23. N. K. Jemisin, "The Effluent Engine".

People have rec'ing this for a long time, but only yesterday morning did I sit down to read it. This is what I want from steampunk. Intrigue! Kick-ass engineers! Lesbians! Haitians and Louisiana Creoles sticking it to the slave-holding empires!

Also! (skip mild spoilers about the engineer character)

An engineer who is female! And who actually pings to me as an engineer! Also, who isn't all "engineering while female turns me into sexy sexy sex object central".

NB: I am not a chemical engineer. That scene with Eugenie first smelling the effluent may in fact be completely ridiculous to actual chemical engineers. Howfuckingever. This female engineer who knows nothing about chemical engineering aside from having shared office space with one once, is happy.

Oh, and I forgot to say when the post first went up: Jemisin posted this as part of the A Story for Haiti fundraiser. 'Tis definitely worth kicking in a little, if you've got a little to kick in.

Also, it's coming out in an anthology soon/now, is it not?

wordsofastory.livejournal.com

7. Jamaica Kincaid, Lucy

This very short novel (though apparently heavily based on Kincaid's real life) follows Lucy, a young woman who moves from the Caribbean to New York City to become a nanny for a wealthy white family. There's little plot, and instead the book reads like a series of vignettes about Lucy's life, interspersed with memories of her childhood. The mother Lucy works for treats her more like a friend than an employee, leading to difficulties; Lucy adjusts to life in a new country; Lucy makes friends and has relationships. Despite relatively little happening, this is a powerful book. I found Lucy to be an insightful, cynical character, and really enjoyed her voice.

I actually read this book back in January and just have been terribly lazy about getting around to posting this review, but one scene in particular has stuck with me all this time: in New York, one day Lucy sees daffodils for the first time. However, as a child, Lucy memorized a poem about daffodils to recite at a school assembly, despite never having seen the flowers and their not growing in her country. This metaphor for the insidious results of colonialism and the ways it affects people really hit home.

Current Mood: cheerful

roadrunnertwice

#3: Chinua Achebe – Things Fall Apart (2/17)

From the Dep’t of Books Named After Yeats’ “The Second Coming.”

So I read this ten years ago with very little context and liked it tons, though I was more or less unable to convey its appeal to classmates who didn’t enjoy it nearly as much. I hadn’t thought much about it since. Then, several references (including big structural ones I didn’t even catch until clued in later, h/t where due) to Achebe came up in that collection of Adichie stories I’d just read, and I started to clue in that he was actually basically a literary giant and that it might be a good idea to reacquaint myself with him before delving much further into Nigerian fiction. Plus I’m a sucker for going back a decade in the book log and seeing if I still dig a thing.

I did! It’s fantastic. But everyone here already knew that.

Reams have been written on it, so I’ll try and keep this short; plus, what I like most about the book seems to shift every time I try to write this paragraph. But here’re some things:

The story appears simple, but it simplifies nothing. Contradictions are allowed to stand.
Likewise, the language is meticulously crafted and elegant, while still reading as quickly as one cares to read it.
It accomplishes that crucial feat of tragedy, commanding heartfelt sympathy for a hero who is, arguably, a bad person.
The texture of it is kind of amazing. I have no idea how he generates such a rich sense of place with such spare use of detail; it’s a hell of a thing. The way you can practically feel the rain or the cracked dirt under your feet was a big part of what had me so hypnotized ten years ago.
I love the title and epigraph. I like dragooning a whole work into a different project by quoting a fraction, I like high modernism, I like anticolonialism; there is nothing I don’t like about commandeering high modernism (a reaction to the first World War and the decoherence of European society it presaged) as a lens with which to eyeball colonialism and the decoherence it inflicted on society after society after society. This is all just squee, I don’t have anything actually cogent to say about it. (Bonus: No Longer At Ease does the same with a T.S. Eliot poem.)

This edition was actually a newly-published omnibus that included Arrow of God and No Longer At Ease (with an introduction by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, hey serendipity), but I was lollygaggin’ and malingerin’ and ended up having to give it back to the library before I could read the other two books. I definitely intend to, though; the introduction made them sound pretty great, and I’m kind of itching for more.

Log Supplemental

Books are nice, but folk also put cool stuff on the internet, so I thought I might link stories and essays here once in a while.

Yoon Ha Lee – “The Pirate Captain’s Daughter” (11/27, short story)

Wow! You wouldn’t expect a recycled John Cage gag to be quite so… exhilarating. But wouldja lookit that, thar she blows.

And what a curious way to sail.

Yoon Ha Lee – “Blue Ink” (2/5? short story; also available in podcast flavor)

I dig the Yoon. Her stories do all this intricate puzzlebox-world stuff, with big grinning slithering things just visible through the storm drains and sidewalk cracks.

N.K. Jemisin – various stories (short stories, 2/3 through 2/9, more or less)

Jemisin’s first novel was just about to come out (preview of Things I Read During March: It’s fuckin’ awesome), so I was going through her online short fiction in preparation.

“L’Alchimista” (podcast) — Urban fantasy with high fantasy food values! Why have I never seen THAT before. Also, basically just wonderful. If I had to pick one of these stories to tie you down and force you to read, this is it.
“Bittersweet” — I enjoyed the thinky parts of this (“paying in gen,” the problem space of motivations for shaking off the dust of a small town) more than the feely parts. (That’s not quite accurate: I really liked the stonetalker’s realization of how tired he’d gotten without even noticing. But by and large, this felt too distant.)
“Cloud Dragon Skies” (podcast) — I am extremely conflicted about the ending here. The first half set my brain on fire, though.
“The Brides of Heaven” — This is probably in dialogue with any number of horror stories I know nothing about (plus Planet of the Apes), so YMMV. I didn’t really dig it.
“The Narcomancer” — Some swords and sorcery with a classic sorta feel. Recommended.
“Too Many Yesterdays, Not Enough Tomorrows” — This was good for reasons almost unrelated to why anything else in this set was good. I still don’t really know what I think about it, but it definitely struck a chord.
“The You Train” — This played with some ideas that I traditionally like, but it didn’t grab me.
“Red Riding Hood’s Child” (podcast) — SO good. This story was exactly what it should have been. (Warning: buttseks)
“The Efluent Engine” — Steampunk lesbian Haitian spy hero science adventure story of the month! (No really, it’s badass.)
“Non-Zero Probabilities” — An urban anthem, of sorts. *pumps fist*

bell hooks – “Killing Rage” (2/8, essay)

Confronting my rage, witnessing the way it moved me to grow and change, I understood intimately that it had the potential not only to destroy but also to construct. Then and now I understand rage to be a necessary aspect of resistance struggle. Rage can act as a catalyst inspiring courageous action.

Noted.

(Somehow I think I missed reading hooks in college, but since I doubt I’d have really appreciated her at the time, it might be just as well. Anyway, this was a good essay.)

Zadie Smith – “Dead Man Laughing” (2/9, memoir/essay)

A charming and odd and clear-eyed and funny family memoir.

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Both these selections are collected in Reasoning Together, by The Native Critics Collective, editors Craig S. Womack, Daniel Heath Justice, and Christopher B. Teuton.

nb: I have a STEM background, not a lit-crit background, which means that there are significant parts of these essays that went whoosh, right past my head. Someone with a lit-crit background may pull very different things from these essays.

21. Tol Foster (Anglo-Creek), "Of One Blood: An Argument for Relations and Regionality in Native American Literary Studies."

After a brief history of the classic biases coming out of the academy about Native Americans (not the least of which is casting Native people as "the Other" with a legitimate identity and existence only to the extent that they are unlike the "Americans" that they allegedly exist in opposition to -- a conceptualization, btw, which tends to cast contemporary Indians as not being "real" Indians), he instead looks to Native cultures as their own sources of critical theory:

Instead of looking for some theory to import into indigenous communities, we yield a far more rigorous understanding by both valuing and critiquing the historical and cultural archive as a theoretically sophisticated site of its own. One's history and experience can provide a testable and portable framework for understanding relations between individuals, institutions, and historical forces. Given these claims, I argue here that tribal figures like the Cherokee writer Will Rogers are historically suited actors who utilize the counternarratives of their communities as a theoretical base from which to conduct anticolonialist and cosmopolitan critique.

One of the key points of this essay comes back to "regionality": Will Rogers is a Cherokee writer, and one can and should go to Cherokee history, culture, and literature for context and insights to his work. To that end, Foster gives a capsule political and social history of the Cherokee and Creeks in Indian Territory, from Removal through the Civil War and Reconstruction and on to Oklahoma statehood, with special attention to issues of political alliances, sovereignty, and differing responses of the two tribes to incursions by non-Native African Americans and whites. (That history alone is worth the price of admission.) Within that context, there's then a discussion of the racial politics in Will Rogers' writing -- a discussion that highlighted for me a number of issues I've been poking at for a while now.

There's more good stuff in there, too -- including a discussion of the potential pitfalls of regional literary criticism (f'rex, overlooking members of the community that are commonly labeled as being outside of the community -- Afro-Creek writer Melvin Tolson -- or giving too much weight to the most culturally conservative parts of the community) but I want to emphasize that even people who don't "do" lit-crit can still get good stuff out of this article.

22. Daniel Heath Justice (Cherokee), "'Go Away Water!' : Kinship Criticism and the Decolonization Imperative."

Tol Foster referred a few times to Daniel Heath Justice's essay, so I turned to that next. (And it's likely the only other essay I'll be reading from the volume for the forseeable future, because it was a weekend-loaner.)

Justice places discusses some of the problems of developing an ethical Native literary criticism, especially around peoplehood and decolonization. Again, there's the note that mainstream American definitions of Indians is centered around Indians being "the Other" -- a definition that disenfranchises Indians who are not Other enough -- while Native conceptions tend to center around peoplehood and community identity. Justice then illustrates these ideas with two intra-Native disputes about Native identity: Delphine Redshirt's (Oglala Sioux) charge that the Connecticut Pequot aren't "real" Indians, and the question of whether mixed-blood, urban Indians can be "real" Indians, especially if they're disconnected from land and community.

...and if you don't think that both of those discussions pushed my buttons hard, then you don't know me. However, Justice did a really nice job teasing out and clarifying a lot of my thoughts on both those issues, and both those critiques. And he did a nice job negotiating the ethical issues, in my opinion. There are big honkin' huge issues of context and regionality there -- it is not random that the first critique came from an Oglala full-blood -- and in my opinion, Justice did a nice job of honoring that while still centering the ethics of the situation.

...like I said, I'm not sure I'm going to make it through the rest of the anthology. Lit-crit is a seriously uphill battle for me, and I have to give this anthology back in a few hours. But these two essays alone were more than worth my time, and did a lot to clarify my thinking about certain thorny intra-Indian and intra-POC issues. If you "do" lit-crit, and if you're looking for insights into approaching Native writings, I recommend the anthology.

(additional tags: Creek; Cherokee)

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17. Monique Poirier, "Concerning the Ars Mechanica".

In a nutshell: steampunk erotica about a gay automaton.

The link above is only good for today:

circletpress is doing an erotic story Advent calendar right now, with each story posted from midnight to midnight. (Pacific time zone? Not sure.) For after that link stops working: "Concerning the Ars Mechanica" is collected in the anthology Like Clockwork.

Erotica is hard to review meaningfully -- either a story hits your personal kink, or it doesn't -- but I will say that I feel frustrated that this is "just" erotica. Haider is too ~~meaty~~ interesting a character, in too toothy a scenario, for me to be content with the story ending where it does. (There are betrayals to be dealt with! Cultureshock to be explored! Political and social identities to be developed! I suppose I shall just have to continue to wait for the steampunk novel she's working on.)

FYI, there's one more story of Monique's that's supposed to go up during Circlet's Advent Calendar: "The Goose Boy." I'm going to be traveling during part of the countdown and may miss it, so don't count on me to catch and post the link.

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(Two novels and a short story. The numbering is wacky because I'm keeping two different lists, one for books and one for shorts.)

7. Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu, Zarah the Windseeker.

I've said it before, and if the odds continue, I'll be saying it again: this comm has saved YA fantasy for me. Especially quest fantasy, which is a subgenre I had pretty much sworn completely off from boredom and irritation.

Rather than writing my own review, I'll point you to

rootedinsong's review: the world is too lush, and too daydreamy, for me to want to wrestle with writing up a description.

And even though I know that I totally shouldn't want to go backpacking in The Forbidden Greeny Jungle -- Zarah's adventures made all of mine feel very soft -- I totally totally want to. Totally. Even if I have to put up with her faulty guidebook (and really, didn't that perfectly capture the faulty-guidebook experience? Not useless enough to toss, but oh, how much time is spent trying to sift the useful information from the was-he-even-here? misinformation) I totally want to go.

But I'm going to need to learn to climb trees first.

However, speaking of guidebooks, tree-climbing, and The Forbidden Greeny Jungle...

16. Nnedi Okorafor, "From the Lost Diary of TreeFrog7".

Precisely what the title says: the lost diary of TreeFrog7, one of the authors of The Forbidden Greeny Jungle Field Guide. TreeFrog7 and Morituri36, in the Forbidden Greeny Jungle. Exploring. And alternately squabbling and rhapsodizing about each other, like what you do when you've been alone together in the backwoods too long.

I'm thinking this one will mostly appeal to fans of the Forbidden Greeny Jungle, and should probably be read after Windseeker -- it doesn't really strike me as a stand-alone. But Forbidden Greeny Jungle fans will probably want to click that. (

rootedinsong? It's about the CPU plants!)

(BTW, Okorafor's website suggests that there are more Ginen shorts out there than just this one. Does anyone know how many or where any of them are published?)

8. Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu, The Shadow Speaker.

Set in the same multiverse as Windseeker, but in Earth's Niger, a hundred-odd years into our future, when Zarah's world and Earth have inexplicably begun to merge. As

rootedinsong points out, this is a darker book than the Windseeker, what with technology and ecology upsets, people being displaced (both within worlds and between worlds), and according social backlashes.

Like all novice shadowspeakers, Ejii is pushed by the shadows to travel -- in this case, to pursue the local ruler/warlord and avert an impending war. But traveling is also part of a shadowspeaker's development: grow or die, but don't overreach your abilities-of-the-moment by too much, or that will kill you, too. (There is a parallel I am groping for between the shadowspeakers' journeys and the various metamorphoses in Butler's novels, but I am having trouble wrapping my arms around it. Other than the sense that growing is a dangerous, reckless, nearly-uncontrolled process, wherein you dig deep and deeper, and hope that the digging deep doesn't break you. And then discover that the digging deep did break you: ultimately, the question isn't whether you break, the question is whether, having broken, you lay down and die or become something else. The Shadow Speaker isn't anywhere near as grim as most/any of Butler, but I do have a strong sense legacy here.)

Oh, and another thing about this book that pleases me: it's messy. The warlord Ejii is pursuing, Saurauniya Jaa, is a strong believer in problem-solving via decisive bloodshed: our first introduction to her is when she decapitates Ejii's father in front of Ejii. However, while Jaa is Ejii's main antagonist, Jaa herself is not evil, and this is not a story of White Hats and Black Hats: Jaa is Ejii's mentor, and their conflict is over whether Jaa's ruthlessness is more compassionate than Ejii's desire to prevent bloodshed.

And like Windseeker: oh, the worldbuilding! Onion! The lions! The storm! Forests that spontaneously appear and disappear! Eee! (And did I mention the lions? The lions!)

sanguinity

15. Jin Haritaworn, with Tamsila Tauqir and Esra Erdem, "Gay Imperialism: Gender and Sexuality Discourse in the ‘War on Terror’". (link is now dead; see ETA below)

Racism is the vehicle that transports white gays and feminists into the political mainstream.

Haritaworn et al discusses the interaction between gay rights and the "war on terror" -- namely, how some white gay activists have struck a mutually-beneficial bargain with neoimperialists, such that "concern" for Muslim queers is used to gay-wash Islamophobic agendas, in return for sexual rights being elevated to the status of a core social value, on par with "freedom" and "democracy." As a result, the social position of white gays is improved, while the position of queer Muslims is worsened. Haritaworn focuses the discussion on Germany and the United Kingdom, and draws parallels with similar neoimperialist bargains struck by white feminists.

There are a lot of rhetorical maneuvers here that are familiar to me. For instance, despite Muslim queers of color being the alleged central figures of the narrative, their voices are written out of the narrative (white gays speak "for" them) unless they are willing to testify in ways that are useful to the imperialist frame:

...the journalists wanted me to respond to the ‘difficulties’ of being gay and Muslim, as well as to the homophobia of Muslim communities in Britain and abroad. I often suggested shifting the focus to the considerable work being done within liberal and progressive Islam. Journalists reacted with silence when I asked them to report on progressive Imams who have conducted Nikahs (Muslim marriage contracts) for same-sex couples, or on parents who had supported their gay children.

Other rhetorical attacks white gay activists include framing people of color as straight oppressors of white gays and as possessors of unique privileges ("imagine someone getting away with saying that about a black person"). Meanwhile, within Muslim communities, since gay-rights rhetoric so often acts as a carrier/justifier for Islamophobia, gay rights becomes equated with anti-Muslim racism, thus worsening the position of Muslim queers.

Some maneuvers detailed by Haritaworn et al are new to me. Most audacious, in my mind, is equating Muslim anti-gay rhetoric with the neo-Nazi anti-gay rhetoric of the British National Party, a move that paints Muslims and neo-Nazis as allies (!?), and thus elevating gays to the ever-coveted "most oppressed" status.

The article is fairly heavy in academic language (I found it rough going in places), but it was well worth my time. Unfortunately, you'll notice that the link above goes to a Google cache of the original article [see ETA below]: one of the white gay activists discussed in the paper appears to have successfully pressured the publisher into declaring the original anthology out of print.

(hat tip)

ETA: The Google Cache no longer works.

Google's cache page of the article, archived elsewhere (html translation of the original pdf)
Scan of the article (pdf, not machine-readable)
Article, responses to the article, and links documenting the dispute (archived by spiralsheep at Dreamwidth)

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13. K. Tempest Bradford, "Until Forgiveness Comes."

As Tempest discusses here, this is inspired by, and commentary on, the anniversary ceremony conducted at Ground Zero. As a west-coaster, I am disinclined to make much comment, except to say that Tempest hits themes that matter to me very much.

14. June Jordan, "The Difficult Miracle of Black Poetry in America: Something Like a Sonnet for Phillis Wheatley."

Creative nonfic -- plus something like a sonnet! -- that serves as both a biography of and an ode to Phillis Wheatley, firmly positioning her as "the first" in the "not natural" enterprise of Black poetry in America: the first to negotiate the "difficult miracle" of persisting, regardless of being published, regardless of being loved.

I had never realized, until Jordan pointed it out, that Wheatley's surviving poems are juvenilia, written while she was enslaved and with the blessing and patronage of her owners; the poetry she wrote as a free adult, married to a law student who argued for universal emancipation, was never published. Jordan then draws the line forward to 1985 (the year of this essay's publication), to judging poetry prizes where all of the finalists are white:

But the miracle of Black poetry in America, the difficult miracle of Black poetry in America, is that we have been rejected and we are frequently dismissed as “political” or “topical” or “sloganeering” and “crude” and ‘insignificant” because, like Phillis Wheatley, we have persisted for freedom. We will write against South Africa and we will seldom pen a poem about wild geese flying over Prague, or grizzlies at the rain barrel under the dwarf willow trees. We will write, published or not, however we may, like Phillis Wheatley, of the terror and the hungering and the quandaries of our African lives on this North American soil. And as long as we study white literature, as long as we assimilate the English language and its implicit English values, as long as we allude and defer to gods we “neither sought nor knew,” as long as we, Black poets in America, remain the children of slavery, as long as we do not come of age and attempt, then to speak the truth of our difficult maturity in an alien place, then we will be beloved, and sheltered, and published.

But not otherwise. And yet we persist.

And it was not natural. And she was the first.

ms-erupt.livejournal.com

06. How Far We Slaves Have Come! by Nelson Mandela; Fidel Castro
Pages: 83
Genre: Non-fiction; World Politics; Diplomacy and International Relations; South Africa; Latin America
Rating: 5/10; May or May Not Recommend

( Short review and possibly spoilery review. )

Comments may contain spoilers.

sanguinity

Two short works, both 22-page, single-issue webcomics, both by Beth Dillon (Anishinaabe, Metis, Irish) and Myron Lameman (Beaver Lake Cree Nation).

11. The West Was Lost.

Native Steampunk, wherein Anishinaabe warriors -- led by the young woman who is our POV character, Nezette -- travel west to destroy an oil derrick.

The storytelling is non-linear and nearly wordless, with a heavy usage of references from traditional Anishinaabe stories. Consequently, it demands more than a single read, and even with multiple readings may yet be fairly opaque to readers who aren't familiar with the cultural referents.

The artwork is gorgeous. I keep coming back to look at the art again. There are some heart-stirring shots of Nezette in battle that particularly catch my eye, and I love the shots of the oil derrick in flames -- this particular act of resistance makes me very happy. (There are some later shots worth mentioning, too, but that gets into spoiler-territory, so I won't.)

I would very much like to see more set in this timeline.

12. Fala.

A Native rendition of Alice in Wonderland. I don't even begin to get all the references here, which hampers my experience of it, but the stuff that I do get, I like. As with "The West Was Lost," (and, for that matter, Alice in Wonderland itself) the work benefits from multiple reads.

sanguinity

All these are from Yes Means Yes! Visions of Female Sexual Power & a World Without Rape, edited by Jaclyn Friedman and Jessica Valenti, and published by Seal Press.

( Nota bene: Seal Press, Feministing, Amanda Marcotte )

2. "A Woman's Worth," Javacia N. Harris
3. "Queering Black Female Heterosexuality," Kimberly Springer
4. "What It Feels Like When It Finally Comes: Surviving Incest in Real Life," Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha (brownstargirl!)
5. "Invasion of Space by a Female," Coco Fusco
6. "Trial By Media: Black Female Lasciviousness and the Question of Consent", Samhita Mukhopadhyay
7. "The Not-Rape Epidemic," Latoya Peterson
8. "Killing Misogyny: A personal Story of Love, Violence, and Strategies for Survival", Cristina Meztli Tzintzun
9. "When Pregnancy is Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will be Pregnant," Tiloma Jayasignhe
10. "Who're You Calling a Whore? A Conversation with Three Sex Workers on Sexuality, Empowerment, and the Industry," Susan Lopez, Mariko Passion, Saundra

( Comments/summaries on the individual essays )

sanguinity

(In addition to the regular 50 books challenge, I'm going to do 50 short-works, too. Not because I'm an overachiever -- which would be a fair charge -- but because I SUCK at finishing anthologies, yet I still want to point in awe at some of the amazing pieces in said anthologies-I-never-finish-reading. Also, sometimes I run across amazing stuff in anthologies that I don't feel otherwise qualify for the comm. Plus, you know, other stuff.)

(So to kick off, here's a piece I ran across while surfing links for the del.icio.us account...)

1. How To Write About Africa, by Binyavanga Wainaina, published in Granta 92, 2005.

It begins:

Always use the word 'Africa' or 'Darkness' or 'Safari' in your title. Subtitles may include the words 'Zanzibar', 'Masai', 'Zulu', 'Zambezi', 'Congo', 'Nile', 'Big', 'Sky', 'Shadow', 'Drum', 'Sun' or 'Bygone'. Also useful are words such as 'Guerrillas', 'Timeless', 'Primordial' and 'Tribal'. Note that 'People' means Africans who are not black, while 'The People' means black Africans.

Never have a picture of a well-adjusted African on the cover of your book, or in it, unless that African has won the Nobel Prize. An AK-47, prominent ribs, naked breasts: use these. If you must include an African, make sure you get one in Masai or Zulu or Dogon dress.

In your text, treat Africa as if it were one country. It is hot and dusty with rolling grasslands and huge herds of animals and tall, thin people who are starving. Or it is hot and steamy with very short people who eat primates. Don't get bogged down with precise descriptions...

If you can't tell from the excerpt, it's a scything and brutal enumeration of the racist and colonialist tropes that appear in writing about Africa. 'Tis very hard not to quote the whole thing at you, it's so freakin' spot on. (The bit about the gorillas and elephants!) (And one's personal ability to eat bugs!) (And how Africa would be doomed without your book!) (And the proper use of Nelson Mandela quotes!)

Full text is at the title link. Go read it. Seriously.

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Writers of Color 50 Books Challenge

Entries tagged with short-works

The Effluent Engine

Books 12-15: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Outlaw Culture, Does Your Mama Know?, Shadow Princess

7. Jamaica Kincaid, Lucy

#3 and supplemental

#3: Chinua Achebe – Things Fall Apart (2/17)

Log Supplemental

Yoon Ha Lee – “The Pirate Captain’s Daughter” (11/27, short story)

Yoon Ha Lee – “Blue Ink” (2/5? short story; also available in podcast flavor)

N.K. Jemisin – various stories (short stories, 2/3 through 2/9, more or less)

bell hooks – “Killing Rage” (2/8, essay)

Zadie Smith – “Dead Man Laughing” (2/9, memoir/essay)

Reasoning Together, The Native Critics Collective

Concerning the Ars Mechanica

Nnedi Okorafor: Three in Ginen

Gay Imperialism

Until Forgiveness Comes; Something Like a Sonnet for Phillis Wheatley

06 / 50 || Nelson Mandela; Fidel Castro || "How Far We Slaves Have Come!"

Beth Dillon and Myron Lameman

Essays from Yes Means Yes

How to Write About Africa

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June 2025

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