Year of Impossible Goodbyes by Sook Nyul Choi

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

Title: Year of Impossible Goodbyes
Author: Sook Nyul Choi
Number of Pages: 169 pages
My Rating: 4/5

Ten-year-old Sookan lives with her mother, grandfather, aunt, cousin, and little brother in Japanese-occupied Pyongyang. Her father has escaped to Manchuria and her older brothers are in Japanese labor camps. As the war drags on and the Japanese become even more cruel, Sookan and her family hold out hope that the Americans will come and free them. But when the war is over, it's not the Americans who come, but the Russians, and now their only hope for freedom is to make the dangerous journey south.

I'm ashamed to say this really ended up being a history lesson for me. I knew that Japan had occupied Korea before WWII and...that's about it, really. I hadn't even really thought about how Korea came to be divided into North and South. :-/ So I ended up reading a lot about Korea on wikipedia while reading this. ^_^;;

It's a good story, though, and based on the author's own experiences. The writing isn't great, but it's better than a lot of YA stuff.

Mooch from BookMooch.

Joseph Bruchac: Children of the Longhouse; Arrow Over the Door

[sanguinity]

(Oh, but I'm behind with posting!)

5. Joseph Bruchac, Children of the Longhouse.

Set in a Mohawk town in 1491, Children of the Longhouse alternates between Ohkwa'ri and Otsi:stia, twin brother and sister, as they work together to outwit the town bully.

Even though the POV alternates between the pair, this is very much the brother's story. It is Ohkwa'ri who is threatened by the bully (even if Otsi:stia does much of the strategic thinking), and it is Ohkwa'ri who gets to do the exciting things, such as build a personal lodge in the forest or take an honorary role on the adults' team in the big lacrosse game. (I just went through the book again to see if I had overlooked cool stuff Otsi:stia did, but not so much: her chapters tend to relate what happened to her brother at the council meetings.)

By the way, the cover teaser -- "It's a man's game— but he's still a boy" -- is a stupid misrepresentation of both the tekwaarathon game depicted on the cover and the book itself. This isn't a book about a boy who has to, somehow, against all odds, live up to a man's role. Quite the opposite, in fact: the book is downright critical of what happens when boys have to find their own way into manhood (as has happened to the bully), and Bruchac places quite a lot of attention on how the adults care for and guide Ohkwa'ri and Otsi:stia. Bah, Puffin Books! Bah!


6. Joseph Bruchac, The Arrow Over the Door.

Bruchac's version of a story traditional among Friends (pdf) about an encounter between American Indians and Quakers during the American Revolution.

In Bruchac's version, French-speaking Abenaki travel south to investigate for themselves the war between the Songlismoniak (English) and the Bostoniak, in order to decide if it is in their best interest to join the war or not. There is a lot of excellent Native-centric historical framework set out here, and that alone is worth the price of the book, in my opinion. Bruchac makes it clear that there has already been a century of heavy interaction between Indians and Europeans, and that history has shaped both Indians and colonists. F'rinstance, the Abenakis and French cannot be distinguished from each other by clothing, and it is made clear that this not a case of Abenakis "modernizing" and adopting "European" clothing, but local clothing being a synthesis of both French and Indian cultures. Bruchac gives a quick review of the political situation from an Abenaki perspective, with the American Revolution being yet another intercolonial war, hot on the heels of the previous one, and the Abenaki characters are well aware that they are being recruited by King George in order to replace Indian allies that had left the war in disgust at imperial racism.

In addition to the Native-centric history, there's other subtle stuff going on in here that I like lots. One of the common tropes in white-authored children's lit about American Indians is the Indian kid who is embarrassed by his family and is considering turning his back on their way of life; in this book, that kid is the Quaker kid. (I laughed and laughed, when I realized.) Stands Straight, the kid on the Abenaki side of the story, feels no such conflict about his family -- and why should he? Unlike Friends in New York society, Stands Straight's family is not othered in his greater community, and Stands Straight is in no way convinced of European supremacy.

Bruchac's historical notes, in which he describes his research and explains the changes he made to the Quaker source material, are nearly as interesting as the book. The "original" source material was written much later than the events, and drips with racism and cultural improbabilities -- see the pdf linked above for details. No one seems to deny that the Quaker story is based on an actual event; however, it's not clear what the event actually was, other than that there were unspecified French-speaking Indians, a Quaker meeting for worship, and no bloodshed. While there is much fabrication in Bruchac's version, there was no less fabrication in the Quaker version -- both versions of the story are told with a particular goal in mind, and I like that Bruchac lays out his goals and reasoning for us.

My sole reservation about the book: Bruchac is quite a bit more laudatory about Quaker/Indian interactions than sets easy with me. While Quakers have a long and well-earned reputation for staunchly opposing virulent racism, the Equality Testimony did not prevent them from buying into white supremacy, which is unremarked upon here. Bruchac points out several things that do credit to Quakers, such as Ely S. Parker selecting Quakers to be Indian agents as part of his reforms of the BIA, but Bruchac declines to note areas where Quakers contributed to harm, such as supporting the Carlisle Indian Industrial School or running "civilizing" Indian schools of their own. I know that it's not Bruchac's job to push Quakers to be honest with themselves about their own history, but since Quaker tradition often runs toward self-congratulation with regards to racism, I would rather that Bruchac's praise had been a little more restrained, yanno?

#37: Ash by Malindo Lo

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

This is largely (in my circles, at least) being advertised as “the lesbian Cinderella YA.” While true, the romantic plotline doesn’t actually begin until well into the book, and is secondary, largely being a part of the heroine’s growth.

The first half of the book follows the standard tale fairly closely: Aisling, called Ash, lost her mother when very young and has had the run of her father’s lands since then. When her father remarries, she doesn’t bond well with her more proper and ladylike stepmother and stepsisters, and when her father dies and leaves them in debt, her stepmother forces her to become a maid. The major change is the addition of Sidhean, a fae who is the Fairy Godmother figure of the tale, who has a past with Ash’s mother.

The second half departs from the standard myth almost entirely. The prince is almost irrelevant, with Ash struggling with her emotions regarding the deaths of her parents and her stepfamily’s cruelty, as well as becoming friends, and then more, with Kaisa, not to mention finding a way to free herself from Sidhean.

Heterosexuality appears to be dominant in this world, but homosexuality (and, presumably, bisexuality) is considered normal and evokes little reaction. The head of the royal hunt is the Huntress-there is never a Hunter-which is Kaisa’s position, though she seems rather young. Though decidedly romantic, the relationship between Ash and Kaisa is rather chaste and innocent (though clearly about to be less chaste). I think, though, that that has more to do with the romance being secondary and this not being That Kind of YA than any hesitancy caused by the lesbian aspect.

This is a good first book, but it also has some problems. For one thing, it really needed to be longer, especially the second half. For another, it has the typical Cinderella problem of most women being mean bullies persecuting the poor, abused heroine. Kaisa, of course, is the major exception to this, but the other non-evil (non-dead) women are very much bit characters, peasants (the class divide was rather noticeable to me), and all but one was a motherly figure cruelly ripped away. In addition, Ash seemed to look down on almost everyone but Kaisa.

Despite the problems, though, I liked it, and look forward to reading more by Lo.

FAQ and Tags Update

[sanguinity]

Heya, it's your friendly neighborhood mod here. Two notes:

1. As many of you have noticed, we've been battling the tag limit for a while, but we haven't gotten the new tagging scheme up and running yet. Right now, I'm working on easing things up a bit by porting author tags over to delicious. Eventually all author tags will be over there, but for some intermediate period we'll have a situation where some author tags are here and some are there. If you can't find an author tag that you're sure ought to exist (or if some of the posts for that tag seem to be missing from the tag), pop over to delicious and look under the "authors" tag bundle. It should be over there. (Also, the (delicious) tag that some of you may have noticed? The intent is for it to be used during the transition, to help us keep track of what we're doing -- when we finish, we'll get rid of it. Please don't add or remove that tag to posts, unless you are working on the tag-portage project.)
   
   And yes, as soon as we get the details sorted out, we will be asking for help in porting things over. Believe me, I am already very much looking forward to the extra hands.
   
   
2. I'm going to modify the spoiler-code listed in the FAQ so that it has better accessibility for people who use screenreaders. The idea and execution is described here, but the basic idea is to bridge the spoiler with a "skip this spoiler" hyperlink. Like so:
   (skip spoiler)
   This should be skippable even when one is using a screenreader. If it's a long spoiler you'll get one border around the entire block of text, instead of overlapping borders around each individual line of text. Dunno about you, but that had been bugging me.
   
   If this doesn't render properly on your browser, let me know, and I'll see what I can do to fix it.
   
   If you want to try it out in the comments, here's the spoiler code:

   
   

   (<a title="Skip this Spoiler" href="#skip.firstspoiler">skip spoiler</a>)
   <div title="This is a spoiler. Highlight to read." style="color:#666; 
   background-color:#666; border:2px red solid"> SPOILER TEXT GOES HERE
   </div> <a name="skip.firstspoiler"></a>

   
   If you have more than one spoiler, just change "skip.firstspoiler" to "skip.secondspoiler" (change both instances!) as appropriate.
   
   Also, because I know that big block of code can be unpleasant for some, I'll add instructions to the FAQ for rot-13. (Unless anyone has a good reason to not use rot-13?) V zlfrys unir n sbaqarff sbe byq-fxbby zrgubqf; ohg gura, V'z yvxr gung. (Gung gbgnyyl jnfa'g jbegu hapvcurevat, jnf vg? Fbeel.)
   
   ETA: It appears that using rot-13 well with screen-readers should have similar "jump past this spoiler" HTML around it, which doesn't make it much/any simpler to implement.