50books_poc | Entries tagged with african-english

I read Helen Oyeyemi's book White is for Witching in a sleeping bag in a tent in the Sierras during an ice storm, and found it spellbinding. Mr Fox has the same enchanting quality. It shifts seamlessly between realism and fairy tale in a way that reminded me of many of the writers I loved best as a child: Joan Aiken, Susan Cooper, Alan Garner, Elizabeth Goudge, Nicholas Stuart Gray, Sylvia Townsend Warner, TH White. No surprises there, because Mr Foxis about the dissatisfactions both of being a reader:

With books you’ve got to know all about other books that are like the one you’re talking about, and it’s just never-ending, and it’s a pain.

and of trying to write:

I was sitting in my study, writing badly, just making words on the page, waiting for something good to come through, some sentence I could keep.

In particular, it's about reading a book and loving parts of it and wanting to smack the writer in the face for the other parts - the parts where women are tormented just to advance the plot, to choose an example at random.

As women, as queers, as POC, as any kind of Other, we all strike this devil's bargain with the canon as written by our oppressors, wanting to keep the good and rewrite the bad. Oyeyemi reminds us that this is the great work:

Tell the stories. Tell them to us. We want to know all the ways you’re still like us, and all the ways you’ve changed. Talk to us.

After all, our enemies do not rest.

Something terrible’s coming, and everyone in the world is working to bring it on. They won’t rest until they’ve brought it on.

muse-books.livejournal.com

UK Cover

"She's not real, honey, she's only an idea. I made her up." - St John Fox to Daphne Fox.

It is 1938 and the celebrated American novelist St John Fox is hard at work in his study until his long absent muse wanders in. Mary Foxe is beautiful, British and 100% imaginary. She is in a playfully combative mood, accusing him of being a villain, a serial killer. For St John Fox has a predilection for murdering the heroines of his tales and Mary has returned determined to change his ways. She challenges him to join her in a series of stories of their own devising. However, it isn't long before St John's wife, Daphne Fox, becomes suspicious of Miss Mary Foxe and a most unusual love triangle ensures.

Framed by this interplay between Mr & Mrs Fox and Miss Foxe are a nine short stories that flit through time and place. Foxes naturally feature prominently in this exquisite novel and the cover art for the USA edition makes this clearer with its anthropomorphic foxes while the UK cover, with its elegant 1930s motif, is more ambivalent. I actually liked both for different reasons.

US Cover

Oyeyemi draws on myth, fairytale and fable from various lands with special emphasis upon Bluebeard and his English equivalent, the were-fox Reynardine. Oyeyemi weaves these into the fabric of her central story and tales with the skill of a true storyteller. There are also themes linked to creativity and the relationship between artist and muse.

This was a book that I fell in love with from its first page and remained enchanted throughout. So much so that I was quite happy to revisit it immediately via its audio edition. The beautiful writing of the novel was further enhanced by Carole Boyd's rich voice and range of character voices. This is one I cannot recommend highly enough to those drawn to works of magical realism and this kind of tale of animal transformations and re-told faerie tales. This is the third of Oyeyemi's four novels I have read and each has been memorable though overall I found this the most accessible to date.

Endicott Studio Article on Bluebeard - Page 2 on Mr. Fox/Reynardine.

Helen Oyeyemi's 'Mr. Fox' page at Picador - includes links to her 'fox thoughts' and the opening chapter.

vass

new tags: a: joseph anthony

32. Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching
This is a truly excellent, very thorough introduction to Buddhism. It defines all the terms and concepts a beginner is likely to know, and then some, while giving a gentle introduction to the practice of Buddhism as well as its intellectual foundations.

I'm in awe of Thich Nhat Hanh's scholarship. His first language is Vietnamese, and he's writing here in English about sutras he's read in their original languages of Chinese, Sanskrit, and Pali. And he also speaks French.

33. Anthony Joseph, The African Origins of UFOs

A short, difficult book. Well, no, I'll amend that. At 137 pages it's definitely a short book. But it might not be a difficult book for you, if all of the following conditions are met: you're very experienced at reading stream of consciousness prose or poetry; you know how to unpack science fiction; you're familiar with the rhythms of soca, calypso, reggae, and jazz; you have a passing familiarity with the history of Trinidad; you understand Caribbean speech patterns well; and you know what the author set out to say before he wrote it.

Even if you don't meet all those conditions (I didn't) you can still enjoy this book, but you'll be very confused. The prose is beautiful. The author is a poet, and it shows. The structure is intricate (according to the introduction, it was based on Dr Timothy Leary's theory that human consciousness evolved through wenty-four evolutionary niches (there are twenty-four chapters in The African Origins of UFOs.)

The novel comes with an introduction by Dr Lauri Ramey, which explains it all including things (like the precise year of the future section) that you couldn't have worked out from the text; but if you prefer muddling things out for yourself, you'll want to read the introduction after, not before, as it contains spoilers.

Edited because I forgot to say what it's about: it's slipstream SF that moves between past, present, and future, dealing with African diaspora, breast cancer, music, and food.

kethlenda.livejournal.com

Helen Oyeyemi's first novel, The Icarus Girl was recommended in this community, and I ordered it about five minutes after reading the review! Then, I unfortunately let it languish in my TBR pile. When I got the chance to read her latest book, White Is for Witching, I decided to read WIfW first, since it's "hot off the presses." I very much liked it, and I'll definitely get to The Icarus Girl before too long!

White Is for Witching blends gothic horror, racial politics, and the older, bloodier sort of fairy tales into a deeply unsettling novel. The story opens with a passage intentionally reminiscent of "Snow White," describing the mysterious imprisonment? disappearance? death? of the heroine, Miranda Silver. From there, we move backward in time, to the point when the events leading to Miranda's fate began.

The story is told from several points of view, all of them seeing events from different perspectives, all of them possibly unreliable narrators. Miranda herself, her brother Eliot, her lover Ore, and her ancestral home all have their own versions to tell as the plot unfolds.

The house looms as the center of Miranda's tale. Menacing and xenophobic, it desires control over the people it considers its own, and means harm toward those it sees as foreign. The house and its ghosts want to make Miranda a vessel for their hatred. Miranda struggles against the house's domination, a battle that threatens to destroy her mental health and possibly her life.

Oyeyemi's prose is haunting and poetic. I hesitate to use the word "beautiful," as that might give a false impression of "pleasantness." Oyeyemi depicts nightmares, not pretty dreams. She has a knack for describing ordinary things in a way that makes them suddenly horrific, and when she describes horrific things, she does it in a subtle, oblique way that feels like you're looking at something so unspeakable that you can only look with your peripheral vision.

White Is for Witching works as a novel of the supernatural, and it also works as an allegory. I hesitate to even mention the A-word, for fear of driving away readers who've been burned by preachy authors. Oyeyemi doesn't preach, however. There's a message, but it never overshadows the plot and characters. It's just that you can see an extra dimension to the story if you look through the lens of allegory.

wordsofastory.livejournal.com

14. Bernardine Evaristo, The Emperor's Babe

This is a novel in verse (which put me off a bit when I first realized it, but it actually works very well), set in Roman-era London, starring a young Sudanese woman. Most of the novel deals with the main character's tomboy-ish childhood and her friendship with another woman and a drag queen named Venus, but the climax comes when she has a affair with the Emperor. There's a lot of deliberate anachronisms such as brand names, musicians, and slang, stirred in with historically accurate details like Latin phrases or trips to watch gladiators fight, and I really enjoyed the bright, vivid world this mix created. Most of the tone of the novel is funny, optimistic, and confident, and so when the ending comes I found it both surprising and very effective.

Really recommend. I'll be looking up the author's other books.

Current Mood: cheerful

violent-rabbit.livejournal.com

My 1st book:

The Icarus Girl by Helen Oyeyemi

( Synopsis: (taken straight from Bloomsbury web site) )

I found it to be a wonderfully magical book. It is, at its core, a meditation on growing up biracial. It reminded me of Pan's labyrinth and Alice in wonderland as much of the fantasy elements had a sinister element to them. The fantastical elements were also used as vehicles for observations on post colonialism and have a wonderful ambiguity as to their concrete nature. (it is late I'm probably not making sense sry)

It seems to be out of print so I offer my copy to anyone who is interested because it is a excellent read and I highly recommend it.

bulliciosa.livejournal.com

( Blonde Roots: Bernardine Evaristo )

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Writers of Color 50 Books Challenge

Entries tagged with african-english

Helen Oyeyemi, Mr Fox, 2011

Mr Fox by Helen Oyeyemi (2011)

Anthony Joseph, Thich Nhat Hanh

3. White Is for Witching, Helen Oyeyemi

Bernardine Evaristo, The Emperor's Babe

The Icarus Girl by Helen Oyeyemi

01/50: Blonde Roots by Bernardine Evaristo