15: Octavia Butler's Fledgling

[hapex-legomena.livejournal.com]

Butler, Octavia. Fledgling

in short:The story of Shori a young genetically-engineered vampire with no memories of her past looking for family, answers, and justice.

in which it is all about me: So I have a back-log of other books to write up before this one, but I don't care.

I was walking around Borders like a lost child, as I sometimes do when I am bored, and decided to do a POC check, mostly of black genre writers. My findings from looking in Literature, Af-Am Lit, SF/F, and YA is that Octavia Butler is on both the Af-Am Lit. and SF/F shelves though different books are in different sections for some reason. The Af-Am Lit. section kind of makes my head hurt. Just looking for Butler went something like: James Baldwin; bunch of romance titles, one or more of which uses the word "thug" in the title; Butler; below that Gangtsa Bitch; below that, approximately a million books by Eric Jerome Dickey. There were a lot of writers that I could not find at all, including Chip Delaney, which makes me feel better about only recently having heard of his existence, because I doubt that this is a short-lived and soon-to-be-rectified oversight and my SF/F lit education was just me wandering around Barnes&Noble as a lone young, feral fan staring creepily at all the books with no one to guide me.

And then I picked up Fledgling.

actual analysis: ( Crack fantasy om nom nom )

Need a Recommendation? Got a Recommendation?

[sanguinity]

Hm. It seems the last time I did a delicious + recs extravaganza was, er, May, which must mean that you have a very lazy mod. Or something.

Interesting and/or useful things that we have been collecting at delicious:

• Booklists
  • People of Color in SF Wiki -- hosted by the Carl Brandon Society
    
  • sparkymonster @ deadbrowalking: Sci-Fi/Fantasy Authors of African Descent
    
  • Books Recommended by Friends of CoffeeandInk, @ LibraryThing, @ GoodReads -- compilation and index of the recs made in this 500-comment RaceFail post
    
  • Books for our Times -- recommended books by African-American authors that "shed light on our times", offered as a corrective to a white-centric list published by Newsweek
    
  • American Book Awards - Before Columbus Foundation -- (description of the award and foundation). Many authors are POC; despite the connotations of the name, award is multicultural-focused instead of Native-focused.
    
  • (I know a BUNCH of booklists got posted during IBARW; I haven't yet had a chance to go through and compile them yet. It'll happen. If you want to help, do the "for:50books_poc" thing listed below, preferably including a short descrip of what we'd find at that link. Otherwise, I'll get to it when I can.)
  
  
  
• Blogs
  • Glyphs - The Language of the Black Comics Community Blog by Rich Watson, focusing on comics by or about people of color.
    
  • American Indians in Children's Literature -- (had I seriously never collected this before? seriously?) reviews and discussions of kid's books about American Indians, written by Deb Reese of the Nambe Pueblo. Most reviews are of white-authored books that get it wrong, but some of the posts are about Native-authored books.
    
  • Novel Spaces -- Group blog of 11 authors, mostly authors of color, in diverse genres: romance, SFF, horror, erotica, and mainstream.
    
  • BronzeWord Latino Authors -- Latest Latin@ books, author resources, showcase for young authors.
    
  • White Readers Meet Black Authors now has an LJ-feed, whitereadsblack
  
  
  
• POC-centric publishers, booksellers, and advocacy orgs:
  
  
  • Zubaan Books -- Indian feminist independent publishing house. "Some of the distinct lists that are being built in Zubaan are: Gender and Reproductive Health/Sexuality, Gender and Conflict, Gender and Architecture, Gender and Law, Gender and History/National Movement, Gender and Economics, The North East of India (including essays and fiction), Fiction in translation (mostly novels), Readers on the Women's Movement/Feminism, Biographies/Autobiographies/Memoirs"
    
    
  • Black Science Fiction Store -- books, comics, ebooks, audiobooks
    
  • African American Electronic Literary Network -- promotes African-American e-book authors, and educates urban communities on ebooks
    
  • Black Author Showcase - Agents of Literary Change -- social networking site with blog, bookstore, author resources.
    
    
  • Black Ink Press -- Community-based Indigenous writing, illustrating and publishing project based in North Queensland, with emphasis on children's books
    
  • Jujurrpa Books Publishes the work of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander writers and illustrators. Poetry, oral histories, children's biography, more.
    
  • AIATSIS Aboriginal Studies Press -- Publisher of Indigenous Studies, part of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. Not all authors are indigenous.
    
  • Keeaira Press Publications Australia -- emphasis on photographs and art; not all authors are inidigenous.
    
  • Black Words -- newsletter, etexts, publishers, and other resources. Some resources only available to subscribers.
    
  
  
  
• Individual authors
  • Caren Gussoff -- CC-released short stories by Romani spec-fic author Caren Gussoff.
    
  • K Chronickles and (Th)ink -- website and blog of comic artist Keith Knight.
    
  • Podcast interview with Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
    

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

• Add 50books_poc to your del.icio.us network.
• Save the link to your account with the tag "for:50books_poc".

And... 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.

more fantasy and science fiction

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

16. The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead
( Read more... )

17. Parable of The Talents by Octavia Butler
The sequel to Parable of the Sower.
( Contains major spoilers for the end of the book )

18. J. by William Sanders
Sanders goes light and rollicking over well-worn territory in the set up for J. -- meeting oneself in an alternate universe may not be an original premise, but I scarcely noticed and did not at all care, given the immensely appealing character of Mad Jack, the sympathetic narrator and foil Ann the mental patient. ( Contains major spoilers  )

Review: "Happy Hour at Casa Dracula" by Marta Acosta

[fiction-theory.livejournal.com]

Title: Happy Hour at Casa Dracula (Casa Dracula, Book 1)
Author: Marta Acosta (MartaAcosta.com)
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Page Count: 312 (Trade Paperback Edition)
Publisher: Pocket Star

( Review: Happy Hour at Casa Dracula. Spoilers! )

#12-13: When the Emperor Was Divine and Woman in the Dunes

[b-writes.livejournal.com]

When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka, was chosen as this year's "Vermont Reads" book, and I was very excited about it-- a book by a woman of color, set neither in Vermont nor in a rural community! But I found the book itself a disappointment. It's slim and the prose is elegant, but I only began engaging with the characters about midway through the novel, and then mostly with only one character-- the youngest boy in the family the book focuses on, a Japanese-American family split by the war and sent to two separate concentration camps. The family seems frustratingly passive, and even the signs of life in the camp-- a dance contest, the murder of a man who was likely only picking a flower-- happen offscreen. When the Emperor Was Divine attempts to illuminate through small details, but isn't always successful. It also probably suffered in contrast with Woman in the Dunes, which I read pretty soon afterward.

I'd heard of Kobo Abe's Woman in the Dunes as a novel that had been adapted into a famous cult movie, about a woman forced to shovel sand to protect her town and a hapless man kidnapped to help her. The premise always appeared faintly ludicrous, so I was pleased to realize when actually reading the book that things make a bit more sense in context. It's still more allegorical than realistic, but it's more believable than I'd thought. I am still not sure whether I was fortunate or unfortunate to read it so closely to When the Emperor Was Divine, because it drew my frustration with that book into sharp relief-- Abe does what Otsuka tries to do, only he makes it look elegant and effortless. Abe's protagonist is also angry, active, and sometimes self-destructive-- but at least he's clearly and brilliantly alive. A few paragraphs about sexuality brought the book to a bit of a screeching halt for me (and there is a certain amount of ingrained sexism in the lead character that might be difficult for some), but overall it was well worth the read.

#14: Interbeing: Fourteen Guidelines for Engaged Buddhism, Thich Nhat Hanh

[b-writes.livejournal.com]

Interbeing: Fourteen Guidelines for Engaged Buddhism contains the principles, with annotations, that organize Thich Nhat Hanh's Order of Interbeing, a Buddhist sect that developed in the tumult of the Vietnam war. It's more a book for those who are interested in his order than for laypeople interested in Buddhism. The first half of the book are the principles and commentary, and the second half is a detailed description of the ceremonies the Order engages in.

Of special interest to me were Nhat Hanh's explicit and repeated rejection of dogmatic thinking-- his Buddhism contains plenty of room for every precept to be questioned and evolved-- and his discussions of anger. Nhat Hanh wrote Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames, so it's no surprise he pays attention to anger here. For Nhat Hanh, anger is not to be channeled or quenched, but to be transformed into positive action. I'm going to be trying to take his advice (wish me luck with that, heh).

Recommended, but only for people with a real interest in Thich Nhat Hanh's spiritual advice and/or the Order of Interbeing.

11. The Kitchen God's Wife

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Amy Tan's The Kitchen God's Wife has all the things I've come to expect from an Amy Tan book - well-formed characters, graceful prose, a solid grasp of history - but it adds, finally, a cracking good plot to tie the whole thing together.

The bulk of the book takes place in the 1930s and 40s in China, during and after the Japanese invasion, which certainly provides a good framework for the story. The descriptions of China are effortlessly evocative - there's no sense, as there often is in historical fiction, that Tan is attempting to shoehorn in references to all the main events of the time.

But the story doesn't use the excitement of its setting as a crutch. The main character, Weiwei, and her relationships with her cruel first husband, her difficult friend Hulan, and (eventually) her second husband are the heart of the narrative and the driving force of the book. The result is always compelling, occasionally depressing (I don't mean this as a criticism; it's realistic and necessary), and sometimes unexpectedly beautiful.

This story is book-ended by a modern day interlude involving Weiwei's American born daughter, Pearl. In fact, Weiwei's story is presented as a story that she's telling Pearl. I'm of two minds about the framing device; on the one hand the first, modern-day chapters are easily the worst part of the book (really, the only boring part of the book), and it saddens me to think of readers turning away before they get to the good part.

But on the other hand, by the end the framing device has become so exquisitely intertwined with the story proper, and so necessary to the book's emotional resonance, that I really can't wish any changes in it except perhaps harsher editing of the first few chapters.

In short: an excellent book, highly recommended. There is some violence, sexual and otherwise (this is World War II, after all), but it's not graphic.