Challenge 2: 1-12
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50books_pocSo, I haven't been doing very well at remembering to write reviews. Here's a few sentences about each book I've read for this challenge since my last post:
1. Edward Gilbreath, Reconciliation Blues: A Black Evangelical’s Inside View of White Christianity
This was an uncomfortable read, because Edward Gilbreath is very much enmeshed in white Evangelical culture. He's able to critise it, but he softpedals as much as possible so as not to scare his presumed white audience off. There's a lot of Racism 101 here.
One fascinating incident he described (without calling out the group by name, just describing it enough that you could google for more details) was the Rickshaw Rally incident, when Lifeway, a company who packages Bible material for kids, produced a vacation Bible school curriculum with an 'Asian' theme that was really offensive. Their response to criticism was pretty much (I am paraphrasing) 'How dare you! If this saves EVEN ONE CHILD from going to Hell for all eternity, it is worth anything we do. DO YOU WANT CHILDREN TO GO TO HELL? DO YOU?'
He also had some very interesting stuff about famous Black Evangelicals.
2. Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
I did not expect rabies.
3. Shani Mootoo, Cereus Blooms At Night
Postcolonial awesomeness, with strong trans characters.
4. Nahoko Uehashi, Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit
A slight, fun read, the sort of thing I'd give my ten year old niece. Had some interesting things to say about colonialism and the way the victors revise history, very unusual in a kids' book.
5. Nisi Shawl, Filter House
I love these short stories in the same way that I love Vonda N McIntyre, only with additional racial perspective. Extremely cool.
6. Nnedi Okorafor, The Shadow Speaker
I loved this book except for the fat fail at the end. Really? Really? There was also some stuff about Indigenous Australians that was a bit um.
7. Richard Wright, Native Son
One of those books I read and can appreciate it's very good while not liking it much. On the other hand, I'm not sure I was meant to like it, or even be part of the intended audience.
8. Nalo Hopkinson, The Salt Roads
I loved this book. It's like the author just decided "Okay, I'm going to write a coherent narrative about St Mary of Egypt, Haitian revolution, and Jeanne Duval, AND YOU CAN'T STOP ME. BECAUSE I'M THAT GOOD." And I think she gets away with it. Only just, but it still counts.
9. Najiyah Diana Helwani, Sophia's Journal: Time Warp 1857
I am not totaly sure whether Najiyah Diana Helwani is actually a POC or not. I couldn't find a bio or a photo anywhere. But I'm giving her the benefit of the doubt. This book had a cool concept, a modern-day American Muslim girl travelling back in time to 1857 to come face to face with slavery. I loved the time travel - she somehow hit all my favourite tropes and none of the things I really hate in time travel stories. I loved the ending. It was very sweet.
What I didn't love was the lack of editing, the first novel syndrome, the telling not showing, and the strong flavour of didactic novel written to give good religious girls something safe to read. It's from a publishing house that only publishes books that don't have any 'un-Islamic' material.
10. Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
I would have loved this book so much more if it just didn't have any women in it. And that's not something I normally say. There was a lot of fucked-upness around his treatment of women. But it was still an amazing book. Funny and horrifying all at once. I knew I was going to enjoy it as soon as I got to the bit about the light bulbs.
11. James Baldwin, Go Tell It on the Mountain
Extremely smart about Christianity, from a post-Christian perspective. It's a bildungsroman about a young man's struggle for salvation, and I've just succeeded in making it more boring than it actually is, so let me try again. John's father is a preacher, and he hasn't gotten Jesus yet because if he does, he'll have to forgive his father's abuse. Better? Also, although it's never explicitly mentioned in the novel, I think it's pretty clear that John is gay, and in love with another boy at his church, and one day after the end of the novel he's going to have to deal with that, and his salvation might take a beating.
12. Naguib Mahfouz, Palace Walk
This is the first book in Mahfouz's Cairo trilogy, which has been compared to Tolstoy's War and Peace. He follows the daily adventures of a family in Cairo against a background of revolution. Two reasons you might be interested in this novel. One: the revolution. It's 1919, and there's a lot there that might be pertinent to Egypt in 2011. Two: the characters. The father, Ahmad Abd al-Jawad, is a total bastard. He verbally and physically abuses everyone in his family to keep them in line and pious, while he goes out every night to get drunk and sleep with less 'virtuous' women and to shower all the affection on his friends that he'd never dream of showing his own family. His eldest son, Yasin, is a rapist. Mahfouz draws these characters, as he does the others, with sympathy and an acute sense of how they justify their actions to themselves.
tags: a: baldwin james, a: ellison ralph, a: gilbreath edward, a: helwani najiyah diana, a: hopkinson nalo, a: hurston zora neale, a: mahfouz naguib, a: mootoo shani, a: okorafor nnedi, a: shawl nisi, a: wright richard, a: uehashi nahoko
1. Edward Gilbreath, Reconciliation Blues: A Black Evangelical’s Inside View of White Christianity
This was an uncomfortable read, because Edward Gilbreath is very much enmeshed in white Evangelical culture. He's able to critise it, but he softpedals as much as possible so as not to scare his presumed white audience off. There's a lot of Racism 101 here.
One fascinating incident he described (without calling out the group by name, just describing it enough that you could google for more details) was the Rickshaw Rally incident, when Lifeway, a company who packages Bible material for kids, produced a vacation Bible school curriculum with an 'Asian' theme that was really offensive. Their response to criticism was pretty much (I am paraphrasing) 'How dare you! If this saves EVEN ONE CHILD from going to Hell for all eternity, it is worth anything we do. DO YOU WANT CHILDREN TO GO TO HELL? DO YOU?'
He also had some very interesting stuff about famous Black Evangelicals.
2. Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
I did not expect rabies.
3. Shani Mootoo, Cereus Blooms At Night
Postcolonial awesomeness, with strong trans characters.
4. Nahoko Uehashi, Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit
A slight, fun read, the sort of thing I'd give my ten year old niece. Had some interesting things to say about colonialism and the way the victors revise history, very unusual in a kids' book.
5. Nisi Shawl, Filter House
I love these short stories in the same way that I love Vonda N McIntyre, only with additional racial perspective. Extremely cool.
6. Nnedi Okorafor, The Shadow Speaker
I loved this book except for the fat fail at the end. Really? Really? There was also some stuff about Indigenous Australians that was a bit um.
7. Richard Wright, Native Son
One of those books I read and can appreciate it's very good while not liking it much. On the other hand, I'm not sure I was meant to like it, or even be part of the intended audience.
8. Nalo Hopkinson, The Salt Roads
I loved this book. It's like the author just decided "Okay, I'm going to write a coherent narrative about St Mary of Egypt, Haitian revolution, and Jeanne Duval, AND YOU CAN'T STOP ME. BECAUSE I'M THAT GOOD." And I think she gets away with it. Only just, but it still counts.
9. Najiyah Diana Helwani, Sophia's Journal: Time Warp 1857
I am not totaly sure whether Najiyah Diana Helwani is actually a POC or not. I couldn't find a bio or a photo anywhere. But I'm giving her the benefit of the doubt. This book had a cool concept, a modern-day American Muslim girl travelling back in time to 1857 to come face to face with slavery. I loved the time travel - she somehow hit all my favourite tropes and none of the things I really hate in time travel stories. I loved the ending. It was very sweet.
What I didn't love was the lack of editing, the first novel syndrome, the telling not showing, and the strong flavour of didactic novel written to give good religious girls something safe to read. It's from a publishing house that only publishes books that don't have any 'un-Islamic' material.
10. Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
I would have loved this book so much more if it just didn't have any women in it. And that's not something I normally say. There was a lot of fucked-upness around his treatment of women. But it was still an amazing book. Funny and horrifying all at once. I knew I was going to enjoy it as soon as I got to the bit about the light bulbs.
11. James Baldwin, Go Tell It on the Mountain
Extremely smart about Christianity, from a post-Christian perspective. It's a bildungsroman about a young man's struggle for salvation, and I've just succeeded in making it more boring than it actually is, so let me try again. John's father is a preacher, and he hasn't gotten Jesus yet because if he does, he'll have to forgive his father's abuse. Better? Also, although it's never explicitly mentioned in the novel, I think it's pretty clear that John is gay, and in love with another boy at his church, and one day after the end of the novel he's going to have to deal with that, and his salvation might take a beating.
12. Naguib Mahfouz, Palace Walk
This is the first book in Mahfouz's Cairo trilogy, which has been compared to Tolstoy's War and Peace. He follows the daily adventures of a family in Cairo against a background of revolution. Two reasons you might be interested in this novel. One: the revolution. It's 1919, and there's a lot there that might be pertinent to Egypt in 2011. Two: the characters. The father, Ahmad Abd al-Jawad, is a total bastard. He verbally and physically abuses everyone in his family to keep them in line and pious, while he goes out every night to get drunk and sleep with less 'virtuous' women and to shower all the affection on his friends that he'd never dream of showing his own family. His eldest son, Yasin, is a rapist. Mahfouz draws these characters, as he does the others, with sympathy and an acute sense of how they justify their actions to themselves.
tags: a: baldwin james, a: ellison ralph, a: gilbreath edward, a: helwani najiyah diana, a: hopkinson nalo, a: hurston zora neale, a: mahfouz naguib, a: mootoo shani, a: okorafor nnedi, a: shawl nisi, a: wright richard, a: uehashi nahoko
