#1-4 reviews and/or impressions

[wingstodust.livejournal.com]

Crossovers and excerpts from the reviews in my book blog

Wanting Mor by Rukhsana Khan - Hmm, my feelings are a bit mixed for this novel. On one hand I enjoyed this book for giving our main girl Jameela agency in her actions. It’s a bit of a Cinderella story sans the prince, wherein the girl rises from her station and comes into her own. She makes her own choices, her own decisions and I very much appreciated that. I particularly loved how she chose to continue wearing a chadri even after she got surgery done on her cleft lip, how she didn’t choose to wear a chadri because of poor self-image but because she wanted to. However, on the flip side, Jameela herself left me a bit cold. I’m thinking it’s maybe because Jameela is rather cold and standoff-ish towards everyone in the story and by proxy I feel distant from her myself? (more)

A Girl Made of Dust by Nathalie Abi-Ezzi - For me, Adult Lit is all about the writing style, and Abi-Ezzi sure delivers in spades. I love the imagery she has with dust and water, the dried out cactus in the dessert that needs watering. Everything had this parallel to it, almost done cyclically as she switches from dust to water imagery and back. Some of the imagery would be shown in a very direct fashion, like our girl made of dust – who was a girl “covered in sand and dirt”. (more)

Ash by Malinda Lo - Hmm, after having finished reading the novel, my feelings were mixed and I mostly felt torn. One side of me was all super gushy and melting over the Kaisa/Ash pairing, and my other half was left ambivalent about the rest. Thinking back, I think it’s due to my lack of love for the Cinderella tale in general, and the whole pseudo-white medieval setting Lo had going on. I’m not sure how much I was affected by the fact that I read this post by Malinda Lo wherein she said that she imagined her cast as Asian before having read the novel. I tried, and I tried to buy it, that the cast were Asian but I just couldn’t. (more)

Bleeding Violet by Dia Reeves - I just really liked Reeves’ whole approach to this world she created in general, from Hanna’s reactions to seeing stuff (Hanna’s reactions the first few days were like, hmm, I thought I took my pills today, guess they haven’t kicked in yet. *walks past those bloodstained windows like she saw nothing*) to the portrayal of the fantastical in this world. The creatures are batshit scary and feel very real, things that will kill you if you walk down the wrong street. And how the people of the town are deeply influenced by their knowledge of these monsters that lurk their town, how it shapes them from their behavior to what they wear to just, their physical selves and their telltale scars. I bought into the world Reeves’ created completely, and really enjoyed reading about the fantastical side of this novel. (more)

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Also, I am hosting a book giveaway in which you can win either Exclusively Chloe by J. A. Yang OR Mountain Girl River Girl by Ting-Xing Ye, who are both POC writers. Link's here if anyone's interested. =D

16: The Vintage Book of African-American Poetry

[hapex-legomena.livejournal.com]

So Black History Month is almost at an end; have 50 African-American poet as presented by The Vintage Book of African-American Poetry edited by Michael S. Harper and Anthony Walton.

In alphabetical order:

( long list of poets. with links! )

[all links go to public domain works - the ones that I could find anyway]

If you look at the list of writers you may notice that the editor, Michael S. Harper included himself in his own anthology, which I think is kind of suspect, but I guess that's what co-editors are for.

I was going to write about every individual writer, but, yeah, no. Too lazy; don't feel like it. Also, it's a lot harder tracking down public domain works on the big wide internets than I thought it would, or think it should. Seriously, if the book was originally published in 1910, I don't google books or whoever pointing me to amazon. Just give me the text JFC.

It's was a good anthology. Not an excellent anthology, but a good one. The editorial inserts were informative, if sometimes annoying. (One of the editor's and I have a slight difference of opinion on the use of dialect in poetry.) By choosing the poets that they did, the editor's try to the diversity of style and identity that falls under the term "African-American poetry" and they also attempt to show growth over time.

Two poems that got me:

White Lady by Lucille Clifton (recently passed, may she rest in peace)

AKA my new go-to poem to explain why White Women's Syndrome and the trope of the Nice White Lady does not give me the warm and fuzzies.

On Being Brought from Africa to America by Phillis Wheatley

'Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,
Taught my benighted soul to understand
That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too:
Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.
Some view our sable race with scornful eye,
"Their colour is a diabolic die."
Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain,
May be refin'd and join th'angelic train.

This poem is so sad. The woman named Phillis Wheatley received the name Wheatley from her owner
and the name Phillis from the slave ship she was brought to America. She lived a hard and short life. And here is this poem pleading for "Negros, black as Cain" to be seen human.

Those two were downers. Here, have a happier one:

Dawn by Paul Laurence Dunbar

An angel, robed in spotless white,
Bent down and kissed the sleeping Night.
Night woke to blush; the sprite was gone.
Men saw the blush and called it Dawn.

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