Another long list of short reviews

[rootedinsong.livejournal.com]

32. Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today's Feminism, edited by Daisy Hernandez and Bushra Rehman

Wow. Have you ever read something that feels like it's patching holes in you that you didn't even know were there? That's what reading this was like for me. The authors are not afraid to address complexity, not afraid to admit that the world doesn't fit into nice discrete classification systems, not afraid to live as who they are.

I especially appreciated Lisa Weiner-Mahfuz and Kahente Horn-Miller's essays (although I didn't like that the latter was the only Native contributor). They made me feel like there was room for me in their world.

33. The Accidental Santera, by Irete Lazo

I think I would have liked this better if it were better written. It's a novel about a Latina biologist who finds out about Santería and quickly finds herself drawn into it; there's a lot about religious ceremonies and community and navigating the world as a member of a marginalized religion. But it's rather awkwardly written; I'd almost (but not quite) describe it as the author saying, "Hey, everybody, I know you don't know anything about my religion, so let me tell you all about it. Oh, and I'll do it in a novel."

34. Sofi Mendoza's Guide to Getting Lost in Mexico, by Malin Alegría

A book about a Mexican-American girl who sneaks across the border to go to a party against her parents' wishes, and then finds that she can't return because her documents are false. She goes to stay with family members she doesn't know to wait and see if things can be worked out, and learns a lot about her heratige, the world, and who she really is.

I thought this was okay. The ending was a little too tidily wrapped up, though.

35. Silver Phoenix, by Cindy Pon

This was awesome. Another one of the wonderful fantasy novels I was hoping to find - a book with telepathy, dragons, monsters, supernatural realms, etc., that's not based on the same old European mythologies. It's deeply rooted in China and Chinese culture.

I hope she writes a lot more.

36. The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love, by bell hooks

Hmmm. On the one hand, I think she's making a good point about masculinity and maleness - how they need to be reconceptualized as positive, non-oppressive identities. On the other hand...

On the other hand, I think a book that really did a topic like this justice would have to be a lot less heterocentric and ciscentric than this one is. The author tries not to be heteronormative, sometimes talking about gay men, but for the most part this struck me as a very heterocentric discourse. She doesn't mention trans or genderqueer people at all. She doesn't distinguish between masculinity and manhood. And it seems to me like this is the place where such an endeavor should start.

The book's also written in a really repetitive style - which she acknowledges in the preface: "In these chapters I repeat many points so that each chapter alone will convey the most significant ideas of the whole." Whatever her reasons for writing it that way, it made it hard for me to keep reading.

37. The Eternal Smile, by Gene Luen Yang and Derek Kirk Kim

I've flipped through this a bunch of times while in bookstores, wanting to read it because I adored Yang's American Born Chinese, but not seeing the same spark in it upon cursory examination.

I finally decided to sit down and read it anyway. And while I didn't like it as much as American Born Chinese, I still thought it was pretty awesome.

The book consists of three stories, drawn and written in very different styles but all dealing with similar themes. They all... I guess bend reality, and deal with the question of whether it's preferable to live in a real world (which may be stark and unpleasant) or a fantasy world. I thought the authors were going to come down hard on one side of the question after reading the first two stories, but the last one showed a more nuanced view.

The stories are also very evocative.

38. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, by Mildred Taylor

Somehow I never ended up reading this (or any of the other books in the series) when I was a kid.

I think this book is a really amazing achievement. It's captivating and readable enough for kids (although Taylor said that she wasn't intending to write for kids) and still examines issues of racism in great complexity. There's a lot of depth here.

I can't wait to read more in the series.

Sherri L. Smith, Flygirl

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

28. Sherri L. Smith, Flygirl

A YA novel. Ida Mae is a young woman working as a maid in Louisiana in the early years of America's participation in WWII. Her father taught her how to fly planes before he died, but as a black woman, she's been unable to get a pilot license of her own. When she hears about the Women Airforce Service Pilots (a government operation that flies non-combat missions), Ida Mae decides to join. But she has to pass as white to have a chance.

This was a great novel. It did a wonderful job of dealing with both sexism and racism (and the intersection between the two), while keeping the situation complicated and letting the characters be individuals. There aren't any easy answers here, though I felt the tone of the book was ultimately uplifting. (Though there were some scenes that broke my heart, like when Ida Mae's mother comes to see her during pilot training.) This book is very well-written, fast-paced, and I couldn't stop reading. Very recommended.

(no subject)

[marzipan-pig.livejournal.com]

Who Am I Without Him?: Short Stories About Girls and the Boys in Their Lives Sharon Flake

I picked this up in the library today and didn't expect much from it (it seemed too fluffy to me from the cover). It turned out to be really great - a series of stories about relationships between young (middle school/high school) adults, most African-American, and mostly (though not all) from a girl's point of view.

Many of the stories had disturbing scenes (one in particular stuck with me more than I would have liked) though each story was written in its own style. My favorite was some kind of wacky class assignment that I couldn't imagine ever being approved, where the class is paired off into male/female couples and an observer, and then asked to work through various relationship issues over a few-week period of time.

This was a quick read and I enjoyed it, though the focus on / assumption of the importance of romantic relationships would have been almost incomprehensible to me as a nerdy white suburban pre/teenager, and I think I would have conflated that with the overall gritty urban settings more than is really warranted.