Need a Recommendation? Got a Recommendation?

[sanguinity]

Hm. It seems the last time I did a delicious + recs extravaganza was, er, May, which must mean that you have a very lazy mod. Or something.

Interesting and/or useful things that we have been collecting at delicious:

• Booklists
  • People of Color in SF Wiki -- hosted by the Carl Brandon Society
    
  • sparkymonster @ deadbrowalking: Sci-Fi/Fantasy Authors of African Descent
    
  • Books Recommended by Friends of CoffeeandInk, @ LibraryThing, @ GoodReads -- compilation and index of the recs made in this 500-comment RaceFail post
    
  • Books for our Times -- recommended books by African-American authors that "shed light on our times", offered as a corrective to a white-centric list published by Newsweek
    
  • American Book Awards - Before Columbus Foundation -- (description of the award and foundation). Many authors are POC; despite the connotations of the name, award is multicultural-focused instead of Native-focused.
    
  • (I know a BUNCH of booklists got posted during IBARW; I haven't yet had a chance to go through and compile them yet. It'll happen. If you want to help, do the "for:50books_poc" thing listed below, preferably including a short descrip of what we'd find at that link. Otherwise, I'll get to it when I can.)
  
  
  
• Blogs
  • Glyphs - The Language of the Black Comics Community Blog by Rich Watson, focusing on comics by or about people of color.
    
  • American Indians in Children's Literature -- (had I seriously never collected this before? seriously?) reviews and discussions of kid's books about American Indians, written by Deb Reese of the Nambe Pueblo. Most reviews are of white-authored books that get it wrong, but some of the posts are about Native-authored books.
    
  • Novel Spaces -- Group blog of 11 authors, mostly authors of color, in diverse genres: romance, SFF, horror, erotica, and mainstream.
    
  • BronzeWord Latino Authors -- Latest Latin@ books, author resources, showcase for young authors.
    
  • White Readers Meet Black Authors now has an LJ-feed, whitereadsblack
  
  
  
• POC-centric publishers, booksellers, and advocacy orgs:
  
  
  • Zubaan Books -- Indian feminist independent publishing house. "Some of the distinct lists that are being built in Zubaan are: Gender and Reproductive Health/Sexuality, Gender and Conflict, Gender and Architecture, Gender and Law, Gender and History/National Movement, Gender and Economics, The North East of India (including essays and fiction), Fiction in translation (mostly novels), Readers on the Women's Movement/Feminism, Biographies/Autobiographies/Memoirs"
    
    
  • Black Science Fiction Store -- books, comics, ebooks, audiobooks
    
  • African American Electronic Literary Network -- promotes African-American e-book authors, and educates urban communities on ebooks
    
  • Black Author Showcase - Agents of Literary Change -- social networking site with blog, bookstore, author resources.
    
    
  • Black Ink Press -- Community-based Indigenous writing, illustrating and publishing project based in North Queensland, with emphasis on children's books
    
  • Jujurrpa Books Publishes the work of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander writers and illustrators. Poetry, oral histories, children's biography, more.
    
  • AIATSIS Aboriginal Studies Press -- Publisher of Indigenous Studies, part of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. Not all authors are indigenous.
    
  • Keeaira Press Publications Australia -- emphasis on photographs and art; not all authors are inidigenous.
    
  • Black Words -- newsletter, etexts, publishers, and other resources. Some resources only available to subscribers.
    
  
  
  
• Individual authors
  • Caren Gussoff -- CC-released short stories by Romani spec-fic author Caren Gussoff.
    
  • K Chronickles and (Th)ink -- website and blog of comic artist Keith Knight.
    
  • Podcast interview with Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
    

If you have a link to add, either drop it in the comments here or:

• Add 50books_poc to your del.icio.us network.
• Save the link to your account with the tag "for:50books_poc".

And... on to the recs! If you're looking books in a particular genre or on a particular topic, or simply want to say, "Hey, I liked THIS book, what else would you recommend?" leave a comment. With luck, someone might have just the rec for you.

Comments

[sanguinity]

Boats. Ships. Sailing.

Tall ships. Age of Sail.

Don't much care if it's fic or nonfic, if it's kids or adult, period or non-period. Just... boaty stuff.

[idella]

I second this.

[scoured.livejournal.com]

Have you tried Sea of Poppies (http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?inkey=1-9780374174224-1) by Amitav Ghosh? It's about the opium trade, and has lots of that great talk about what makes their ship awesome that I love in boat books, as well as lots of geeky talk about languages. The only caveat to my recommendation is that it's supposed to be the first in a trilogy, and the ending really left me wanting the next one (and there is no word on when it will be out).

[sanguinity]

Oo, no I haven't. Thanks!

[rosehiptea.livejournal.com]

I loved Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart (though I found it devastating) but it seems to be the only one of his books I find in the bookstore. I'd like to know what other books of his people liked.

And also "Hey, I liked Things Fall Apart, what else would you recommend?"

[(Anonymous)]

You might like No Longer at Ease by Achebe and anything by Chimamanda Adichie Ngozi who is greatly influenced by the elder Nigerian writer.

[rosehiptea.livejournal.com]

Thank you very much for the suggestions!

[coloronline.blogspot.com (from livejournal.com)]

Please add Color Online to your list of blogs. We focus on women of color writers for children, YA and adults. We cover all genres. Currently hosting Color Me Brown Challenge. Write review, drop us a link and earn a chance to win a book.

Thanks.

[sanguinity]

It's listed! We had Color Online in the April roundup. (Which was huge; Color Online is listed down near the end, because I didn't do a separate "blogs" listing in that one.)

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you. Didn't know this was monthly. I have found a lot of great reads and resources here.

When can I publish another review of yours? :-)

[sanguinity]

Oh, good! I'm glad we're able to be of service. :-)

Monthly in theory, more like. We only started doing the round-ups in March; in June we swapped it out for a rec-post to respond to some of the questions that kept coming up in MammothFail; and I flat-out forgot to do it in July. I mostly started doing the round-ups because I had the impression that people didn't know the delicious was there, or don't think to go look through it.

:: When can I publish another review of yours? :-) ::

Mmm.... when I link one, I guess!

[scarletts-awry.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the links!

And if anyone has suggestions--right now I'm looking for books that are suffused with dread. Absolutely any genre, any time period. I'm looking for books where you sense that something awful is going to happen, but you don't know what or when. (i.e., it's not telegraphed.)

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

I just read In the Miso Soup by Ryu Murakami and loved it. You know something bad is going to happen and based on some stuff you know the kind of thing it will be (like, you know it will be X not aliens or ghosts or whatever), but I was totally taken by surprise by what actually did happen and when it happened.

[(Anonymous)]

Reading In Color (http://blackteensread2.blogspot.com/) is written by African American teen who focuses on POC YA lit.

[sanguinity]

Added, thank you!

[sheafrotherdon.livejournal.com]

a rec for the booksellers portion of your list - Louise Erdrich's bookshop in Minneapolis: Birchbark Books (http://birchbarkbooks.com/). Great resources for Native culture, literature, arts, and history, and a wonderful children's section, plus part of the profits from the store go to supporting other Native artists.

[sanguinity]

Her bookshop is already listed, thanks! And I caught it in the March roundup, too. :-)

[sheafrotherdon.livejournal.com]

Oh! I'm sorry! My bad :">

[sanguinity]

No worries. :-) There's a lot more listed in that account that what shows up in any particular round-up; go have a poke around if you haven't yet.

[sweet-adelheid.livejournal.com]

My reading list is very light on authors from South and Central America. Preferably Indigenous people or those with African ancestry, as my own short time in Brazil has led to me not counting those of European ancestry as "POC", even once they move to the US (eg, there's no use reccing Isabelle Allende or Gabriel Garcia Marquez...)

Any recommendations? Especially by Australians who've managed to find books by such authors in libraries out here?

[alias_sqbr]

I haven't read it yet, but just got "Love and Rockets" out of the Western Australian Australian library system. I also have a review for "Love walked in" planned, it was pretty good and also in the system(*) And I have "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" on reserve.

(*)This is what I get for not looking up authors before reccing them, the author is Filipino-American. I must have gotten her mixed up with someone else. Still a good book though :)

[seekingferret.livejournal.com]

I've been enjoying the post-colonial Indian literature in English that I've been reading- R.K. Narayan and G.V. Desani. Other authors like those to check out would be appreciated.

Also, I'd like to check out post-colonial literature in English from other cultures. I recognize the problems inherent in this literature being written in a non-native language, but I'm equally mistrustful of translation, and I find it really exciting the way Narayan and Desani make English their own in a very non-Western way.