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50books_poc2009-02-11 03:06 pm
sophinisba) wrote in 50books_poc2009-02-11 03:06 pm
Entry tags:
Edwidge Danticat, Machado de Assis, Jamaica Kincaid, Octavia E. Butler, Eric Liu
Hi everyone, I'm new and my goal is to read 50 books by people of color this calendar year and post reviews once a month. So far I'm a little ahead with reading and a little behind with posting. These are the books I finished in January:
1. Edwidge Danticat, The Dew Breaker, 2004
This is a novel made up of linked short stories about Haitian and Haitian American characters, most of them somehow related to stories of political violence, especially the torture of prisoners. It's not clear until the end how the different parts relate to each other and at times I felt a little lost as far as that goes, but all the characters felt very real and all their stories were interesting and moving, even when I wasn't sure what year I was in, and even though I know very, very little about Haitian history. I liked that there were characters from different social positions and different sides of the conflict but they were all sympathetic, all presented as human beings. I liked that one of the women had an ex-girlfriend and this was part of her character but not the point of it. Mostly I just loved Edwidge Danticat's prose! I hadn't read anything of hers before but I've got the novel Breath, Eyes, Memory out from the library now and I'm also very interested in I will definitely be reading the memoir Brother, I'm Dying, which was reviewed here.
2. Machado de Assis, Dom Casmurro, 1899
I had to read this for school, but I enjoyed it anyway. :) Most critics and regular Brazilians consider Machado to be the greatest Brazilian writer of all time, and this is one of his most important books. This is a novel about a friendship, courtship, and marriage in which the husband, Dom Casmurro, is the unreliable narrator. In some ways it's incredibly frustrating that we never get to hear the woman's side of the story, but that's also what's so fascinating about it, that the book is partly about her being silenced, and over a hundred years later readers continue to argue about what actually happened in the story. The writing is also just fun, with lots of crazy asides in which the narrator addresses the reader or talks about the construction of the novel.
Machado de Assis was of mixed European and African ancestry (which is why I'm counting him for this challenge and not counting, say, José de Alencar or Rubem Fonseca, other Brazilians whose books I finished in January) but, I should say, this is not the book to start with if you're looking to learn about the experiences of people of color in Brazil. It takes place in the mid-19th century and the main characters are whites in a slaveholding society (though there are some little hints that the female lead might have some African ancestry). The word black is used almost as synonym for slave, and black people are very much in the background of the story. But as a novel about this fucked up society from a semi-outsider perspective (Machado was born poor but was hugely famous and accepted in elite circles by the time he wrote this) it really works.
3. Jamaica Kincaid, My Brother, 1997
I was excited to read this because back in college I'd been blown away by Kincaid's novel Lucy and her essay A Small Place. My Brother is a memoir about the author's younger brother dying of AIDS in Antigua in the 1990s. What I liked about it was one of the things I loved about those other books – the raw honesty of it. Kincaid doesn't hide her anger at her mother for the way she treats her children, at her brother for being careless about his own and others' lives, at Antiguans in general for trying to ignore this disease, and for not taking care of people who are sick and suffering. I liked this book, I got sucked into it and read it quickly and found it very affecting, but it I wouldn't recommend it as readily as I do those other two. (I'm also planning to read her novel Annie John soon.) To me this read like something Kincaid had to write in order to deal with this horrible event in her life, but where she wasn't really thinking that much about the reader, or that's my explanation for why I didn't connect as much with this one.
4. Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower, 1993
I know a lot of you have read this already and it's been reviewed in the comm before, so I won't summarize here. I had a little trouble getting into this at the first but I loved the second half and I'm looking forward to reading Parable of the Talents. I did think the shift was a little weird, like how all of a sudden there were all these new characters and it almost seemed like a different book, and also how different elements like the slavery stuff didn't get introduced until very late; but since I thought the second half was so much more interesting I didn't mind that it was different! I really liked the narrator's strength and her natural leadership abilities, and the way all the other characters who came along (okay, especially the men) had to deal with that. I was less interested in the empath stuff, not sure why. At first I didn't care for the Earthseed verses but once I understood how they were related to the content of the chapters I got to really like them, like I would go back at to them when I'd finished the chapter to think about them some more.
5. Eric Liu, The Accidental Asian: Notes of a Native Speaker, 1998
I know some Asian American readers have had strong negative reactions to this book and others have loved it. It seems to work for most people as a memoir, as one guy talking about his experience as a Chinese American, deciding (or having his parents decide for him) how much his Chineseness is going to be part of his life and his identity. I really like how honest and thoughtful he is, that he not only acknowledges that his Chinese language skills are not good or that some Asian Americans would call him a "banana" because he "acts white", but that he really talks about different sides of what that means. I also like that he talks about people he knows who've experienced being Asian American in completely different ways, and he talks about how his own attitude has changed throughout his life, or sometimes how it changes in the course of one conversation.
Some people don't like the parts of this book that go into bigger generalizations about history and assimilation and the meaning of race and ethnicity in the US. But I really loved these parts too! I figure it's not that you need to agree with him on everything, but he's putting out some really interesting ideas and the writing is elegant; it was a real pleasure for me to read.
1. Edwidge Danticat, The Dew Breaker, 2004
This is a novel made up of linked short stories about Haitian and Haitian American characters, most of them somehow related to stories of political violence, especially the torture of prisoners. It's not clear until the end how the different parts relate to each other and at times I felt a little lost as far as that goes, but all the characters felt very real and all their stories were interesting and moving, even when I wasn't sure what year I was in, and even though I know very, very little about Haitian history. I liked that there were characters from different social positions and different sides of the conflict but they were all sympathetic, all presented as human beings. I liked that one of the women had an ex-girlfriend and this was part of her character but not the point of it. Mostly I just loved Edwidge Danticat's prose! I hadn't read anything of hers before but I've got the novel Breath, Eyes, Memory out from the library now and I'm also very interested in I will definitely be reading the memoir Brother, I'm Dying, which was reviewed here.
2. Machado de Assis, Dom Casmurro, 1899
I had to read this for school, but I enjoyed it anyway. :) Most critics and regular Brazilians consider Machado to be the greatest Brazilian writer of all time, and this is one of his most important books. This is a novel about a friendship, courtship, and marriage in which the husband, Dom Casmurro, is the unreliable narrator. In some ways it's incredibly frustrating that we never get to hear the woman's side of the story, but that's also what's so fascinating about it, that the book is partly about her being silenced, and over a hundred years later readers continue to argue about what actually happened in the story. The writing is also just fun, with lots of crazy asides in which the narrator addresses the reader or talks about the construction of the novel.
Machado de Assis was of mixed European and African ancestry (which is why I'm counting him for this challenge and not counting, say, José de Alencar or Rubem Fonseca, other Brazilians whose books I finished in January) but, I should say, this is not the book to start with if you're looking to learn about the experiences of people of color in Brazil. It takes place in the mid-19th century and the main characters are whites in a slaveholding society (though there are some little hints that the female lead might have some African ancestry). The word black is used almost as synonym for slave, and black people are very much in the background of the story. But as a novel about this fucked up society from a semi-outsider perspective (Machado was born poor but was hugely famous and accepted in elite circles by the time he wrote this) it really works.
3. Jamaica Kincaid, My Brother, 1997
I was excited to read this because back in college I'd been blown away by Kincaid's novel Lucy and her essay A Small Place. My Brother is a memoir about the author's younger brother dying of AIDS in Antigua in the 1990s. What I liked about it was one of the things I loved about those other books – the raw honesty of it. Kincaid doesn't hide her anger at her mother for the way she treats her children, at her brother for being careless about his own and others' lives, at Antiguans in general for trying to ignore this disease, and for not taking care of people who are sick and suffering. I liked this book, I got sucked into it and read it quickly and found it very affecting, but it I wouldn't recommend it as readily as I do those other two. (I'm also planning to read her novel Annie John soon.) To me this read like something Kincaid had to write in order to deal with this horrible event in her life, but where she wasn't really thinking that much about the reader, or that's my explanation for why I didn't connect as much with this one.
4. Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower, 1993
I know a lot of you have read this already and it's been reviewed in the comm before, so I won't summarize here. I had a little trouble getting into this at the first but I loved the second half and I'm looking forward to reading Parable of the Talents. I did think the shift was a little weird, like how all of a sudden there were all these new characters and it almost seemed like a different book, and also how different elements like the slavery stuff didn't get introduced until very late; but since I thought the second half was so much more interesting I didn't mind that it was different! I really liked the narrator's strength and her natural leadership abilities, and the way all the other characters who came along (okay, especially the men) had to deal with that. I was less interested in the empath stuff, not sure why. At first I didn't care for the Earthseed verses but once I understood how they were related to the content of the chapters I got to really like them, like I would go back at to them when I'd finished the chapter to think about them some more.
5. Eric Liu, The Accidental Asian: Notes of a Native Speaker, 1998
I know some Asian American readers have had strong negative reactions to this book and others have loved it. It seems to work for most people as a memoir, as one guy talking about his experience as a Chinese American, deciding (or having his parents decide for him) how much his Chineseness is going to be part of his life and his identity. I really like how honest and thoughtful he is, that he not only acknowledges that his Chinese language skills are not good or that some Asian Americans would call him a "banana" because he "acts white", but that he really talks about different sides of what that means. I also like that he talks about people he knows who've experienced being Asian American in completely different ways, and he talks about how his own attitude has changed throughout his life, or sometimes how it changes in the course of one conversation.
Some people don't like the parts of this book that go into bigger generalizations about history and assimilation and the meaning of race and ethnicity in the US. But I really loved these parts too! I figure it's not that you need to agree with him on everything, but he's putting out some really interesting ideas and the writing is elegant; it was a real pleasure for me to read.
Parable of the Sower