ext_939: Sheep wearing an eyepatch (skywardprodigal Cog Flowers)
[identity profile] spiralsheep.livejournal.com
6, 7, & 8. Three poetry collections by Moniza Alvi: Carrying My Wife, A Bowl of Warm Air, and The Country At My Shoulder (all three collections are available together in an omnibus also called "Carrying My Wife"). I have to admit, out of about 150 poems, there were three that did anything for me. I mostly found the expression of content incomprehensible, possibly due to the author reaching for innovative imagery, and the aesthetics of form uninteresting, but she's a comparatively popular mainstream Establishment poet so my judgement is extremely questionable (and I haven't heard her read her own work live). There are two of the poems, which did speak to me, at my dw journal.

9. The Redbeck* Anthology of British South Asian Poetry, edited by Debjani Chatterjee, is a nearly 200 page collection with a wide variety of content and style, which I enjoyed. There are two example poems at my dw journal and a third example poem but, of course, three poems can't reflect the breadth (or depth) of this anthology.

* I keep misreading it as "Redneck". ::facepalm::

10. The Lost Thing by Shaun Tan didn't appeal to me visually as much as the previous Tan books I've perused but the gist, that it's more important to be happy than to fit in, is another good theme, especially for kids.

Note to tag wranglers: "british-asian" and/or "british-south-asian" is correct usage and, yes, some of the authors (and/or their subjects) are also caribbean / african / &c.

Tags: women writers, poetry, anthologies, asian, british-asian, pakistan, britain, british, caribbean, african, bangladesh, india, indian, indian-british, pakistani, bangladeshi, pakistani-british, bangladeshi-british, british-south-asian, asian-australian, australian, chinese-australian, picture books
ext_939: Sheep wearing an eyepatch (skywardprodigal Cog Flowers)
[identity profile] spiralsheep.livejournal.com
1. Bloodshot Monochrome by Patience Agbabi, is a pleasingly varied contemporary poetry collection with a strong emphasis on reinventing traditional printed-poem forms, especially in the sonnet sequence Problem Pages. I posted a sample poem and a video link at my dw journal.

Author bio: http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p=auth163

2. The Red Tree by Shaun Tan, is a picture book full of complex and surreal images. The verbal story is minimal but effective, the art is stunning. I can't explain but I recommend you read this or one of Tan's other equally brilliant works such as Tales From Outer Suburbia, The Lost Thing, or The Arrival (no words at all)... or...

3. Eric by Shaun Tan, is a very short picture book with drawings in a deceptively simple style. Their meanings, and Eric's story, may be puzzled out by would-be readers here: Eric by Shaun Tan @ The Grauniad. It's only 12 pages and FREE TO READ (but Mr Tan got paid)! :-)

Author's website: http://www.shauntan.net/

Tags: women writers, poetry, asian-australian, british, picture books, black british, australian, chinese-australian
[identity profile] cyphomandra.livejournal.com
I borrowed all of these from the library, but they don't have a lot else in common - the first is a YA, coming of age (or responsibility) novel, set in contemporary Pakistan; the second, a literary novel that mixes general and personal histories to create various identities (in families, in cultures, in racial/ethnic groups); and the third is a satire, sharp and uncomfortable. More details follow - spoilers, definitely, for the first book, and the second two I talk about how I felt about the endings, although am hopefully vague enough about actual events.

Amjed Qamar, Beneath my mother's feet. )

Hsu-Ming Teo, Love and Vertigo. )

Colson Whitehead, Apex hides the hurt. )
[identity profile] lehni.livejournal.com
1. Octavia Butler - Parable of the Sower
2. Octavia Butler - Parable of the Talents
3. Octavia Butler - Bloodchild and other stories

I'm really grateful to this community for introducing me to Octavia's work. My main delight in discovering her are the strong, complex and not always sympathetic female protagonists in her stories, but I also enjoy the realism she brings in her portrayal of dystopia. Parable of the Talents may come off strongly as anti-Christianity which might bother some readers.

I tried reading the first few hundred pages of The Broken Crown by Michelle Sagara but I found it really cliched and frustratingly difficult to follow. I think that the first ten pages will tell you if it's your kind of book or not.

4. Richard Kiyosaki and Lechter, Sharon - Rich Dad, Poor Dad

Personal finance book with an entrepreneurial slant - I had only heard of the blog before reading this. I don't really agree with most of the advice. Kiyossaki also comes off as anti-'wage slave' which isn't very endearing. This book also had some very negative reviews online. The main personal finance book that I would recommend to most of my friends is still Your Money or Your Life by Dominguez and Robin (the 2008 edition has a third author as well).

5. Yasmin Alibhai-Brown - Mixed feelings: the complex lives of mixed race Britons

The first third of this book is a brief history of mixed race relationships more globally; almost all of it was new to me and I found it really interesting. The personal anecdotes throughout the book really help to illustrate the diversity of interracial relationships and families, (although granted the majority of interviewees are white/poc and particularly white/black - not necessarily problematic given the methodology of collection; Alibhai-Brown does discuss the need for further research into the mixed race population and notes issues with self-reporting on government ethnic monitoring forms.) I found it a very worthwhile read and the personal stories prevent the content from seeming too dry. Alibhai-Brown does comment occasionally on her own personal situation (she has a white husband and a mixed-race daughter) but it doesn't detract from her research.

6. Tananarive Due - The Good House

Modern horror and a cautionary tale against dabbling in magic. The book centres around Angela and her relationships with her separated husband, her son and an old boyfriend. I found her relationships a bit boring and found it difficult to sympathise with Angela most of the time, but the book was interesting enough to finish.


Before joining this community I read Growing Up Asian in Australia (ed. Alice Pung), which is an anthology of 'growing up' stories written by Asian-Australians. The collection is pretty diverse and includes mixed race, queer and famous contributors (off the top of my head this includes celebrity chef Kylie Kwong and illustrator/writer Shaun Tan). I really recommend it, particularly for fellow Asians who have grown up in western countries.
[identity profile] sweet-adelheid.livejournal.com
The Garden of Empress Cassia by Gabrielle Wang (Penguin, 2002)



Mimi Lu doesn't like being Chinese in Australia. She doesn't like being different from the kids at school, and doesn't like being called "Smelly-Lou" (who would?). She's teased and bullied for her difference, and on top of that, her parents want her to focus on getting good grades when what she wants to do is draw pictures. Her art teacher at school is sympathetic and lets Mimi have extra classes at lunchtime. And then she gives Mimi a set of "Empress Cassia pastels". Mimi's draws the Garden of Empress Cassia outside her parent's Herbal Medicine shop, and all sorts of things begin to change.

Mimi is a *wonderful* character, a totally believable eleven-or-so year old girl; her friend Josh is also marvelous. I was a little uncomfortable with Old Ma and his "very wise very old Chinese man" sort of role. But I did love the book overall, and the ending is terribly, wonderfully gripping.

Wang is third generation Chinese Australian. The Garden of Empress Cassia was her first novel, and Mimi is very much based on Wang herself as a child. I was also interested by the ways in which this book can be read as a meditation on cultural appropriation. Which is perhaps better left for a discussion with others who have also read the book.

Wang has a new book coming out in the next month or so: "The Ghost in the Suitcase". This new book has been highly recommended and I'm looking forward to reading it.
[identity profile] sweet-adelheid.livejournal.com
Books #16-19

16. The Trouble with Islam, by Irshad Manji
Manji is a Canadian of Indian ancestry whose early life was in Uganda before Idi Amin expelled the Asian population. The book (which I read in an original edition - it was later renamed as The Trouble with Islam Today, although I don't know if that involved any changes to the text) was first published in 2003. I liked it, and found a lot in it to make me think, and that I admired. However, I also know that this book is *not* highly thought of in many quarters. (It was, therefore, refreshing to find Randa Abdel-Fattah saying pretty much the same main argument in The Age newspaper on the weekend.) More here.

17. Stradbroke Dreamtime, by Oodgeroo Noonuccal and Bronwyn Bancroft
A beautiful book - part memoir of Oodgeroo's childhood, and part collection of stories from the Dreaming. Bronwyn Bancroft's artwork is an absolute highlight and, for me, really makes this book something special. More here.

18. Secrets of the Red Lantern: Stories and Recipes from the Heart, by Pauline Nguyen
Far more than a cookbook. A memoir of Nguyen's family, a beautifully produced book, mouthwatering food photography... I can't recommend this highly enough. More here.

19. Daisy Kutter: The Last Train, by Kazu Kibuishi
My first ever comic book/manga! Set in a world that's pretty much Firefly crossed with Star Wars, Daisy is a retired gunslinger lured out of retirement for a Train Job. There's clearly a lot of backstory, but I'm fairly sure that this is the first (currently only, unfortunately) Daisy Kutter comic. As I think both Daisy and her unfortunate sidekick Tom are fabulous characters (very white, though, for those who would find that a problem), I rather hope there are more to come. More here.
[identity profile] sweet-adelheid.livejournal.com
The Arrival has been reviewed by people who are not me here, here, here, here, here and here.

(Did you ever get the feeling that it was a book you just really had to read?)

My review - should you want another one - is here.

(Hint: this book is awesome in its awesomness...)
[identity profile] sweet-adelheid.livejournal.com
#5 - Anno's Medieval World by Mitsumasa Anno, (Bodley Head, 1980)

A favourite storyteller of my childhood, and here I found an Anno book I hadn't yet read! My review is here.

#6 - The Red Tree by Shaun Tan (Lothian, 2001)

I'm not sure there's any point linking to my "review" of this, because it's mostly incoherent and gobsmacked. With the exception of the fact that I really loved the final spread and have found a great deal in it, I'm just going to point you all to [livejournal.com profile] sanguinity's review instead. (Mine's here if you really want to read it.)
[identity profile] mizchalmers.livejournal.com
Hiya, new to the community, please fire if I say anything pantsless, delighted to be here. All links to Powells because Amazon donates to the GOP :)

1. Shaun Tan, The Arrival

I'm going to cheat and count this as my first read for the poc challenge, even though it was actually part of an earlier catch-up-on-what's-happening-in-graphic-novels lovefest. I'm counting it because, even though I read it in January of 2009, I'll be amazed if I read anything better this year.

People recommend Australian books to me all the time, and I plow through 'em, often merely out of a sense of duty. With The Arrival, I didn't even realize Tan was Australian until I was half way through. This wordless novel is a delight and a masterpiece. The experience of moving to a foreign land and trying to remake your life there, missing your family like part of your body, misunderstanding everything in horribly embarrassing ways: nailed.

2. Ted Chiang, Stories of Your Life

I'd read "Hell is the Absence of God" elsewhere and liked it, so it was a pleasure to spend more time with Chiang. He seems to have two main schticks, closely related. The first group, including "Hell" and "Tower of Babylon", explore with utmost rigour the formal implications of a given system: Babylonian cosmology in the second case and Christian theology in the first. The end of "Hell", which I won't spoil, made me as a recovering Sydney Anglican laugh until tears ran down my face.

"Seventy-two Letters" is arguably one of these tease-out-the-system stories, its system being how golems might work, but it's twisted around a great example of Chiang's other schtick, which is the system, typically linguistic, that he comes up with on his own. In the case of the golems, it's an entirely new mechanism for the transmission of genetic information. In the case of my favourite piece, "Story of Your Life", it's an alien language with a very strange construction of time.

I found the beginning of "Story" very difficult, because part of its premise is the death of a child. I have two daughters and they have changed forever the way I feel about child peril as a plot device. Done poorly it destroys, for me, the suspension of disbelief. The pain of it is like a black hole sucking everything else in. Maybe this is how rape survivors feel about casual rape in fiction, or people of colour about casual racism? Done well it's something I devour: I loved Elizabeth McCracken's An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination even though it was about the death of her son. The difference can be subtle - respect, maybe, or the acknowledgement of pain.

I was afraid "Story" would be the other kind of story. In fact it's something weirder and subtler altogether, a brilliant meditation on time and free will and language, mediated through a mother's love for her daughter. If you knew then what you know now, would you still have gone ahead and done it? Well, would you? Imagine a different way of being with that question, in the world. This one will remain with me for a long, long time.

3. Anita Heiss, I'm Not Racist But...

4. Doris Pilkington, Rabbit Proof Fence

5. Larissa Behrendt, Home

I'll be including lots of Australian Aboriginal writers in my fifty, because I'm a white Australian expat, and as such, I view Ursula K. Le Guin's "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" more or less as documentary. I could reel off a bunch of stats about the effects on Aboriginal Australians of being dispossessed from their land and made the objects of active and passive genocide for 200 years, but why should I appropriate their stories when my people have already appropriated everything else? The only thing I can do at this point, I think, is to listen. And reading Aboriginal authors is how I'm going to try and listen.

Anita Heiss's poems are not highly-wrought artifacts; they're rants written down to be read aloud, and Heiss's plain, urgent, funny voice comes through loud and clear. The poems are most effective, at least to me, when they're addressed to exactly those white Australians who think they're not part of the problem - professors of anthropology and Aboriginal studies, lefty poets and intellectuals. (Or how about white writers living in San Francisco and posting to anti-racist LJ communities. Hi, Anita!)

In one especially sharp piece Heiss outlines exactly the difference between a white poetry reading (wine and cheese, complaints about the Volvo and the mortgage) and a black one (angry, political, mourning). White privilege is precisely being able to think about racism for a bit, castigate oneself and come to all the approved conclusions, and then go away and think about something else. Privileged people are dilettantes by definition.

Rabbit Proof Fence - the source material for the amazing film - and Home have both been difficult for me, in revealing ways. It's not that I flinch from the subject matter, except insofar as everyone with a pulse has to flinch from child abduction, rape, the long vile litany of abuse. It's actually tough for an odd reason, one that has to do with the different uses to which story is put in my culture and in theirs. I'm a nerdy English major with a yen for the Napoleonic wars and great Victorian statesmen. Narrative, to me, is about character; complex recesses of the psyche illuminated by a bit of dialog, painted with a fine brush on ivory.

Aboriginal stories seem to work in different ways, and this is maybe best illustrated by the myths embedded in Behrendt's Home. Here, Wurranah has stolen two of the Seven Sisters to be his wives. He orders them to go and strip bark off some eucalyptus trees so that his fire will burn hotter.

"But we must not cut bark. If we do, you will never see us again."

"Your talking is not making my fire burn. If you run away, I will catch you and I will beat you."

The two sisters obeyed. Each went to a different tree and as they made the first cut into the bark, each felt her tree getting bigger and bigger, lifting them off the ground. They clung tight as the trees, growing bigger and bigger, lifted them up towards the sky.

Wurrannah could not hear the chopping of wood so he went to see what his wives were doing. As he came closer, he saw that the trees were growing larger and larger. He saw his wives, high up in the air, clinging to the trunks. He called to them to come down but they did not answer him. The trees grew so large that they touched the sky, taking the girls further and further away.

As they reached the sky, their five sisters, who had been searching in the sky for them, called out, telling them not to be afraid. The five sisters in the sky stretched their hands out to Wurrannah's two wives and drew them up to live with them in the sky, forever.


Lots to love there - the Miyazaki-esque trees growing and growing with the girls clinging to their trunks, the upper branches knocking on the sky in an echo of Ted Chiang's Tower of Babylon. But I am wondering: why did Wurranah's wives warn him? Did they love him in spite of themselves, in spite of the abduction, in spite of his abuse? The stomach rebels at the thought. Or were they issuing the obligatory Sybiline warning, knowing that he would ignore it and meet his fate? Why warn him, though? Why not just leave him to it, and ride the trees to the stars?

I want to know how the wives felt; I want their motives. But here as when I did oral history with my mother and pressed her like this on points of her story, the answer to my badgering is a tolerant smile and a shake of the head. I am asking the wrong question. I have missed the point. Not everyone's insides work the way mine do. My internal narrator is specific, culturally-mediated and quirky, not a universal human truth. I think? Or have I misunderstood the non-answer?

6. Junot Diaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

So much here, so much to love - the dead-accurate and sympathetic portrayal of a fat science fiction fanboy desperately trying to get laid, the catastrophic collision of third-world dictatorship politics and irresistible sex. But for me, exile, the truest part was that yearning, aching undertow familiar to anyone who has lost his or her moorings:

...after he refused to succumb to that whisper that all long-term immigrants carry inside themselves, the whisper that says You do not belong...


7. Angela Johnson, The First Part Last

Picked up after I saw it recommended here. A fast, beautiful and shattering read, like a catastrophic blood clot to the brain. So many off-hand character details that slew me: the grandmother refusing to help when the teenage dad was crashing, so he would not learn to depend on her; the warm neighbour who can't save the situation, for much the same reason; the teenage mother's parents, their austere apartment, their quiet hopes for their daughter. The first of three and I can't wait to read the rest.

That's me for now. In my to-read pile: Felicia Pearson's autobiography, Octavia Butler, Samuel R. Delany, Tobias Buckell, Doreen Baingaina.
ext_150: (Default)
[identity profile] kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com
Tanuja Desai Hidier "Born Confused" - 5/5
This is the story of Dimple Lala growing up and finding herself over the summer between 11th and 12th grade. There is romance in there, and there is friendship stuff, but really it's about Dimple. I've been reading more young adult books lately (so many of the interesting books I see recced are YA...) and a lot of them really feel like it. This did in some ways (the feel of the POV felt more like a novel aimed at teens), but it wasn't dumbed down or anything. I really enjoyed this book a lot, and I'm sad to see Hidier hasn't written any other novels.

I did have some frustrations with it, namely that because it's first person and Dimple doesn't really speak up when people blame her for stuff, it comes off feeling like we're supposed to think she was the one in the wrong. (With Gwyn, it kind of came around at the end (though I still felt like she never admitted/realised what an ass she'd been to Dimple), but by the end of the book I was still left feeling like Dimple was blamed for the mixups with Karsh, even though it would be ridiculous to read his behaviour any other way than she does. In fact, I was shocked that he said he had never been dating Gwyn. I was sure that he was dating her, but still had feelings for Dimple, and I am just so confused as to what the fuck he thought he was doing if not dating Gwyn.) Also Gwyn seriously bugged me. Like, the whole time. I loved um, the lesbian cousin, whose name I can't remember right now. And Zara! ♥ And Dimple's parents were awesome, too.

Very highly recommended.

Shaun Tan "The Arrival" - 5/5
I almost feel like it's cheating to including this on my reading list, since it's a story told entirely in pictures, but I will anyway. :p And it's really, really awesome, so you should read it, too. It's the story of a man who leaves his wife and daughter behind in order to find work in a foreign country. The book follows him in his new life there as he meet people and tries to figure things out, and ends with him eventually sending for his wife and child to join him. The story is set in a fantastical world. The land he comes from has shadow dragons flying through the sky. The land he arrives in has...well, just about everything weird you could think of. One man he meets escaped to this land from a different country, where he and his wife had to run for their lives from giants with blowtorches. Another man tells of the war he fought, and when he returned, he found his entire village destroyed. A young woman tells of how she escaped slavery to come here. I love these tales as much as the main character's. And I love his little book, as he tries hard to figure out what these strange foods are and how to read maps. Tan's beautiful drawings really get across the confusion of being somewhere where you don't understand anything and are trying your best to get by.

Hamasaki Tatsuya "One Piece: Chopper's Kingdom on the Island of Strange Animals" - 2.5/5
I grabbed quite a few manga novels at one point because I'd so enjoyed the D.Gray-man novel, Reverse. Alas, this did not live up to that at all. It's the novelisation of one of the One Piece movies and as OVAs and films of manga and anime often are, it's vaguely AU. It takes place just after Chopper joins Luffy and the others, but Vivi is not on the ship with them for this adventure. The plot here is that the crew sets sail for an island that's supposed to have a great treasure, only when they land there, Chopper gets separated from the others. The island turns out to be inhabited by weird animals and a little boy named Mobambi, and they mistakenly think Chopper is their new king. Of course a baddie appears and lots of fighting happens and stuff. It was a fun enough read (and very quick), but not anywhere near as good as the manga itself. (Note: I read this in Japanese. I don't believe it's been released in English.)

I also recently read M.T. Anderson's The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume I: The Pox Party. I won't post my review here, since Anderson is white, but I will say, you should really, really read it if you haven't. It's an awesome story about a slave during the Revolutionary War, and after all the racefail about "zomg poor white me, I could never write people of color, wah wah, damned if I do, damned if I don't", it's nice to see a story that proves how untrue all that whining is.

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