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50books_pocOne Tribe - M. Evelina Galang. Isabel Manalo, devastated after a miscarriage, decides to move from the Chicago area (where she & her siblings grew up as the only Filipinos in school) to Virginia Beach. She's been hired to teach Filipino culture & history there, to youth troubled by drive-by shootings & milder forms of gang violence. The white administration & local Filipino parents feel that giving the students information about their background will keep them out of trouble. The irony is, these kids are already steeped in Filipino culture: they speak Tagalog to each other, they have a few local activists that serve as informal mentors, they participate in activities (such as a beauty pageant--which causes more strife & stress for the girls than anything else) sponsored by the many Filipino organizations in the area.
In comes Isabel, who doesn't speak Tagalog & grew up alienated from any Filipino community, & who is supposed to instill this feeling in these kids. Like Isabel, they have been squeezed by the vise of tsismis (gossip): constantly told not to bring shame onto their family, surrounded by the buzz of busybodies exchanging scandalous details. After the expected period of friction w/the teens (but some success teaching younger students), Isabel's work elicits disapproval from the school administration & local parents: she's not teaching the kids to be respectful, she's teaching them to question & to voice their own thoughts & to understand how race & colonialism play into how they're treated in their community.
After this buildup, the ending is frustratingly vague, just when certainty would be most satisfying. Although the plot in general probably sounds cloying, I found it v. moving in parts, & I liked how the novel explores questions about who is Pin@y, who decides, & what does that mean? There's also humor, in the form of Ferdi Mamaril, a stereotyped uber-Pinoy activist who leaves long lectures on Filipino American history on Isabel's answering machine.
Sometimes I think Galang tries a little too hard to imitate teenage voices, but overall she does a fair job. I did think Isabel was just blindingly oblivious sometimes: is it that hard for a teacher to figure out that "Sup?" means "What's up?" And even if she didn't speak Tagalog, I found it hard to believe that she would've been so ignorant of it that, when hearing the teens speaking it (mixed w/English), she asks them if it's slang.
The Shadow Speaker - Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu. In Niger in 2070, teenage Ejii is a metahuman, one of many humans born w/strange powers after worldwide nuclear war. She is a shadow speaker, a person who can hear & speak with shadows. Ejii finds herself traveling w/Jaa, the violent & powerful Red Queen, to Ginen, a separate world from Earth. Jaa's mission is supposedly to negotiate for peace between the five worlds now known to exist. Meanwhile, Ejii's powers are changing, in frightening & painful ways, & she doesn't quite know why she's along on this journey. I loved Zahrah the Windseeker, & this had a lot of the same elements that I enjoyed in that one. It was less wide-eyed than Zahrah, not that I minded that, although sometimes I thought it was a bit too much. Anyway--I loved this book, too, & look forward to future works!
Not Home, But Here: Writing from the Filipino Diaspora - Edited by Luisa A. Igloria. Disappointing; almost everything in this slim anthology left me cold. One piece I did like was Leny Mendoza-Strobel's, which talked about decolonizing yourself. The worst was Bino A. Realuyo ranting about how the Latinos working at the McDonald's where he gets his daily breakfast should just LEARN ENGLISH ALREADY. Augh.
Homelands: Women's Journeys Across Race, Place, and Time - Edited by Patricia Justine Tumang and Jenesha de Rivera. This is more what I was hoping for w/Not Home, But Here. I've read a lot of anthologies published by Seal, & most of them have at least a few amazing pieces, but often as a whole the books are somewhat disappointing (& yet they're one of the only publishers doing anthologies on topics that consistently interest me). This one is a happy exception. Also I appreciated the wider age range of contributors--sometimes w/Seal books I feel like everyone in it is my age. The pieces in this book talk about what home means to refugees, to exiles, to immigrants, to the children of immigrants who've never been back "home," etc. There's a decent geographical spread in what's talked about, too, & a lot of the pieces are wonderful. One quote that particularly resonated, from Diane Wilson's "Dakota Homecoming":
Learn to Play Go: A Master's Guide to the Ultimate Game - Janice Kim and Jeong Soo-hyun. It seems every few years I make some sort of effort to learn a game like go or chess or something along those lines. Although even if I never end up playing, just reading this book is somehow soothing & interesting. They lay things out v. simply, & offer problems to test yourself w/. I wish they had more problems, actually, but I suppose there are other books I could get for that.
The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex - Edited by INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence. I was interested in reading this book b/c last year I got rather spectacularly burned-out on working in nonprofits, & as it turned out, this book hit on a lot of the reasons why.
This anthology critiques the 501(c) 3 system of nonprofits in the US. Named for the tax code section they fall under, these organizations are eligible for tax breaks and to receive funding from foundations & government. In return, they have strict limits on lobbying, they can't advocate for candidates, & they hand over a lot of their autonomy to the foundations (who decide what they're going to fund, & require tedious progress reports & site visits). Companies & families that set up foundations receive tax breaks as well--so instead of millions of dollars going into the public coffers, it remains in the hands of a few rich folks who decide where it's going to be spent. Foundation money has historically also divided social justice activists into two categories: the "good" ones (eligible for funding, nonviolent, do more reformist work) & the "bad" ones (radicals, those critiquing capitalism, etc.). The many nonprofits in the US also have served to professionalize the movement--now organizers & policy makers & community workers have to have degrees, & are often not from the communities they are working on behalf of. All this is v. different from how movements work in many other parts of the world (they talk a lot about South America specifically).
The first few essays tend to the dull academic stuff I have less of a tolerance for these days; it's ironic considering the book's issue w/the elitism generated by the US nonprofit system. Luckily, the rest of the book was much more readable. I ended up feeling quite vindicated for the grief I went through after several years in nonprofits after I was done.
So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction & Fantasy - Edited by Nalo Hopkinson & Uppinder Mehan. This was a strong collection, & so needed. As Nalo Hopkinson says in the introduction, "one of the most familiar memes of science fiction is that of going to foreign countries and colonizing the natives... for many of us, that's not a thrilling adventure story; it's non-fiction, and we are on the wrong side of the strange-looking ship that appears out of nowhere." There were so many pieces I really liked from this anthology that I can't really name them, or it'd be most of the table of contents.
Brother, I'm Dying - Edwidge Danticat. Absolutely wrenching. Haitian-American novelist Danticat gives us an account of her father & uncle's lives, looking backwards from their deaths: her father's of pulmonary fibrosis, & her Uncle Joseph of pancreatis, which occurred while he was in detention in Miami after requesting asylum. Even though Joseph was 81 & ailing, & had just had his church in Haiti burned down & his life threatened by gangs, he was thrown into detention & didn't receive proper medical care (I actually remember writing letters through Amnesty International requesting an investigation into the circumstances of his death, when this happened).
Joseph was a second father to Danticat for years, while her parents were in the US working. The book portrays the agony of families separated this way really well--& also what it feels like when Danticat & her brother are sent to rejoin their parents in New York.
Others in Danticat's family make multiple migrations as well, spurred in part by the political turbulence going on in Haiti: to Cuba, to the Dominican Republic, to the US, sometimes leaving & reclaiming children in the same way. And even though this is obviously sad & painful, it also shows the strength of family bonds, how people are willing to step up & take care of children who need it, how supportive of each other Danticat's family is.
The writing is clear & simple; Danticat doesn't need to use fancy tricks in order to break your heart.
Bento Box in the Heartland: My Japanese Girlhood in Whitebread America - Linda Furiya. Furiya grew up in the only Japanese American family in Versailles, Indiana. Her memoir has some good insights about shame, & how white friends alternately acted like her family's cultural differences were exotically exciting or anathema. I got frustrated w/the zillion typos & other errors (for example, each chapter ends w/a recipe, & one recipe appears twice; also, who was the fact-checker that thought that Finland was famous for its hot springs???), though. The writing is decent enough, but I finished the book feeling like something had been missing.
In comes Isabel, who doesn't speak Tagalog & grew up alienated from any Filipino community, & who is supposed to instill this feeling in these kids. Like Isabel, they have been squeezed by the vise of tsismis (gossip): constantly told not to bring shame onto their family, surrounded by the buzz of busybodies exchanging scandalous details. After the expected period of friction w/the teens (but some success teaching younger students), Isabel's work elicits disapproval from the school administration & local parents: she's not teaching the kids to be respectful, she's teaching them to question & to voice their own thoughts & to understand how race & colonialism play into how they're treated in their community.
After this buildup, the ending is frustratingly vague, just when certainty would be most satisfying. Although the plot in general probably sounds cloying, I found it v. moving in parts, & I liked how the novel explores questions about who is Pin@y, who decides, & what does that mean? There's also humor, in the form of Ferdi Mamaril, a stereotyped uber-Pinoy activist who leaves long lectures on Filipino American history on Isabel's answering machine.
Sometimes I think Galang tries a little too hard to imitate teenage voices, but overall she does a fair job. I did think Isabel was just blindingly oblivious sometimes: is it that hard for a teacher to figure out that "Sup?" means "What's up?" And even if she didn't speak Tagalog, I found it hard to believe that she would've been so ignorant of it that, when hearing the teens speaking it (mixed w/English), she asks them if it's slang.
The Shadow Speaker - Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu. In Niger in 2070, teenage Ejii is a metahuman, one of many humans born w/strange powers after worldwide nuclear war. She is a shadow speaker, a person who can hear & speak with shadows. Ejii finds herself traveling w/Jaa, the violent & powerful Red Queen, to Ginen, a separate world from Earth. Jaa's mission is supposedly to negotiate for peace between the five worlds now known to exist. Meanwhile, Ejii's powers are changing, in frightening & painful ways, & she doesn't quite know why she's along on this journey. I loved Zahrah the Windseeker, & this had a lot of the same elements that I enjoyed in that one. It was less wide-eyed than Zahrah, not that I minded that, although sometimes I thought it was a bit too much. Anyway--I loved this book, too, & look forward to future works!
Not Home, But Here: Writing from the Filipino Diaspora - Edited by Luisa A. Igloria. Disappointing; almost everything in this slim anthology left me cold. One piece I did like was Leny Mendoza-Strobel's, which talked about decolonizing yourself. The worst was Bino A. Realuyo ranting about how the Latinos working at the McDonald's where he gets his daily breakfast should just LEARN ENGLISH ALREADY. Augh.
Homelands: Women's Journeys Across Race, Place, and Time - Edited by Patricia Justine Tumang and Jenesha de Rivera. This is more what I was hoping for w/Not Home, But Here. I've read a lot of anthologies published by Seal, & most of them have at least a few amazing pieces, but often as a whole the books are somewhat disappointing (& yet they're one of the only publishers doing anthologies on topics that consistently interest me). This one is a happy exception. Also I appreciated the wider age range of contributors--sometimes w/Seal books I feel like everyone in it is my age. The pieces in this book talk about what home means to refugees, to exiles, to immigrants, to the children of immigrants who've never been back "home," etc. There's a decent geographical spread in what's talked about, too, & a lot of the pieces are wonderful. One quote that particularly resonated, from Diane Wilson's "Dakota Homecoming":
As a witness to my family's experience, and that of our people, I finally understood that our daily lives are only the tip of a mountain that rises above hundreds of years of generations whose experience--acknowledged or not--has everything to do with the people we have become. We are the sum of those who have come before us: good, bad, wise, and indifferent. We build our lives on top of that mountain.
Learn to Play Go: A Master's Guide to the Ultimate Game - Janice Kim and Jeong Soo-hyun. It seems every few years I make some sort of effort to learn a game like go or chess or something along those lines. Although even if I never end up playing, just reading this book is somehow soothing & interesting. They lay things out v. simply, & offer problems to test yourself w/. I wish they had more problems, actually, but I suppose there are other books I could get for that.
The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex - Edited by INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence. I was interested in reading this book b/c last year I got rather spectacularly burned-out on working in nonprofits, & as it turned out, this book hit on a lot of the reasons why.
This anthology critiques the 501(c) 3 system of nonprofits in the US. Named for the tax code section they fall under, these organizations are eligible for tax breaks and to receive funding from foundations & government. In return, they have strict limits on lobbying, they can't advocate for candidates, & they hand over a lot of their autonomy to the foundations (who decide what they're going to fund, & require tedious progress reports & site visits). Companies & families that set up foundations receive tax breaks as well--so instead of millions of dollars going into the public coffers, it remains in the hands of a few rich folks who decide where it's going to be spent. Foundation money has historically also divided social justice activists into two categories: the "good" ones (eligible for funding, nonviolent, do more reformist work) & the "bad" ones (radicals, those critiquing capitalism, etc.). The many nonprofits in the US also have served to professionalize the movement--now organizers & policy makers & community workers have to have degrees, & are often not from the communities they are working on behalf of. All this is v. different from how movements work in many other parts of the world (they talk a lot about South America specifically).
The first few essays tend to the dull academic stuff I have less of a tolerance for these days; it's ironic considering the book's issue w/the elitism generated by the US nonprofit system. Luckily, the rest of the book was much more readable. I ended up feeling quite vindicated for the grief I went through after several years in nonprofits after I was done.
So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction & Fantasy - Edited by Nalo Hopkinson & Uppinder Mehan. This was a strong collection, & so needed. As Nalo Hopkinson says in the introduction, "one of the most familiar memes of science fiction is that of going to foreign countries and colonizing the natives... for many of us, that's not a thrilling adventure story; it's non-fiction, and we are on the wrong side of the strange-looking ship that appears out of nowhere." There were so many pieces I really liked from this anthology that I can't really name them, or it'd be most of the table of contents.
Brother, I'm Dying - Edwidge Danticat. Absolutely wrenching. Haitian-American novelist Danticat gives us an account of her father & uncle's lives, looking backwards from their deaths: her father's of pulmonary fibrosis, & her Uncle Joseph of pancreatis, which occurred while he was in detention in Miami after requesting asylum. Even though Joseph was 81 & ailing, & had just had his church in Haiti burned down & his life threatened by gangs, he was thrown into detention & didn't receive proper medical care (I actually remember writing letters through Amnesty International requesting an investigation into the circumstances of his death, when this happened).
Joseph was a second father to Danticat for years, while her parents were in the US working. The book portrays the agony of families separated this way really well--& also what it feels like when Danticat & her brother are sent to rejoin their parents in New York.
"Uncle seemed sad," Bob answered for me. "I think he was sad to see us leave."
"I suppose that's how it is sometimes," my father said in a whisper of a voice. "One papa happy, one papa sad."
Others in Danticat's family make multiple migrations as well, spurred in part by the political turbulence going on in Haiti: to Cuba, to the Dominican Republic, to the US, sometimes leaving & reclaiming children in the same way. And even though this is obviously sad & painful, it also shows the strength of family bonds, how people are willing to step up & take care of children who need it, how supportive of each other Danticat's family is.
The writing is clear & simple; Danticat doesn't need to use fancy tricks in order to break your heart.
Bento Box in the Heartland: My Japanese Girlhood in Whitebread America - Linda Furiya. Furiya grew up in the only Japanese American family in Versailles, Indiana. Her memoir has some good insights about shame, & how white friends alternately acted like her family's cultural differences were exotically exciting or anathema. I got frustrated w/the zillion typos & other errors (for example, each chapter ends w/a recipe, & one recipe appears twice; also, who was the fact-checker that thought that Finland was famous for its hot springs???), though. The writing is decent enough, but I finished the book feeling like something had been missing.
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no subject
Date: 2008-02-14 06:44 am (UTC)The library doesn't have Revolution, though, which makes me sad. Revolution appears to talk about an itch I've been wanting to see someone to talk about, these big professional "grassroots" "activist" groups that seem more into being big and professional than into being grassroots or activist. That, and how they make me feel crazy and duped and khaki-corporate when I volunteer for them. :-(
So Long Been Dreaming looks good, too. It looks like it touches in close to a story that I've been noodling for a little while now...
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Date: 2008-02-18 06:26 pm (UTC)these big professional "grassroots" "activist" groups that seem more into being big and professional than into being grassroots or activist
YESSSSSSS. & how they pretend to be so progressive & then they're totally not--like the place I last worked for that burnt me out so much gave lip service to diversity in hiring & blah blah, but over the 2 years I was there, somehow lots of POCs got laid off or left, & were replaced by white folks, & then we noticed all the queer folks were starting to go too. :P Oh, & members of both groups were the ones most likely to critique the way the org was running itself, of course.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-19 06:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-24 02:58 pm (UTC)