Zahrah the Windseeker

[mirrorshard.livejournal.com]

This will be a short post, since chomiji and amarykate have already reviewed it here.

I've done a longer review here, but to summarize - this is a delightful book, and well worth the reading for anyone who likes YA quest fantasy. Zahrah's world is whimsical and interesting, and fascinatingly animistic - everything she meets seems to be smart, even though not all of them talk, and it's very much not All About Her.

My only quibble with it (which almost certainly won't be nearly such a problem for its intended audience) is that it's narrated in the first person. Zahrah's head is not all that interesting a place to be - I'd much rather be in the world directly.

#15: Yep; #16: Taylor; #17: Smith

[gwyneira.livejournal.com]

#15: Laurence Yep, Dragonwings

It is 1903, and Moon Shadow lives in China with his mother; a few months before Moon Shadow was born, his father, Windrider, left for America, the Land of the Golden Mountain, to earn money which he sends back to his family in China. Now Windrider has sent for the eight-year-old Moon Shadow to join him. When Moon Shadow meets his father, he finds out Windrider's true dream, to fly, and slowly he grows to believe in Windrider's dream, even though it's keeping them from sending for Moon Shadow's mother. I wish Yep had explored that issue a little more, but overall, I liked the book's historical and cultural details very much and probably will read more of Yep's historical fiction (although I liked Dragon of the Lost Sea more).

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#16: Mildred D. Taylor, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry

Cassie Logan doesn't understand why possessing land means so much to her family, nor does she realize that so many of the white people around her think she's inferior to them. Then the night riders appear, threatening the black people in her community with tar and feathers and burning, and Cassie herself is humiliated by a white girl. Taylor's depiction of the moral choices the Logans must make is complex: though they may want to resist (and Cassie does several times), there's a fine and dangerous line they cannot afford to cross, lest they be the next targets of the night riders. The characterization is excellent, not only of Cassie, but of her whole family and her friends, of the white people who target them and the few who support them. This is one of those books I can't believe I missed when I was growing up, but at least I can make sure my son reads it in a few years. And I already have Let the Circle Be Unbroken and The Road to Memphis on the way from Bookmooch!

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#17: Andrea Smith, Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide

I've been wanting to read this since oyceter reviewed it (and see also sanguinity's review). It's an utterly eye-opening, fierce, and challenging book which makes a compelling link between sexual violence and American colonialism, both historical and contemporary. Some of what she writes about historical violence against American Indians was known to me, but her exploration of present-day abuses was much newer to me, surprising and horrifying. I was particularly struck by the chapters on environmental racism (and will be looking much more closely at the mail I get from the Sierra Club), medical experimentation, and sterilization abuse, and the penultimate chapter on strategies for fighting gender violence. I was especially impressed, in fact, with the way that Smith doesn't stop with documenting the issues; she also focuses on how to solve them. It wasn't an easy book to read, but it is shocking and illuminating and important, and I'm glad I read it.

More science fiction and fantasy

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

5. Salt Fish Girl by Larissa Lai

( Read more... )

6. Naughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackman

( Read more... )

7. Charisma by Steven Barnes

( Read more... )

8. Racing the Dark by Alaya Dawn Johnson

( Read more... )

9. How Like a God by Brenda Clough

( Read more... )

10. The Calcutta Chromosome by Amitav Ghosh

( Read more... )

11. The Ballad of Billy Badass and the Rose of Turkestan by William Sanders

( Contains spoilers for the ending )

Octavia Butler, Bloodchild

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

16. Octavia Butler, Bloodchild

This is a book of short stories and essays. I'd never read anything by Butler before, though I know she's very popular, and a book of short stories seemed a good place to start (well, and also the book was sitting right there on the shelf looking at me when I was checking out at the library). The stories are science-fiction, though they range from very similar to the real world (a drug for cancer causes a disease in the children of the people who took it) to very, very different (humans live in a few encampments on a world controlled by giant centipede-like aliens). Unexpectedly, I discovered that I'd actually read two of the stories before, though I have no idea where I would have come across them, since I don't read short stories often. Regardless, they were both excellent, and I was glad to rediscover them. The essays are mostly advice for writers, with one about Butler's own experiences as a science-fiction fan and trying to become a published author.

I really enjoyed this book, and will definitely be reading more of Butler in the future. A lot of people have described her as depressing, but I didn't find these stories to be. Dark, yes, involving people in very bad places, yes, but there always seemed to be a certain... belief in humanity? Or at least in its potential? Not quite sure how to describe what I mean, but these stories didn't come off as depressing to me.

#12. Wounded in the House of a Friend, by Sonia Sanchez

[whereweather.livejournal.com]

#12. Wounded in the House of a Friend, Sonia Sanchez
1997, Beacon Press

Sonia Sanchez is a poet and professor, and was involved in the Black Arts movement of the 1960s.  (Some background from Wikipedia).  She lives in Philadelphia, where I live, and teaches at Temple University.  I have seen her once or twice on panels and things, and thought I would check out her poetry.  This book was the one I found on the library shelf, and I was intrigued by the title.

I was... disappointed by the book.  Criticizing it is somewhat difficult for me; can we separate the aesthetic from the cultural, the critical preference from the conditioned one?  I will say that I find most of the work here far too literal; it uses very prosey language; and it sometimes seem as if it might work well as a spoken-word performance, but on the page it falls flat.  I am not sure whether it is okay for me to say that some of this work feels very amateurish to me.  But that was my response to it.  I don't know; does that response inherently imply that I'm missing the point?
( Let's see what the issues are... )

Let it be noted that, myself, I do like Ntozake Shange; I did like the prose/poetry mix about the unfaithful husband; and I thought the "Harlem woman struggling with... her junkie granddaughter" was idiotic (not in concept, but in execution; that literalism again, plus tear-jerking sentimentality and stereotype, plus it's a longish poem with an ending you can see coming miles away).  So neither of these reviews entirely voices my feeling.  However, I am certainly closer to the second one than the first.

Well, we will try Homegirls and Hand Grenades, and see what that yields.

Has anyone else read Sanchez?  Or is anyone more familiar with this particular movement, and school, than I am?