Wizard of the Crow by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o

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I just finished reading Wizard of the Crow by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o and felt compelled to post about it to this community and extol its virtues to anyone who would listen.

Summary from Amazon.com: In exile now for more than twenty years, Kenyan novelist, playwright, poet and critic Ngugi wa Thiong’o has become one of the most widely read African writers.

Commencing in “our times” and set in the fictional “Free Republic of Aburiria,” Wizard of the Crow dramatizes with corrosive humor and keenness of observation a battle for control of the souls of the Aburirian people. Fashioning the stories of the powerful and the ordinary into a dazzling mosaic, this magnificent novel reveals humanity in all its endlessly surprising complexity.


The summary doesn't even begin to describe how amazing this book is. Thiong'o himself says the aim of the novel is "to sum up Africa of the twentieth century in the context of two thousand years of world history", and the novel depicts "a battle for the control of the souls of the Aburĩrian people" by the competing forces of a corrupt dictatorship, folk wisdom/religion, fanatic Christianity, and self-serving capitalism. The novel is a gigantic political satire that strikes with great accuracy because by reducing these entities into farcical imitations of themselves, it exposes the truth about them. This novel is funny and touching and fast-paced and just *O*.

This book also follows along the tradition of African story-telling in its construction. It weaves distinct threads that eventually come back to the main narrative to create a cohesive whole, and I was amazed at the ability of Thiong'o to create a narrative of hope out of a story of chaos. This is possibility some of the finest fiction I've ever read, and although it is pretty long (768 pages in hardcover), it's worth every single minute. The time went by so fast for me because I was completely immersed in the novel, just wanting to know how it all ends, and that's what I love about this novel—it's an engaging tragicomedy that really gets into what Africa is. This novel is peopled by real Africans, men and women, all of whom are complex and none of whom are passive "victims" awaiting rescue, even if they are farcical at times.

Mindblowing Science Fiction by POC, Redux

[sanguinity]

A week ago I asked y'all to go chip in on Angry Black Woman's effort to compile a list of mindblowing science fiction by POC.

The final list in now published, over at Tor. Go have a look-see! (Not everyone on the list is a person of color, just so's you know -- white women were included in the round-up, since the "inspiring" anthology was both 100% male and 100% white.)

She also posted a commentary on her blog, expressing her thanks and giving her reasons for publishing it at Tor. She concludes:

When we’re confronted by people who claim that there just aren’t very many outstanding women or POC writers in the field, we can point to this and say: bullshit, bucko. Try again.

We have to be responsible for keeping track of and highlighting and celebrating and giving notice to our own and recording the accomplishments of our best. Because no one else is going to do it for us. If they’re not ignoring, they’re actively suppressing. Neither of which is acceptable.

Make lists, write reviews, pass on books, stories, and authors you love. Be heard.

29. Shan Sa, Empress

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29. Shan Sa, Empress. Translated from French by Adriana Hunter.

A novel based on the life of Wu Zetian (called Heavenlight in the novel), a woman born in China in 625 AD to a relatively obscure family, who rose to eventually become Empress of China- in her own right, not as a wife- and found her own dynasty. The novel, told in first person, covers every single event of Heavenlight's life, from before birth (this may be the only novel which includes a fetus's perspective I've ever read) until after her death. This comprehensiveness is my main complaint with the novel: there are only so many scandals, political power grabs, rebellions inside and outside of the court, and trouble with relatives I can read about before it all starts to sound the same and I stop caring about who is who. I think this would have been a much more interesting book if it had chosen one period and focused on it in detail, instead of trying to cover Heavenlight's entire life.

That said, I did enjoy this novel. The beginning especially had lots of beautiful descriptions and fascinating events. Heavenlight was raised at least partially as a boy, and her accounts of horseback riding were so evocative (Sa is a poet, which I'm sure accounted for the gorgeous language in some parts of the book). Her early days as a concubine in the court were also fascinating, particularly when she develops a relationship with one of the other women. Recommended, though I do warn that it is extremely similar in parts to Anchee Min's Empress Orchid (despite the books being based on two different historical figures).

#23. Bayou, Volume 1, by Jeremy Love with Patrick Morgan

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 #23.  Bayou, Vol. 1,  Jeremy Love (writer, illustrator) with Patrick Morgan (colors)
2009, Gettosake and ZudaComics.com (online), D.C. Comics (print version)

A shoutout to  chipmunk_planet for posting about this book back in June.  This is the first -- and, I know, not the last -- book I've discovered via this comm that I would have overlooked otherwise, and which I found absolutely amazing

Bayou is an incredibly creepy, graphically startling work of deepest [Black] Southern Gothic, set in rural Mississippi in the 1930s and featuring as hero the courageous young daughter of a sharecropper.    

All by itself, that premise would make it kind of remarkable: heroic little girls are in markedly short supply in the comics, much less poor, ragged black ones.  The ambition and underlying coherence of this comic's vision, and the graphic aplomb with which it is executed, make it downright astonishing.  I am really impressed by Bayou.  My only serious complaint about the print version is that this "Volume 1" is really not complete; the story is published serially online, at ZudaComics.com (under the aegis of D.C. Comics), and although this book collection heralds itself as "the first four chapters of the critically acclaimed webcomic series," it doesn't end with much closure -- the author was clearly not planning these chapters to be a self-contained story arc.  (That said, it just drove me online to see What Happened Next. :)  You can read it online, too (if you have a fast enough connection...)

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