1. Restoried Selves: Autobiographies of Queer Asian/Pacific American Activists

[littlebutfierce]

I am so excited that this community exists! I have major issues w/the white feminist Inga Muscio (especially w/her book on racism), but one of her ideas that I liked was to only consume media by women for a period of time, I think a year, just to shift her thinking a little. While I won't be doing that for POCs, I think the prompt to deliberately read POC authors will be v. v. good for me. I hope folks will keep posting link lists of POC authors as they find them. I'll be searching for one of YA writers, myself, & will post if I find a useful one.

I write brief notes on my reading journal (furyofvissarion), & I'll cross-post the POC ones here. I'm afraid I generally don't write v. long/in-depth reviews (I'd never get myself to do them!), but hopefully @ least mentioning what I'm reading will help expose some authors to other folks.

1. Restoried Selves: Autobiographies of Queer Asian/Pacific American Activists - Edited by Kevin K. Kumashiro, Ph.D.

I was chuffed to see a few folks I know in here, hee. Besides that, I definitely appreciated that they included mixed-race folks, & obviously there was also a lot of talk about the pressure to either be queer or Asian, depending on which situation you're in. One essay talked about starting a group for queer Asians & getting a lot of resistance for wanting to keep it closed (to queer Asians). Ohhhhh I could identify w/that one. In this person's case, it was even suggested that they allow white men who were interested in Asians (rice queens!!) to attend events. Barf. Anyway, this is the sort of book that I think is radical just for existing; a lot of the content felt like conversations I've had w/my friends, or journal entries I've written, & it was v. validating to see these concerns shared publicly in print.

Comments

[sanguinity]

I've been keeping my eye out for YA authors, too. Jacqueline Woodson has been recommended to me, and I've been browsing through the Coretta Scott King Awards. The King Awards cover all youth age groups, but don't appear to do separate lists for the different ages. If you're willing to go through them manually, there ARE a lot of YA books on the list.

Unfortunately, like the Newberry, the Coretta Scott King list seems to be salted with books that adults want kids to like, as opposed to books that kids actually DO like. Good books, I'm sure, but the list doesn't seem to cover the whole spectrum of what is good in YA, only the more inspirational end of the range.

[littlebutfierce]

Oh, thank you for that link! That's a good start, even w/the caveat. I'd read about that award fairly recently in another community; I don't know why looking for its awardees didn't occur to me!