Ghost Girls: A Review of M+O4EVR by Tonya Cherie Hegamin

[zahrawithaz.livejournal.com]

( General intro, about LGBT fiction, YA lit, race, and the few other books about African-American queer girls )

In this context, it’s a real pleasure to discover a third novel about a queer African-American girl, especially one as moving and skillfully written as Tonya Cherie Hegamin’s M+O4EVR. 

( Click for review. Spoilers through the end of chapter 2 of a 10-chapter YA book. )

Corn Bread and Sashimi: A Review of Southland by Nina Revoyr

[zahrawithaz.livejournal.com]

I know life is not fair, but recently I’ve been thinking about one grave injustice: Nina Revoyr is not famous.

Most people I’ve met have never even heard of Nina Revoyr, much less read one of her novels. They’ve never had the pleasure of sinking under the spell of her deceptively simple prose, or falling in love with her palpably real characters. That’s their loss, but it’s also part of a greater injustice, because Nina Revoyr tells the stories that aren’t often enough heard.

She writes incisively about relationships between working-class Japanese-American and African-American communities, and about lesbians whose relationship struggles have moved far past coming-out dramas; she creates fully-realized characters and worlds in which white people have only bit parts; she makes the effects of racism so real that the reader recoils; she treats the black urban community of  LA with a deeper respect than I have found in any other author.

Why isn’t she famous? Oh, wait….

( Review of Southland by Nina Revoyr )