50books_poc | Entries tagged with history

gwyneira.livejournal.com

( Sojourner Truth, Narrative of Sojourner Truth; Nell Irvin Painter, Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol )

( Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day )

rachelmanija.livejournal.com

This illustrated history of Chinese emperors is rather hectic and hard to follow if you’re as ignorant of Chinese history as I am, as it’s a 180 page book which begins with the invention of fire and concludes with the Qing Dynasty. Nevertheless, it’s an entertaining introduction to a vast history.

Rather than attempting a summary, I will simply excerpt some of my favorite bits:

In particular, he [Shennong] is remembered for tasting hundreds of wild herbs in order to find remedies to treat his people’s illnesses. In the process, he suffered from poisoning, even to the extent of being poisoned 70 times on a particular day. Eventually, he tasted a lethal wild herb which tore his intestines apart, and it became known as duanchangcao*

*Herb that tears the intestines apart.

…

It may be said that the Qin Dynasty was destroyed by eunuch intervention.

This two-panel comic sequence should give you an idea of the “1000 years of history in 15 minutes” flavor of the book:

Panel 1: Emperor Gaozong (peeking into temple to meet Wu Zetian): “Dear, come back to the palace with me.”

Panel 2: Wu Zetian (with sheaf of papers): “I’ve drafted the 12 Guiding Principles for administrative, military, economic, social, and cultural affairs.”

Emperor Gaozong (holding hand over eyes): “I’m weak in health and have contracted an eye disease. You may decide any good policies.”

I note that there is a companion book, Infamous Chinese Emperors, which I sadly don’t own.

Compiled and Illustrated by Tian Hengyu. View on Amazon: Great Chinese Emperors - Tales of Wise and Benevolent Rule

wordsofastory.livejournal.com

40. Reza Aslan, How to Win a Cosmic War: God, Globalization, and the End of the War on Terror

A non-fiction pop book dealing with a wide range of subjects, from the history of the state of Israel, to the difference between Islamist groups like Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood and Jihadist groups like al-Qa'ida (as well as the inaccuracy of referring to al-Qa'ida as any kind of unified group), to historical examples of other 'cosmic wars' such as the Crusades or the Zealot rebellions of the Roman Empire, to the history of Fundamentalist Christianity in the United States, to others. He doesn't always tie these many, many topics together as tightly as one might wish, but if you look at the book as a smorgasbord of various information about the "war on terror", it's a pretty awesome book.

One of my favorite things about Aslan is that he's a much more lyrical, thoughtful writer than I tend to expect from pop non-fiction. Let me quote a paragraph at you: "When I close my eyes, I see white. Strange how synesthetic memory can be. I am certain the insular town of Enid, Oklahoma, where my family alighted three decades ago, was chockablock with buildings, homes, churches, parks. And surely other seasons came and went in the stretch of time we lived there, months when the city's empty streets were not blanketed in snow and the sky did not rumble with dark and silvery clouds. But I remember none of that. Only the clean, all-encompassing whiteness of Enid, Oklahoma, snow as it heaped on the sidewalks, perched on the trees, and settled evenly over the glassy lake." See? How can you not be willing to spend a couple of hundred pages with the man, even if he wasn't telling you fascinating, important things.

Overall, I think I prefer Aslan's other book, No God But God, to this one, but for a broad summary of many things relating to modern Middle Eastern politics and the American response, this book is great.

Current Mood: cheerful

wordsofastory.livejournal.com

39. Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina, Black London: Life Before Emancipation

This was a great book, but not quite as great as I wanted it to be. An academic work as readable as any pop non-fiction book, Black London deals with the historical presence of black people in London throughout history, although the focus is on the 1700s. The author says that she decided to write this book when, while doing research, a bookseller told her, "Madam, there were no black people in England before 1945".

I loved how this book didn't just give generalities about black life in the 1700s, but used the historical record to find real individuals and tell their stories: slaves, escaped slaves, servants, husbands and wives (it appears to have been quite common for black men to marry white women during this time), shop-owners, writers, the children of African elites come to Europe to study, the mixed-race children of Caribbean planters, actors, beggars, and on and on. I found it really fascinating and wished the whole book had been about these stories of people. Alas, about half the book is actually taken up with recounting the stories of two legal changes (and the mostly white lawyers, judges, plaintiffs, defendants, reporters, etc, etc, involved): the James Somersett lawsuit of 1771, which outlawed slavery in England itself, and the Slave Trade Act of 1807, which abolished the slave trade. While these parts of the book were interesting, they weren't as incredibly awesome as the first part. Still, I enjoyed this book, and am excited to see she has another about black people during the Victorian period.

Current Mood: cheerful

wordsofastory.livejournal.com

37. John McWhorter, The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language

A popular non-fiction book about linguistics, particularly how languages change. This book doesn't try to tell the story of any particular language and its history, although it uses plenty of examples (mostly English, though McWhorter seems to speak an enormous number of languages, and knows details about even more), nor does it try to reconstruct the "original language". Instead it is about the way languages change: how words change their meanings, slang, how sounds change, how grammar changes, how creoles and pidgins arise, why people change the languages they use, and so on. This book is compulsively readable, with lots of funny pop-culture references, and the sort of facts and tid-bits that make you want to turn to anyone nearby and say, "OMG! Did you know...".

A great book. Highly recommended, and I'll be checking out McWhorter's new book, about English, soon.

I've been really interested in reading popular-style non-fiction lately. I'm particularly interested in history, but biology, linguistics, astronomy- anything easy to read and interesting would be great. Does anyone have some recs by PoC authors?

Current Mood: cheerful

wordsofastory.livejournal.com

30. Reza Aslan, No God But God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam

I adored this book. It's a non-fiction book detailing Islam as a religion; about half of it is devoted to an incredibly detailed description of life and culture in the Arabian peninsula immediately before and during Mohammad's life. The second half of the book lays out some of the most prominent evolutions of Islam since then, from the basic branches of Sunni, Shia, and Sufism, to more recent developments like Iran's Khomeinism to Saudi Arabia's Wahhabism.

This book was fantastic. It's perfect both for the reader who knows nothing about Islam and the educated reader. It contains so many details and interesting perspectives that I think there's something new for everyone to learn*, and yet it lays things out so clearly that it's also a great introduction. Aslan is a wonderful writer; despite it being a non-fiction book, it has a very conversational tone, which is totally engaging and enthralling. I have not read many non-fiction books that have sucked me in like this one.

Very, very highly recommended, and I'll be checking out Aslan's other book.

In particular, I spent a lot of time shrieking "Oh my God! Did you know this?!" during the section about Britain's role in the formation of Saudi Arabia.

Current Mood: sleepy

sweet-adelheid.livejournal.com

#28 - Desmond Tutu, No Future without Forgiveness (1999, Rider & Co)
Appointed by Nelson Mandela to be co-Chairperson of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission set up in South Africa following the transfer of power from the Nationalist Apartheid Government, Desmond Tutu writes in this book about the history leading to the Commission, the progress of the Commission itself, and his thoughts on forgiveness. Link here.

#29 - illustrated by David Diaz, Smoky Night, words by Eve Bunting (1994, Harcourt Brace)
The illustrations are stunning. The backgrounds are mixed media collage: including shards of glass one the page that mentions "smash and destroy", half-crushed rice cracker snacks on the page about the destruction of Mrs Kim's shop. Link here.

#30 - illustrated by David Diaz, Just One Flick of a Finger, words by Marybeth Lorbiecki (1996, Dial)
A beautiful example of the way picture books are meant to work (no matter what age group they are aimed at) and I credit a lot of that to Diaz' design and layout work in addition to his illustrations. Link here.

#31 - Adeline Yen Mah, China: Land of Emperors and Dragons (2008, Allen & Unwin)
It is a *very* basic introduction to Chinese history; very much an overview. It (allied with some Avatar-related posts I've been reading around LJ, and IBARW stuff) has made me realise how much I don't understand about China, and how I do tend to view the entire Imperial era as some sort of pretty fantasy "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" world. Which is a major failing on my part. Link here.

Tags needed: a: tutu desmond, a: mah adeline yen, i: diaz david, (and if we're still going to do whitefella tags, w-a: lorbiecki marybeth, w-a: bunting eve.

wordsofastory.livejournal.com

29. Shan Sa, Empress. Translated from French by Adriana Hunter.

A novel based on the life of Wu Zetian (called Heavenlight in the novel), a woman born in China in 625 AD to a relatively obscure family, who rose to eventually become Empress of China- in her own right, not as a wife- and found her own dynasty. The novel, told in first person, covers every single event of Heavenlight's life, from before birth (this may be the only novel which includes a fetus's perspective I've ever read) until after her death. This comprehensiveness is my main complaint with the novel: there are only so many scandals, political power grabs, rebellions inside and outside of the court, and trouble with relatives I can read about before it all starts to sound the same and I stop caring about who is who. I think this would have been a much more interesting book if it had chosen one period and focused on it in detail, instead of trying to cover Heavenlight's entire life.

That said, I did enjoy this novel. The beginning especially had lots of beautiful descriptions and fascinating events. Heavenlight was raised at least partially as a boy, and her accounts of horseback riding were so evocative (Sa is a poet, which I'm sure accounted for the gorgeous language in some parts of the book). Her early days as a concubine in the court were also fascinating, particularly when she develops a relationship with one of the other women. Recommended, though I do warn that it is extremely similar in parts to Anchee Min's Empress Orchid (despite the books being based on two different historical figures).

Current Mood: cheerful

wordsofastory.livejournal.com

28. Sherri L. Smith, Flygirl

A YA novel. Ida Mae is a young woman working as a maid in Louisiana in the early years of America's participation in WWII. Her father taught her how to fly planes before he died, but as a black woman, she's been unable to get a pilot license of her own. When she hears about the Women Airforce Service Pilots (a government operation that flies non-combat missions), Ida Mae decides to join. But she has to pass as white to have a chance.

This was a great novel. It did a wonderful job of dealing with both sexism and racism (and the intersection between the two), while keeping the situation complicated and letting the characters be individuals. There aren't any easy answers here, though I felt the tone of the book was ultimately uplifting. (Though there were some scenes that broke my heart, like when Ida Mae's mother comes to see her during pilot training.) This book is very well-written, fast-paced, and I couldn't stop reading. Very recommended.

Current Mood: bored

wordsofastory.livejournal.com

27. Dorothy Ko, Cinderella's Sisters: A Revisionist History of Footbinding

A non-fiction, academic book, but very readable. Ko states that her intention is to present a study of footbinding that does not approach the subject moralistically; she's very good at that. However, she also writes that she wants to give the female perspective on footbinding, and I felt that she mostly failed in that attempt. Nearly every single source is from a male writer. The few female sources don't show up until the last chapter. I also would have liked to see more archaeological sources used, either of the actual preserved shoes, or information from graves, houses, etc. Though being an archaeologist, I may be predisposed to that source.

Anyway. Regardless of my problems with it, I mostly enjoyed this book. Ko does a very good job of showing that there was no such single thing as "footbinding". What the practice entailed, in terms of age begun, physical shaping (or not) of the foot, and the cultural meaning, changed continually across time and space. She also does a great job of showing that ending footbinding was in itself a cultural practice, which meant specific things to specific people. Overall, an interesting book, even if I wished it had used a wider range of sources.

Current Mood: cheerful

rootedinsong.livejournal.com

29. Ten Things I Hate About Me, by Randa Abdel-Fattah

I liked this a lot more than Does My Head Look Big In This? Real, honest examination of passing, dual consciousness, and holding on to one's cultural identity.

One thing that got on my nerves about it was the protagonist's older sister, who is one of these "smart kids" and uses (or is portrayed as using) strings of big words that actually don't make much sense. That's a particular pet peeve of mine...

30. Persepolis (complete edition), by Marjane Satrapi

I really liked this. Comparing this to a lot of other books that portray authoritarian regimes, real or fictional, really illustrates for me one of the main things that

50books_poc is about: the viewpoint matters.

So many books depict the horrors of a regime and the devastation it wreaks on the citizens, emphasizing how resistance is crushed and the people's spirits are broken. This shows oppression, but not the breaking of spirits; it shows the little everyday resistances, the extent to which the regime does not control the people, the fact that the people are emphatically still human and life is still life.

And the book is not about that. It's about the author's own story.

31. No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam, by Reza Aslan

I read this on

sheafrotherdon's recommendation. I agree with her assessment: it's really beautifully written, really clear, and really engaging. (And I find most books of history to be excruciatingly boring.)

The author starts with a depiction of the society in which the Prophet Muhammad lived and goes on to explain the social and religious reforms that he championed, the reception of his message, and the evolution of Islamic thought, practice, and politics from then until the present day. I kept thinking, "Oh, that makes so much sense now!" or "Now I understand what people mean when they say..." (It shed a lot of light on books on Islam that I've previously reviewed here.)

At the end, he argues for a reformation within Islam - new ways of understanding the religion, formulations of an indigenous Islamic conception of democracy. (It actually reminded me a lot of what I said in my review of The Whale Rider - he doesn't think of it in terms of a conflict between Western conceptions of human rights and the traditions of Islam, but in terms of Islam evolving, reforming itself from within.)

Recommended.

chipmunk-planet.livejournal.com

This is an autobiography by the first president of Tuskegee University (called then Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute), Booker T. Washington. Born to a slave woman in Alabama and an unknown white man, he was emancipated at the end of the Civil War along with the rest of the slaves there, taking the last name of Washington the first time he went to school, when he was about ten or so. The book chronicles his journey from dirt poor to a man known internationally for his work.

There are a few things that strike me about this book: foremost, how 19th century Washington's writing style is. He thinks and speaks as a man of his day, which makes sense, but it's a bit jarring to hear him compare the "barbarous" red man to the black man who "chose life and civilization to extinction". (he actually used this analogy many times in his speeches to prove that blacks were better suited to be part of Reconstruction, joining forces with whites to rebuild the South)

The other thing that you can't fail to miss is the man's humble and cheerful attitude. He has very little in the way of negative to say about anyone, although at the end of the book he does mention times where people ignored him then later contributed to his work as the school grew. Washington's core belief seems to be that his hardships built character, and that through hard work and perseverance anyone could succeed.

He insisted that every one of his students, no matter how well-off, work at the school. The students built the school; they provided their own food, clothing, equipment, and many returned after graduation to teach as well. He himself spent most of his waking time working at the school, making speeches to raise money for the school, writing letters in support of black civil rights (even in other states, and on his vacation!), and networking with prominent white leaders. He visited several Presidents and William McKinley came to visit Tuskegee, the first time a sitting President had visited a black university. Washington also received an honorary degree from Harvard, another first.

Later in his life, he clashed with some of the other black leaders, particularly the religious leaders (and the influential W.E.B. DuBois), for his tell-it-like-it-is assessment of the condition of black America. Washington's view was that only by blacks being prosperous and useful to the country would racial tension be resolved, and that forcing social and political equality prematurely would only lead to a backlash from the majority white populace. He felt that help to blacks should come in the form of promoting both industrial and liberal arts education, because he felt everyone should know how to work with his or her hands (the university took men and women from its inception), and that it was more costly not to educate someone than to do so, both black and white.

He died in 1915 (I've seen several possible causes listed, but he had extreme high blood pressure and possibly a heart condition, and refused to stop working), outliving two wives and being survived by a third, along with many children and grandchildren.

I found this book very interesting and would highly recommend it.

Current Mood: good

rootedinsong.livejournal.com

10. Skim, by Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki

Somehow, this book didn't resonate with me as much as it did with others here. I'm not sure why; it is beautifully done, and it seems like the kind of book that I would love. But it didn't quite do it for me.

11. Shortcomings, by Adrian Tomine

I had mixed reactions to this one. On the one hand, a lot of things about the characters made me twitch. On the other hand, it examines honestly the issues of race and attraction and what contemporary American culture conditions us to find attractive. And there are a lot of queer women, portrayed for the most part realistically. It's just... eh.

One thing that I found amusing: the protagonist tears into his ex-girlfriend for dating a white man, and she protests that he's actually half Jewish and half Native American. I'm a quarter each, and have never encountered that combination in fiction before (or anywhere, really).

12. Still I Rise: A Graphic History of African Americans, by Ronald Laird and Taneshia Nash Laird, illustrated by Elihu "Adofo" Bey

This book traces the history of African-Americans from the early 17th century to the election of Barack Obama. It is absolutely packed with information: the authors try to squeeze four centuries of history into 217 pages, so it feels like information is whizzing by at a breakneck speed.

This is the second edition; the first edition was published in 1997. The second edition includes 13 more pages about history from 1997 to now. (There's an obvious break between the original pages and the added pages: the handwriting in the new pages looks different, the lines are thinner, and the characters look subtly different. It looks a little less carefully planned.)

The history is told by two narrators, a man and a woman - who sometimes have different opinions about the events they're recounting. I think doing it this way, as opposed to attempting to tell the history "objectively," allowed the narrative to be deeply centered in the black point(s) of view: they could talk about "us," make value judgments, show the unity and diversity of opinion. For those who are used to the dominant white-centered narrative of US history, I think this would represent a radical recentering; for me, it was interesting because I'm used to Native American critique and recentering of that narrative, so this recentering was alike-but-different. It felt to me like some parts were missing - but it also felt like it included other parts that I was missing.

All in all, I recommend it. But look elsewhere for in-depth treatment of the events depicted.

Edit: I keep breaking the tagging system...

wordsofastory.livejournal.com

21. Ayana D. Byrd and Lori L. Tharps, Hair Story: Untangling the Roots of Black Hair in America

This is a non-fiction book detailing, in vaguely historical order, the styles, meanings, and business of black hair within the United States. It focuses very little on specific hairstyles, instead describing topics like what is "good" hair versus "bad" hair, and how the attributes that make hair "good" have changed over time; various processes and products that tried to make "bad" hair into "good", and who profited economically off of them; the role and symbolism of the Afro (and other hairstyles, but that one in particular) in the political movements of the 1960s and 70s, and others. There are tons of photographs and drawings throughout the book, which showed the changes in depictions of both black people and their hair over time. I also liked how this one, seemingly small, topic allowed for discussion about expressions of racism, support for black-owned businesses, intersections of gender and race, and black people as used in advertising.

I really liked this book. My one complaint is that I would have liked it to go into more detail about some of the topics it covered, but that's not much of a problem.

Current Mood: cheerful

wordsofastory.livejournal.com

19. Tariq Ali, Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree

I really wanted to like this book. I was so excited for it. And then, sadly, it just didn't live up to my expectations. It's so disappointing when that happens!

Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree is set in 1500, just a few years after the Reconquest of the city-kingdom of Granada, the last of the Muslim kingdoms in the Iberian peninsula to fall to the Spanish Christians. Although the peace agreement signed at the time promised that Muslims could continue to practice their faith and speak Arabic, the tide has been turning against them; the novel opens with a scene of Arabic books being burnt. For Muslims in Granada, there are basically three choices: leave their home and move to Africa or the Middle East; convert to Christianity; or attempt to fight the Christians and take back their land (a pretty much hopeless cause, given the relative military strengths of the Muslims and Christians). The main focus of the story is one family of wealthy Muslims who are dealing with these changes and watching how it affects their friends and family. They debate these choices, some people choosing one and some another, and the novel shows the consequences of their decisions. Despite all this, there's a lot of upbeat and cheerful scenes in the novel, such as the courtship of a daughter of the family, or the youngest son's attempts to beat people at chess.

That's all fine: the plot is interesting, the characters are well-drawn. The problem I had with the book was the writing itself. It came off to me very much like a first draft. There were a lot of little not-quite-right phrasings, people abruptly appearing or disappearing from scenes, awkward dialogue, and historical details that seemed off (like the scene where the family is described as eating tomatoes and red chilis. Both of these plants are native to the Americas, and though Christopher Columbus did bring back some peppers from his second trip to the Americas, and so I suppose it's just possible, if unlikely, that they spread quickly enough to be a common food a mere seven years later, Europeans don't seem to encounter tomatoes until almost fifty years after this scene is set. I know this is a little nitpicky detail, but there were lots of things like this that bugged me). Overall, it just seemed like it needed the author to look over it another time.

I finished the book, and enjoyed parts of it, but I can't say that I liked it well enough to recommend it, though people who are less bothered by writing style than I am may have no problem. If anyone knows of any other books about Al-Andalus, I'd love to know! I do already have Ornament of the World on my reading list.

Current Mood: lazy
Current Music: MSNBC

whereweather.livejournal.com

A Small Place, Jamaica Kincaid
1988. Farrar, Straus and Giroux

I am a fan of Jamaica Kincaid. In the last year or so I have read her books At the Bottom of the River, Annie John, and Lucy, and got a lot out of each of them. I was looking forward to reading A Small Place because I was looking forward to learning more about Antigua, the Caribbean island she comes from. (Both Annie John and At the Bottom of the River are set on Antigua, but since they are pretty much in the mind of a first-person narrator, who is usually a child, there is not the kind of distance that you'd need to be _told about_ Antigua -- the kind of political, historical, or sociological things about it that might be interesting to a grown-up North American reader.)

I am disappointed in A Small Place, partly because... I'm not sure what the book wants to be. I've seen it described as a "travelogue," and also as a "jeremiad." The first section, or chapter (like many of Kincaid's books, it is very short: 80 pages of large, clear print), starts off in second-person: it is telling "you," the traveller, what to expect when you arrive in Antigua. The next two sections are in first person, with many recollections of Kincaid's early life in Antigua, which move out and away to analysis of what the problems of the island are (the second section considers mostly colonialism and slavery, the third the island's desperate political corruption.) There is also a very short fourth section, which feels sort of tacked on for closure.

I guess I feel as if the book is not very tight or well-held together, in spite of its size -- and a small book needs that even more, doesn't it? Although her fiction is also full of digressions, I feel as if they work and shape to a larger whole. A Small Place is strangely imbalanced, though: analysis, personal recollection, anger carrying the writer away.. Part of the issue, maybe, is that she seems to sort of be writing around or even trying to get at certain ideas and concepts which have, I think, been formulated more concisely and forcefully by various other post-colonialist theorists and writers. But Kincaid does not want to seem to avail herself of any of that language or intellectual discourse, and so it feels as if she is lurching at things and coming up short. (It feels odd and audacious to level this criticism at Jamaica Kincaid, whose intellect is profound and formidable and whose writing sometimes borders on genius. But nonetheless, that is how the book made me feel.)

( Despite that, there were entire passages I want to copy out to think about and remember. )

whereweather.livejournal.com

#13. Three Chinese Poets: Translations of poems by Wang Wei, Li Bai, and Du Fu, translated by Vikram Seth
1992, HarperCollins

Here is an interesting double play: a collection of poems by three Tang Dynasty Chinese poets, translated into English by Indian poet and novelist Vikram Seth.

I had not known Seth spoke Chinese (though looking it up on the Internet, apparently everybody else did: he is "a famous polyglot" who speaks German, Welsh and French as well as Hindi, Urdu, Mandarin and English, and one of his early award-winning books was a travel narrative through Muslim China and Tibet (From Heaven Lake, 1983, in case you were wondering)). In fact, I had not known much about Seth at all except what I decided/learned/concluded from reading about the first third of Golden Gate, his amazingly ambitious and eccentric verse novel about San Francisco, late one night when someone left it in the grad-student work room while I was procrastinating on writing my thesis. From reading this I concluded that Seth appeals to me. I like his playfulness, his eccentricity -- his standing-outside-of-the-orbitness; at the same time, his obvious irregular but snooty attachment to the Established. (Not that this is a universally admirable trait, but it's something I share, so I recognized myself in it.) I like his queer sensibility, his flashes of nastiness blurred with a deep attempt to reach for compassion and humanity. I like his baroque attachment to rhyme, which I also have and which is not very popular these days -- is very risky, also, because unsuccessful free verse is just boring, but unsuccessful rhymed verse descends into doggerel, which makes me sometimes too nervous even to make the attempt.

I think some of Seth's translations here are successful, and some of them really aren't. (Which is okay, right?) He has taken the -- to me -- very surprising approach of trying to translate the poems in metered and rhymed English versions; they are, in fact, metered and rhymed in Chinese, but of course the process of translation complicated everything... I feel like this inevitably puts such a personal stamp on the end results that in this entry I'm tagging Seth as the author, _as well as_ the translator. (Eccentric, maybe, but... so? Seth is eccentric; he makes me feel like eccentricity.) Even though, I should note in fairness, Seth gives the disclaimer that his translations "are not intended as transcreations or free translations" à la Ezra Pound.

( Though you are kind enough to ask... )

gwyneira.livejournal.com

#15: Laurence Yep, Dragonwings

It is 1903, and Moon Shadow lives in China with his mother; a few months before Moon Shadow was born, his father, Windrider, left for America, the Land of the Golden Mountain, to earn money which he sends back to his family in China. Now Windrider has sent for the eight-year-old Moon Shadow to join him. When Moon Shadow meets his father, he finds out Windrider's true dream, to fly, and slowly he grows to believe in Windrider's dream, even though it's keeping them from sending for Moon Shadow's mother. I wish Yep had explored that issue a little more, but overall, I liked the book's historical and cultural details very much and probably will read more of Yep's historical fiction (although I liked Dragon of the Lost Sea more).

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#16: Mildred D. Taylor, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry

Cassie Logan doesn't understand why possessing land means so much to her family, nor does she realize that so many of the white people around her think she's inferior to them. Then the night riders appear, threatening the black people in her community with tar and feathers and burning, and Cassie herself is humiliated by a white girl. Taylor's depiction of the moral choices the Logans must make is complex: though they may want to resist (and Cassie does several times), there's a fine and dangerous line they cannot afford to cross, lest they be the next targets of the night riders. The characterization is excellent, not only of Cassie, but of her whole family and her friends, of the white people who target them and the few who support them. This is one of those books I can't believe I missed when I was growing up, but at least I can make sure my son reads it in a few years. And I already have Let the Circle Be Unbroken and The Road to Memphis on the way from Bookmooch!

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#17: Andrea Smith, Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide

I've been wanting to read this since

oyceter reviewed it (and see also

sanguinity's review). It's an utterly eye-opening, fierce, and challenging book which makes a compelling link between sexual violence and American colonialism, both historical and contemporary. Some of what she writes about historical violence against American Indians was known to me, but her exploration of present-day abuses was much newer to me, surprising and horrifying. I was particularly struck by the chapters on environmental racism (and will be looking much more closely at the mail I get from the Sierra Club), medical experimentation, and sterilization abuse, and the penultimate chapter on strategies for fighting gender violence. I was especially impressed, in fact, with the way that Smith doesn't stop with documenting the issues; she also focuses on how to solve them. It wasn't an easy book to read, but it is shocking and illuminating and important, and I'm glad I read it.

whereweather.livejournal.com

#10. Kindred, Octavia Butler.
1979

Okay, I am about the fiftieth person to read this book in this community, and the sixth or seventh to post about it TODAY. Which makes me feel as if an in-depth review would be... unnecessary? Redundant? I will, nonetheless, try to write briefly about what I myself took away from it.

A brief summary: Dana, who is black, is a feminist and a writer. It is 1976, and she has just moved with her husband of not-very-long, Kevin (who is white), to a their first house together in Los Angeles. By mechanisms unknown to her, she finds herself unwillingly pulled back into the past, for the presumable purpose -- she quickly figures out -- of saving Rufus, a young white boy who will become the master of his father's Maryland plantation, and keeping him alive long enough to father the child who will become Dana's ancestor. But that means Dana has to live -- and try to keep her body, integrity, and sense of self intact, in a society in which blacks are property, women are treated like children, and she has no legal or personal rights at all.

Butler calls this book a "grim fantasy," which seems correct, in that it's certainly not science fiction. The mechanism of time travel is not really important here; what matters are its consequences. I find Butler's writing very immediate, and although she is not a particularly lyrical or elegant stylist, her calm, tough, clear prose works very well to keep the story moving, to illuminate character and to draw the reader into the questions she is most interested in addressing: those of assumptions; of ambiguous ethical questions; of painful choices which genuinely -- unlike in most fiction -- have no obvious right answer.

A couple of interesting, and illuminating, quotes from the book's Wikipedia page:

"I was trying to get people to feel slavery," Butler said in a 2004 interview. "I was trying to get across the kind of emotional and psychological stones that slavery threw at people." In another interview, she said, "I think people really need to think what it's like to have all of society arrayed against you."

The book is set on Maryland's Eastern Shore. Butler said she chose the setting "because I wanted my character to have a legitimate hope of escape," and because two famous African-Americans, Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman, had been enslaved there.

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15. Alice Randall, The Wind Done Gone

This book is, in a way, fanfiction of Gone with the Wind. I remember the huge controversy when it first came out (long story short: the copyright holders of Gone with the Wind sued to prevent publication of this book), but I hadn't read it until now.

It's an absolutely gorgeous book. The language is really lovely, poetic and often dream-like. The story is about Cynara, the mixed-race daughter of Mammy and the half-sister of Scarlett O'Hara. There's a great deal of intersection with and reinterpreting of the events and characters of Gone with the Wind (I haven't read that book, though I've seen the movie a few times, and didn't have a problem following along). The narration skips around in time a great deal, mainly following Cynara's life in Atlanta and Washington D.C. after Rhett Butler leaves Scarlett at the end of Gone with the Wind, but with large portions dealing with memories of events from her childhood or young adult life. It can be depressing and bitter, but the book ultimately ends on an optimistic note, due to the politics and changes of the Reconstruction Period that Cynara participates in.

I thought the best part of the book was its depiction of the emotional and psychology effects of slavery. Cynara, as the daughter of a plantation owner, is relatively sheltered from many of the physical effects of slavery (she is not whipped, she does not work in the fields, her father makes a bit of an attempt to protect her from sexual abuse), but it is still absolutely clear what devastating consequences it has had on her life. In particular, the four-way relationship between Cynara, Mammy, Scarlett, and Scarlett's mother is complicated, heart-breaking, and (I thought) insightful.