50books_poc | Entries tagged with family

I just read Notes From A Young Black Chef by Kwame Onwuachi with Joshua David Stein, thanks to this recommendation.

I enjoy chef memoirs -- The Apprentice by Jacques Pepin is a favorite and I've read it multiple times -- and this one definitely hit the spot. I appreciated getting the behind-the-scenes glimpses at different restaurants, including ones where I've eaten, and I appreciated the specifics of how different self-presentations, and sometimes lying, were instrumental to Onwuachi's steps on his career ladder.

Onwuachi is significantly younger than I am, and I found it edifying to get glimpses of how cell phones, social media, and related technologies have played different kinds of roles in his education than in mine.

Also, I rarely cook, and this book spurred me to get back in front of the stove!

yatima

An exquisitely beautiful graphic memoir by a Vietnamese woman who came to the USA as a child refugee. Bui weaves together the present-day birth of her son with the reckoning with her family of origin that childbirth so often provokes. Her parents' stories are told with imaginative insight, and the class barriers that divided them are sensitively drawn.

In black ink with a blood-red color wash, the art is gorgeous and many-layered. The map of Vietnam appears and reappears, and its sinuous curves are echoed by smoke, clouds, and ocean waves as Bui's family flees the aftermath of the war. Family and news photographs are incorporated and contextualized. The effect is to complicate and give a human face to a war we know both too much and too little about.

yatima

Believe the hype. This is the best book of poetry I have read in years, dense with precisely described emotion. It reminded me of the first time I read Plath's Ariel:

Not
a piano—but a mare
draped in a black sheet. White mouth
sticking out like a fist. I kneel
at my beast. The sheet sunken
at her ribs.

A side-note: in my Honours English class back in nineteen ninety-mumble, our great professor Bruce Gardiner wasted most of a tutorial trying to get me and the rest of my virginal cohort to understand Yeats "The Song of the Wandering Aengus" as the poet going outside at night for a wank. One of Vuong's poems here is helpfully titled "Ode to Masturbation," which should save many graduate student hours.

yatima

My 11yo bought this on the strength of a blurb from Alison Bechdel (we all loved Fun Home.) After she finished it, she insisted that I read it. Kid knows the kind of thing I like. Tagame is known for his extremely kinky gay manga, but this is family fare: the tender story of a Canadian who visits his dead husband's brother and niece in Japan.

The point of view is that of the brother, Yaichi, who is burdened with a lot of unexamined homophobia. While a lot of the critical response to My Brother's Husband approaches this as a text that will help people unfamiliar with LGBTQ+ issues, it worked equally well to give my San Francisco-raised kid an insight into people whose daily lives aren't suffused with the gay! Tagame gives Yaichi space to wrestle with his preconceptions and doesn't judge him for his missteps. It's a sweetly sympathetic portrait that didn't raise my queer hackles: not an easy feat.

The art is my favorite aspect of this book. Mike, the Canadian widower, is a big beardie hairy man, and his body is presented as straightforwardly attractive. His growing rapport with his niece Kana and his kindness towards another young character are beautifully and movingly rendered. I can't wait for Volume 2.

kaberett

This came into my possession via the latest Humble Ebook Bundle, and I am so glad it did. This is how glad I am: I am about two-thirds of the way through it and I can't wait to finish before I tell you all how good it is.

The protagonist, Hanna, is sixteen, manic depressive (and explicitly, canonically prefers that descriptor to "bipolar", Because Reasons), and Finnish-"island girl" (Hawaiian?), raised (for most of her life) in Dallas. She describes herself as biracial and bicultural, and she's bilingual in English and Finnish - and the codeswitching is genuinely plausibly represented.

The dude she ends up hanging around with a lot is the same age, Latino, and bilingual in Spanish and English - again, really nicely represented.

The story takes place in creepy smalltown Texas. It's sub/urban fantasy and abusive parents and a critique of the medical-industrial complex and teenagers having (complicated, not always happy) sex lives all tied up in tight, funny monster-killing brilliance. It's lovely.

( Content notes. )

emma-in-oz.livejournal.com

2.29 Larissa Behrendt, Home: A Novel (2004)

Here's another from Anita Heiss' list of her top 100 (or rather 99) Indigenous books - http://anitaheissblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/anitas-bbc-black-book-choice-reading.html

I really really liked this novel. It begins in 1995 with a young, Indigenous lawyer visiting the lands from which her grandmother was taken. It then flashes back in time to 1918 when she was taken as part of the Stolen Generation and has different chapters on the lives of her descendants.

Not only is it an interesting conceit but it is very well written. There's a great line about her relationship with her white, French boyfriend - there is 'nothing between us but skin'.

It's the winner of the David Unaipon Award for Indigenous writers.

atdelphi.livejournal.com

4. The Jade Peony by Wayson Choy (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1996)

In three related novellas, The Jade Peony relates the experiences of a trio of siblings growing up in Vancouver's Chinatown in the 1930s and 40s. The result is simply one of the best books I have ever read.

Choy's writing is beautiful, and his characterization is at once perceptive and unflinching but also endlessly sympathetic. Usually in pieced work stories like this, at least one narrative falls flat, but I enjoyed and was impressed by all three sections equally: the story of Jook-Liang, who wants to be like Shirley Temple and who forms an unlikely friendship with an elderly family friend; Jung-Sum, who grapples with the past regarding his first family, and with the future regarding his sexuality; Sekky, who more than anyone deals with the blurring lines between Chinese and Canadian, home and away, and friend and foe; and, in the corners of the children's narratives, the story of their parents and grandmother.

I can't recommend this book enough to anyone who likes coming of age stories, and I'm looking forward to reading more of Choy's work.

atdelphi.livejournal.com

3. The End of East by Jen Sookfong Lee (New York: Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press, 2008)

Sammy Chan, the protagonist of The End of East, is newly returned to Vancouver, having left behind a boyfriend and thesis in Montreal in order to look after her widowed mother. Soon after, she discovers some papers belonging to her late grandfather, and the story begins to weave in and out of the past, looking at the lives of Sammy's parents and grandparents, the family's relationship with Chinatown, and the way familial bonds are both borne as burdens and desperately sought.

I have a general rule about stories featuring dysfunctional families: I already have one of those, so if I'm going to read about an imaginary one, there had better be something more going on than "Tsk, isn't that awful?" Jen Sookfong Lee does some interesting things with distance in this book (Sammy's point of view is so immediate that it may be difficult to have any idea what's really going on with her, but her family is presented from afar, so objectively that emotion may be blunted), and there are individual scenes that are written beautifully and subtly, but on the whole, this story felt underdeveloped and needlessly episodic to me, and too familiarly bleak and brittle for me to enjoy on an aesthetic level.

This is the author's debut novel, and based on the things I did like about her writing here, I would pick up one of her subsequent works, but I wouldn't be interested in re-reading The End of East.

Additional note: For those who look to avoid such content, The End of East contains a fairly graphic and sudden rape scene.

wordsofastory.livejournal.com

2. Sarita Mandanna, Tiger Hills

Devi is a beautiful, strong-willed young girl, growing up in Coorg, a rural, mountainous area of South India, in the late 1800s. She's in love with Machu, a warrior famous for having killed a tiger single-handedly. Devanna, Machu's younger cousin, is a quiet, intelligent boy, studying to be a doctor, who's in love with Devi. As you might expect, things don't turn out well.

This novel has some beautiful descriptions of scenery (apparently Coorg- spelled Kodagu today- is known as 'the Scotland of India'), but the plot is a bit over-the-top, with tragedy following tragedy. I enjoyed reading to pass the time on a long bus trip, but I'm not sure I can genuinely recommend it, unless you're looking for something to read that won't require a lot of thought.

veleda-k.livejournal.com

#9: Home by Larissa Behrendt

( Home )

veleda-k.livejournal.com

I swore I wouldn't get behind this year, and look at this. I'm already lagging. I suck at New Years resolutions.

#2: The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino (translated by Alexander O. Smith with Elye J. Alexander)

( The Devotion of Suspect X )

#3: Villain by Shuichi Yoshida (translated by Philip Gabriel)

( Villain )

#4: The Other Side of Paradise: a Memoir by Staceyann Chin

( The Other Side of Paradise )

veleda-k.livejournal.com

So, I'm wildly behind on my

50books_poc reviews. Because I'm full of suck. But I'm supposed to be doing schoolwork, so that seems the perfect time to do a few reviews.

( The Twentieth Wife by Indu Sundaresan )

( The Feast of Roses by Indu Sundaresan )

( In Search of Our Mother's Gardens: Womanist Prose by Alice Walker )

( The Last Time I Saw Mother by Arlene J. Chai )

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. )

whereweather.livejournal.com

#30. Luba: The Book of Ofelia (Vol. 2 in the Luba trilogy; Vol. 21 in the Complete Love & Rockets)

2005 (material originally published 1998-2005), Fantagraphics Books

Warning: Long and obsessive plot details ahead! This is a crazy long book -- 240 pages -- and incredibly dense, for a graphic novel. Also, the storytelling modalities are highly refined and self-referential, full of interweaving, flashback and allusion; and also it's Part 2 of a three-part series-within-a-series. So I take these reviews as an opportunity to parse the plot, to assure myself that I've actually followed what the hell is going on.

So! This is the second part of Gilbert ("Beto") Hernandez's trilogy about the latest adventures of Luba, his protagonist, in America. (For basics about Luba, you can see my earlier post about the previous book in this series.)

At this point in time, Luba and her children are in the United States, but her husband Khamo is stuck in immigration limbo. Luba continues her quest to figure out what she must -- or can -- do in order to untangle his shady past, police record, and hazy criminal associations, so that she can bring him to join them. (Like most of Luba's accomplishments, this is not really hindered -- and is perhaps made more impressive -- by that fact that, like some of the other main characters living in the United States, she still can't speak a word of English.)

Much of this section's narrative mechanics is fueled by the announcement that Ofelia, Luba's long-suffering older cousin, has decided to finally try being the writer she has always wanted to be. This in-progress "book of Ofelia" gives, perhaps, the collection its title, although the phrasing also seems to imply (in its Biblical cadence) that she is instead the main subject of the book. (Except that she isn't, really; she's not present throughout. I keep thinking about the way that, in Spanish -- as I think I understand it, anyway -- this phrase, "el libro de Ofelia," does not make a distinction between the book *by* Ofelia and the book *about* her. So this book, perhaps, is both.)

(On that note: one other thing I like is how much of the book's dialogue and internal thought-monologues are in Spanish. The switches back and forth are frequent but consistent: the Latin American-born children tend to speak in fluent English to each other, but use Spanish with their parents, and to think in it when introspection is called for; the American-born children and adults think in English, although they frequently and fluently use Spanish with their relations. Hernandez indicates the switches with the widely used comics convention of putting the "second-language" dialogue within brackets (and, in this book, some double-bracketing for other languages, like French). When Hernandez' stories were set entirely in the Central American village from which many of the characters hail, he used to just put a note at the bottom of the first page that everything was in Spanish unless otherwise indicated -- a convention that Jaime has also sometimes used, e.g. in stories set among recent immigrants and jornalero workers -- but now that they've migrated to America, there's a lot more use of both tongues.)

So. What's happening in the Book of Ofelia?

( Obsessive plot details! Avoid if you fear spoilers! )

[Tags I'd like to add: a: hernandez gilbert, i: hernandez gilbert, california, children [*not* "children's"], magic realism, disability, meta-literature]

anitabuchan.livejournal.com

19. Girl Overboard by Justina Chen Headley

I didn't expect to like this, as normally I can't stand 'poor little rich girl' stories. I think the difference here is that I couldn't help liking Syrah, the main character. She wasn't self-pitying, and didn't sit around waiting for someone else to come and fix her life. Her problems were the type that I think most could relate to - family, weight, boyfriend, friends, and the loss of something she loved (snowboarding, after an accident).

I liked that all the characters ended up quite complex, even if some of them started out seeming stereotypical. I also very much liked the ending, although I don't want to spoil it! And finally, I liked how Headley handled issues like gender and weight - Syrah wasn't made happy by succeeding in losing weight, she became happy when she gave up dieting and started to enjoy food.

20. Lucy the Giant by Sherri L. Smith

Another book about a teenage girl with family problems :). But very, very different. Lucy's father is an alcoholic, and she is driven to run away. Her height (over 6 foot) means she is taken as an adult - something she takes advantage of by joining a crabbing boat.

I loved this. It was very emotional, reading as Lucy learnt what normal life was like for most people - from the big things, like having someone care for them, to little things, like learning that most people don't leave money lying out in the open. Of course, in the end the boat crew she's joined discover her real age. They reacted the way you'd imagine, but even so, this has a happy (or at least hopeful) ending. It made me cry, so if you feel like a depressing but hopeful read, I recommend this!

whereweather.livejournal.com

#28. Skim, Mariko Tamaki (writing) and Jillian Tamaki (art)
2008, Groundwood Books

Another book that I found through reviews on this comm. (Thanks again to all of you: you keep leading me to wonderful books.)

I enjoyed the book for many of the same reasons others did, especially those mentioned by

kyuuketsukirui,

sanguinity and [Bad username or unknown identity: puritybrown .] As regards the art style, I also loved, as someone else mentioned, that it clearly evokes Japanese aesthetics and the Japanese artistic tradition... but the influences it draws on are not manga. There's something about that, especially given the often troubling aspects of gender representation in mainstream manga (I'm thinking of exaggerated gender dimorphism, neoteny, and hypersexualization), that I found profoundly refreshing and even kind of inspiring.

Very highly recommended. I'm putting Mariko Tamaki's other graphic work, Emiko Superstar, on my to-read list, and I'd love to see other work from Jillian Tamaki. (Actually... let's see. Her website is here, there's an interesting illustrated interview with her here, and I see mention of a 2006 book called Gilded Lilies. Has anyone read it?)

[Tags I would add if I could: spirituality (or: religion/spirituality), high school]

Hey, by the way: [Bad username or unknown identity: puritybrown ,�]did you ever send the Tamakis that fan letter?

whereweather.livejournal.com

#26. Luba in America (Vol. 1 of the Luba Trilogy), by Gilbert Hernandez
2001 (material originally published 1998-2000), Fantagraphics Books

Ha! Man, I just never stop referencing myself, do I? (Well, well: the internet wouldn't be as much fun if it weren't so easy to be intertextual.)

This is the third Love & Rockets book I'm reviewing, since I am indulging in a catch-up binge on my favorite comics series after years of only-sporadic reading. The first two I reviewed were by Jaime Hernandez, the half of the Hernandez brothers whose work I consistently adore. Luba in America, by contrast, is by Gilbert Hernandez, whose stories, characters, style and subjects are quite different. In an earlier post I discussed my feelings about Gilbert's work, including and especially my ambivalence about his increasingly sexual and sexualizing vision of his female characters' lives.

But, heh, Gilbert was also a bold, compassionate and masterful storyteller at one time, and perhaps is still. If his "weird id display" (as a previous commenter called it) doesn't put you off, there is still a lot of story to admire. So here I am: taking a careful breath, and plunging into the now-complete "Luba trilogy" to see what Gilbert has recently been up to.

( Venga conmigo! )

whereweather.livejournal.com

#20[b]: A Right to Be Hostile: The Boondocks Treasury, Aaron McGruder
2003, Three Rivers Press

This is hilarious. I remember reading The Boondocks on and off while it was running in newspapers (more off than on; I was moving around a lot and not all my papers carried it), and I remember being sometimes impressed but often lukewarm on it. I remember formulating the impression that it was presumably the strip's controversy value and what Amazon somewhat coyly calls its "notoriety" that made it such a big success. (What "notoriety" means here is, among other things, visibly black characters talking about visible black issues, often with no white people in sight(!), and, with enormous daring, going so far as to claim the aforementioned right to be hostile. In America's newspapers! In the funny pages!)

Anyway, reading this compilation, I'm forced to dramatically revise my opinion. This is fabulous stuff. McGruder's incisiveness, cutting wit, characterization and sense of timing are often nothing short of brilliant. The strip really does bring to mind the eminent predecessors McGruder cites as influences in the foreword (Trudeau, Watterson, Breathed). (All of which leaves me unsure why I didn't find the strip quite so awesome at the time, except that it does come to mind that collections allow authors the luxury of picking and choosing; McGruder may have wisely left out a lot of duds. ;)

Anyway. What is awesome about this strip? ( Let me tell you! )