Writers of Color 50 Books Challenge

Hi everyone--I'm here via rachelmanija's suggestion, and having a great time reading the posts and adding to my "must read" list. I'm not great at reviews, and if I try to do really detailed ones, I'm afraid this will start to feel like homework--which means I won't post about the books at all. Most of these seem to have been reviewed here in the past by people who are much better at it than I will be, so I'm sticking mostly to my personal impressions.

Nothing but the Truth (and a few white lies), Justina Chen Headley: Patty Ho is caught in the middle, at school and at home. She goes to math camp at Stanford. Touching, funny, very very real, and I loved the portrayal of the diversity within the group of gifted kids at the camp; it took me back to my days in grad school at Purdue, when we ran all kinds of summer camps for the same kinds of kids.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie (illus. Ellen Forney): Everyone told me this was funny, and it was, but man, it was also tough to read all the terrible things that happen to Junior/Arnold. I'd never read Alexie's work before, but I'll be reading more of it. This book still haunts me.

She's So Money, Cherry Cheva: Great voice, and a fun read. I found it a little hard to read because I knew Maya was going to screw up and get caught, and I was cringing waiting for that to go down, but there were still plenty of places where I laughed.

Zahrah the Windseeker, Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu: The most inventive fantasy I've read in years--compelling and scary, with a heroine who grows into her power in a very believable (and heroic!) way. I will probably reread this one at some point because the worldbuilding is amazing, and I know I missed some details because I wanted to know what happened next.

Change Has Come, Barack Obama's words with Kadir Nelson's drawings: I'm so grateful to penmage for telling me about this book's existence; Nelson's illustrations are usually lush and detailed, but in this little book we get quick, energetic sketches that capture a feeling and a moment and...joy. I love seeing an artist's bare-bones sketches like this, love getting a look at Nelson's process, in a way. And I plan to get more of his books because I love his work in the same way I love Trina Schart Hyman's and Lisbeth Zwerger's.

Next in the queue I have In the Time of the Butterflies and The Pluto Files. Oh, and I'm also reading Christopher Paul Curtis's The Watsons Go to Birmingham, 1963 to my niece and nephews--which marks something like the fifth or sixth time I've read it. (CPC autographed my copy when I went to a reading years ago, and I'm still OMG every time I see it--he's one of my writer heroes.)