguinity]

Hello, this is your friendly community mod, bringing you an update to the FAQ:

I think the comm would be interested in [book by white author]. Can I write a post about it?

No. This is a comm for books written by authors of color.

Is that too blunt? ;-)

In the past, if the mod-team discovered a post that was about a book by a white author, we would give the original poster twenty-four hours to rewrite or delete the post. As of now, we are changing our custom: we will delete posts about^[1] white authors as we find them. We are also instituting a two-strikes rule about such posts. (However, we are not wholly draconian: if you thought that an author was of color when you made the post, talk to us. The two-strikes rule is intended to be about people who cannot or will not take "books written by authors of color" at face value.)

Some members have been very helpful about making the sure the mods know if there's a post about a white author that needs to be deleted. To those of you who have been doing so: thank you. The mod team isn't always watching the comm, or sometimes we're skimming and thus miss stuff. If there's a problem brewing somewhere, please, don't assume we'll see it. Let us know. There is contact info for us in the community profile.

Happy reading!

---

[1] The key word there is "about." If you're writing a post about a book by an author of color, you can mention a related white-authored book within your discussion. Just make sure that the post's reason for existence is a book by an author of color.

Silver Phoenix, by Cindy Pon

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

An exuberantly inventive YA fantasy novel set in a China more mythic than historical.

The back cover compares it to Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, but it has much more in common with the pell-mell action and flamboyant fantasy of films like Swordsman II (in which Brigitte Lin plays the Invincible Asia, a eunuch whose magic laser beams level mountains), The Bride With White Hair (in which Brigitte Lin was literally raised by wolves, and the villains are incestuous conjoined twins), and A Chinese Ghost Story (which makes up for its lack of Brigitte Lin with haunted tentacle trees).

Silver Phoenix lacks tentacle trees and conjoined twins. It does, however, have eyeball trees, triple-breasted succubi, flying machines, serpent-women, a pond of pregnancy, and a telepathic heroine. And more! Much more! Much, much, much more! A scene in which the perpetually hungry heroine, Ai Ling, is about to sit down to a meal of roast duck when she’s attacked by a pair of worm-haired fiends is absolutely typical of the novel’s action-packed, everything plus the kitchen sink sensibility.

When teenage Ai Ling’s gentle bookworm father never returns from a trip to court and a local evil-doer attempts to force her to marry him, she takes off to find her father. She’s promptly attacked by every monster in China (there’s lots), rescued by a sexy young man with a mysterious past, and develops her growing psychic powers while learning to fend for herself amidst wild adventures taking place everywhere from dumpling joints to Heaven to the Palace of Fragrant Dreams.

This is just as much fun as it sounds. It’s an atmospheric, fast-paced read, full of action and imagery, cool Chinese mythology and delectably described Chinese cooking. While the characterization isn’t terribly deep or unusual, Ai Ling is likable and goes from frequently needing rescue by magic amulet or other deus ex machina to learning to rescue herself and others. The hero, Chen Yong, faces prejudice and exoticising because he’s biracial, and likes to spar shirtless. Yesssss! Spar shirtless some more, Chen Yong!

For a YA novel, it’s quite frank, though not graphic, about sex. (“My manhood may be sitting in a jar, but I can still satisfy you in every way,” an ancient eunuch explains.) I mention this in case you’re planning to buy it for a child you know. I’d recommend it for twelve and up.

The story is complete in one volume, but there is a sequel or prequel planned. I hope it’s a sequel, because the ending as it stands wasn’t sufficiently set up to come across as poignant rather than unsatisfying.

Silver Phoenix would make a good compare-and-contrast reading with Kristin Cashore’s Graceling, (not by a POC author as far as I know) which also focuses on a young woman who doesn’t fit into her society and has a subplot about the difficulty of romance when one partner is telepathic. Generally, Cashore is better with characterization and angst, and Pon is better with pace and setting. I am amused to note that the male romantic leads in both books have unusually colored eyes.

Click here to purchase from Amazon: Silver Phoenix: Beyond the Kingdom of Xia

Dark Enchantment, by Karen Harbaugh. 25.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

She’s an amnesiac swordfighter with stigmata! He’s a scar-faced soldier fanatically devoted to Charles II! Together, they fight an evil sorcerer and his vaguely described monstrous minions!

A sweet, likable romance, though regrettably not as half as cracktastic in the reading as a plot description makes it sound, nor is there as much action and adventure as the set-up made me anticipate. Most of the story consists of Catherine and Jack getting to know each other in a succession of inns. This is surprisingly fun reading despite the lack of obvious conflict: I cared about what happened to them, plus there’s some dueling, lots of food description, and period-accurate birth control (intercrural intercourse and withdrawal.) It also contains the only misunderstanding plot I’ve ever liked, which is that at one point Jack thinks she only had sex with him because a priest told her that her stigmata is a gift from God, so she sinned in the hope of getting rid of it.

Finally, I am pleased to report that the epilogue does not involve a baby.

Incidentally, the back cover of my edition seems to be describing an entirely different, and much more erotic, dark, and angsty story than the one between the covers. Its claims to the contrary, Jack does not have a terrible secret, Catherine is not a hunted criminal, and I have no idea what the stuff about “a place of unimaginable pleasure” where “day becomes endless night” is about. Though I’d also like to read that book!

Click here to purchase from Amazon: Dark Enchantment

The author is biracial (Japanese-American and white); unless I missed something, all the characters in this are white.

#20 - "The Color of Water" by James McBride

[sweet-adelheid.livejournal.com]

Somehow - I don't remember how - The Miracle at Santa Ana caught my eye, and was on my mental list, at least, for this challenge. And then, browsing the biography shelves at one of the public libraries to which I belong, The Color of Water caught my eye. Santa Ana is now most definitely on my list.

Every so often you see an interview question - or an internet meme - that asks what books have stayed with a person throughout their life.

I hope that this is one of mine.

I hope that what I think I've learned from reading this book stays with me: that God is the color of water; that there's always more to someone else than you think. I hope that the lyricism, the simple beauty of McBride's writing stays with me. I hope that the image of Ruth McBride, riding her bike through Brooklyn, tall and proud and indomitable, stays with me.

( Read more... )

'The Parable of the Talents' by Octavia Butler

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

This is the second Octavia Butler novel I've read as part of this challenge. The first one was 'Wild Seed', which I mostly enjoyed. 'The Parable of the Talents' I enjoyed less. I think it's a good book - it's well written, and the story/world is really interesting. However, from what I can tell, Octavia Butler has a fairly bleak view of the world and in 'The Parable of the Talents' it's much more noticeable - it's set in a dystopian future in which the world is falling apart and society is ravaged by violence, and in which one woman tries to found a new religion whilst being attacked by fanatics and fundementalists.

Much as I struggled with the lead characters in 'Wild Seed', I struggled hugely with Olamina in 'Parable' - I had problems sympathizing with her. Whilst she is meant to be painfully empathic, she actually felt quite self absorbed to me. I haven't entirely given up on Octavia Butler yet - I might go back to the Patternist series - but I don't want to read any more of the 'parable' series, and I'm not entirely sure if I'd recommend this book to anyone unless you do like your dystopian futures very dystopian, and are very keen on increasingly bleak moral ambiguities.

15. Origin, Diana Abu-Jaber

[jinian.livejournal.com]

Another amazing book in my continuing series (yes! I made it to two!) of posts on books new to the comm.

Origin is a mystery, or several mysteries. The main character, Lena, has an unknown past about which her not-quite-adopted parents have told her little, and in her job as a fingerprint specialist she is also drawn into investigating a series of crib deaths in her city. Lena is logical and detached, overwhelmingly drawn to the details of her work, but also highly intuitive and constantly worrying at her lost memories -- what she does remember seems impossible. Abu-Jaber's writing is evocative and possibly addictive, though in a very different style from her other work. Summer would be a great time to read this book since the miserable freezing cold of a northeastern winter is awfully well described!

Race in this book was largely invisible. There's one moment where Lena's foster parents reveal how important it was to them to get a white baby, but other than that I didn't see it addressed. Abu-Jaber is a fabulous writer, though, so I still recommend Origin on grounds of sheer literary greatness. I also read Crescent, which is set among Arab-American immigrants and their wonderful food; it wasn't as memorable as Origin, but I recommend it as well.

[Abu-Jaber's The Language of Baklava, a memoir of the author's mixed-race, mixed-location childhood, was previously reviewed by littlebutfierce.]