Alexie

[rootedinsong.livejournal.com]

7. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie

What everyone else said. I loved this book. There are lots of people I want to give a copy of it to.

8. The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, by Sherman Alexie

I found this harder to read than Absolutely True Diary; the writing style was much more opaque, full of long rambling sentences without a comma to be seen. It's also heavy in magic realism, which tends to make a work hard for me to get into.

Something I found interesting about it was the set of elements found in this book also found in Absolutely True Diary, such as having a character with hydrocephalus (I just read his Wikipedia page, and saw that he apparently based this on himself).

There were a few lines that I found striking and thought-provoking, such as this:

They all want to have their vision, to receive their true names, their adult names. That is the problem with Indians these days. They have the same names all their lives. Indians wear their names like a pair of bad shoes.

The Devil's Kiss - Sarwat Chadda

[kitsuchi.livejournal.com]

The Devil's Kiss was previously reviewed on the comm here so I'll just put my personal response here and skip the summary bits.

I read a review The Devil's Kiss today which seemed to put it in with all the vampire novels that are coming out for girls at the moment (and variants such as the werewolves and even zombies – yes, zombies as romantic interests!) It doesn't belong to this particular genre of supernatural book at all. The Devil's Kiss bears more resemblance to things like Anthony Horowitz's Power of Five series – except without failing on the female protagonist – or to Skulduggery Pleasant, where the girl actually does kick ass. It's an action-adventure, with the addition of Judeo-Christio-Islamic mythology (and definitely all three). Which means it's right up my alley.

There is some romance, yes, but not with a jerk. ( Spoilers! )

And while Billi is a sword-fighter, Kay has the female-coded psychic abilities. It's nice to have a story that can give the female character some romance without letting that overwhelm her character.

The prose itself wasn't anything special, and I think I skimmed a lot of the descriptive parts, but I was gripped by the story, engaged by the world and the characters. There's a sequel coming out, which I'm keen for, but it's also a fully self-contained story (another nice change!) Particularly recommended for teenage girls who like action-adventure and are sick of having their gender relegated to secondary roles!

American Born Chinese

[rootedinsong.livejournal.com]

9. American Born Chinese, by Gene Luen Yang

I devoured this book. And then I read it two more times.

I'm not sure exactly why I feel in love with it like I did - I even found his insertion of Christianity into the story to be a little squicky. (He comments on his decision here. I'm not at all saying he was wrong to insert Christianity - I think my discomfort actually stems from the fact that I would have adapted stories to make them Christian in much the same way when I was a Christian.)

But... I found the use of Chinese characters to illustrate kung fu fight scenes absolutely delightful (especially because I knew most of them). And I loved how he made the three narratives fit together (I didn't see it coming). And I loved all these little things.

And there were some quotes that I thought were lovely and deep, such as "Returning to your true form is not an exercise of kung fu, but a release of it."

And the book really showed in a crystal clear way what it means to fade into whiteness, and what that entails giving up. I think this is what spoke to me most deeply.

Highly recommended.

5. A New School for Susan

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Yoshiko Uchida published A New School for Susan in 1951, and I read it out of historical interest as much as anything else: what were the yay!multiculturalism books of the fifties like?

This one, at least, is a very stereotypically fifties children’s book: happy little boys and girls attending their happy little school, where they draw cheerful little pictures under the watchful eyes of their cheery teacher and jolly principal. It’s just that instead of featuring little blonde girls named Sally and Sandy and Susan, the Susan in this book is Japanese-American.

This book might be the most frictionless thing I’ve ever read. No arguments, no conflicts of any kind, certainly no mention of racism or the Japanese internment camps – which would have been a pretty raw memory in 1951, so I can’t blame Uchida if she didn't want to write about it. But still, not even any arguments?

So I can't recommend the book on its intrinsic merits, but it really was interesting as a historical artifact - especially if you compares it to Uchida's later books, like Journey to Topaz, which is all about the Japanese internment camps.