Books By or About POC
So apparently by "tonight" I meant "two days from now."
You Can't Touch My Hair, Phoebe Robinson
Someday, I want to be a quarter as smart, funny, and insightful as Phoebe Robinson.
You Can't Touch My Hair (And Other Things I Still Have To Explain) is an incredibly funny and insightful collection of essays on race, gender, pop culture, and the intersection thereof. Robinson is a black female comic, so her stories can be very raw, and yet her talent is such that they're hilarious anyway. It's clever and awesome and such a great book. Go read it immediately. Everyone. Well, every adult. I mean it.
Fuck Fascists Factor: 4--fascists have major problems. Robinson is black and female and hilarious and critiques many fascist viewpoints at the same time, how dare she.
A Wreath for Emmett Till, Marilyn Nelson and Philippe Lardy
Half poetry collection, half art project, A Wreath for Emmett Till is something called a sonnet cycle, which is an absurdly complicated style of poetry that I encourage you to look up if you're interested. I've tried to write one. They are not easy.
Anyway, there's not a lot to say about this book. We all know who Emmett Till was, and we all know he died much too early and too cruelly. The art is painful and disjointed in contrast to the smooth sonnet lines. It's a good, if painful, read.
Fuck Fascists Factor: 5--fascists will froth at the mouth. They murdered this boy. This book makes it clear.
Gabi: A Girl in Pieces, Isabel Quintero
Okay so this book is much darker than I was led to believe. That said, I did enjoy it. It's your pretty standard high school coming of age story.
Gabi Hernandez is a senior in high school dealing with your average teenage difficulties-- college applications, dating, dieting, poetry-- and your not-so-average teenage difficulties-- her friend Cindy's pregnancy, her friend Sebastian's difficulties with his family after he came out, her father's meth addiction. Gabi channels her fears and her joys into her diary, where she writes about her entire senior year, with occasional inclusions of poetry.
Gabi is a very likable and realistic protagonist, who goes through way more shit than any teenage girl should ever have to, and yet comes out more or less intact at the end. Or, well, if not intact, at least still stuck together, all of her broken pieces meshing into a beautiful whole. I really enjoyed this book, and would recommend it to more or less everyone over the age of fifteen or so.
Fuck Fascists Factor: 3--fascists have problems. Gabi and Cindy are both Latinx, and Sebastian is gay; I don't recall if he's Latinx as well. Also, the heroine is a teenage girl.
Spirits of the Ordinary, Kathleen Alcalá
This is a lovely magical realism book set along the Mexican-American border in the late nineteenth century. The story doesn't follow any one character in particular; it's more a tale of an extended family and their struggles with obsession. To me it really echoed One Hundred Years of Solitude, with that same languid feeling and sprawling nature of the story.
Zacarius is monofocused on the search for gold in the mountains. His father Julio searches through the Kabbalah to find God's perfect order. Their obsessive desires come close to destroying their families, their wives Estela and Marina, and Zacarius's children. Between and around those obsessions lie stories of Jewish mysticism and Catholic intolerance, the love of nature and the love of order, how clinging too hard can destroy something, and how dreams coming true sometimes fall apart.
I thought the book was a little jumpy in places, but it was really a lovely story. Like an impressionistic painting.
Fuck Fascists Factor: 4--fascists have major problems. If there was a white person in this book, I don't remember them. Oh, wait, there's an Irish priest. But he's kind of a jerk. Also, Jewish people are awesome and don't deserve to be persecuted.
Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass, Meg Medina
Piddy Sanchez is minding her own business when someone tells her that Yaqui Delgado wants to kick her ass. Piddy's never met Yaqui. Piddy doesn't even know what Yaqui looks like. Piddy definitely doesn't know what she did, or what she can do to make it better. All she can do is avoid Yaqui, try her best at school and her weekend job, search for information about her unknown father, and hope everything turns out for the best.
This book is primarily about bullying, but it's also Piddy's coming of age as she probes into her past and tries to set up her future. It was hard for me to read, because the bullying gets really bad, but Piddy is a really sympathetic character, even at her most teenage, and I wanted to see if she could get out of this intact. Piddy and her community of women (there are very few male characters) are warm and strong and trying, and even Yaqui is very understandable and sympathetic in her awfulness. Finally, everyone in this book is Latinx, but the book isn't especially about being Latinx: it's background, casual. I am a white girl, so I don't know if this is an appreciable thing, but as a lesbian, it's really nice to see books where women are queer and the story's not about that, so I thought I'd include it anyway.
Fuck Fascists Factor: 4--fascists have major problems. I mean, It's about brown American women standing up to bullying.
Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
I read this book in three days. Not just because the meeting was coming up and I have a really bad habit of playing book club chicken, but because it was that engrossing.
Americanah is possibly Adichie's most famous book, and certainly an excellent one. It is the story of Ifemelu, a Nigerian girl who falls in love with a boy named Obinze. Eventually, she moves to America to study, and is separated from Obinze when his visa is refused. Years later, Ifemelu returns to Nigeria and reunites with Obinze, now wealthy, married, and a father. The novel mostly follows Ifemelu-- we do get little side looks into Obinze's life without her, but it is her journey, her struggles and triumphs and pains, that define the story.
This is a sprawling story, and one that doesn't really resolve well, but then what about life resolves well? There's a sense that everything continues, that we don't see everything but we see enough, that this is just a small segment of a much larger story, which is an accomplishment in a book that runs nearly five hundred pages. I couldn't really tell you what it's about, specifically: immigration, race, love, strength, homecomings, where home is to begin with, life. Suffice to say that it's a great book, and definitely one I'd recommend.
Fuck Fascists Factor: 5--fascists will froth at the mouth. In addition to this being a story about a black immigrant woman doing her own thing, Adichie strongly critiques race and race relations in America.
This entry is crossposted at http://bookblather.dreamwidth.org/422460.html. Please comment over there if possible.
You Can't Touch My Hair, Phoebe Robinson
Someday, I want to be a quarter as smart, funny, and insightful as Phoebe Robinson.
You Can't Touch My Hair (And Other Things I Still Have To Explain) is an incredibly funny and insightful collection of essays on race, gender, pop culture, and the intersection thereof. Robinson is a black female comic, so her stories can be very raw, and yet her talent is such that they're hilarious anyway. It's clever and awesome and such a great book. Go read it immediately. Everyone. Well, every adult. I mean it.
Fuck Fascists Factor: 4--fascists have major problems. Robinson is black and female and hilarious and critiques many fascist viewpoints at the same time, how dare she.
A Wreath for Emmett Till, Marilyn Nelson and Philippe Lardy
Half poetry collection, half art project, A Wreath for Emmett Till is something called a sonnet cycle, which is an absurdly complicated style of poetry that I encourage you to look up if you're interested. I've tried to write one. They are not easy.
Anyway, there's not a lot to say about this book. We all know who Emmett Till was, and we all know he died much too early and too cruelly. The art is painful and disjointed in contrast to the smooth sonnet lines. It's a good, if painful, read.
Fuck Fascists Factor: 5--fascists will froth at the mouth. They murdered this boy. This book makes it clear.
Gabi: A Girl in Pieces, Isabel Quintero
Okay so this book is much darker than I was led to believe. That said, I did enjoy it. It's your pretty standard high school coming of age story.
Gabi Hernandez is a senior in high school dealing with your average teenage difficulties-- college applications, dating, dieting, poetry-- and your not-so-average teenage difficulties-- her friend Cindy's pregnancy, her friend Sebastian's difficulties with his family after he came out, her father's meth addiction. Gabi channels her fears and her joys into her diary, where she writes about her entire senior year, with occasional inclusions of poetry.
Gabi is a very likable and realistic protagonist, who goes through way more shit than any teenage girl should ever have to, and yet comes out more or less intact at the end. Or, well, if not intact, at least still stuck together, all of her broken pieces meshing into a beautiful whole. I really enjoyed this book, and would recommend it to more or less everyone over the age of fifteen or so.
Fuck Fascists Factor: 3--fascists have problems. Gabi and Cindy are both Latinx, and Sebastian is gay; I don't recall if he's Latinx as well. Also, the heroine is a teenage girl.
Spirits of the Ordinary, Kathleen Alcalá
This is a lovely magical realism book set along the Mexican-American border in the late nineteenth century. The story doesn't follow any one character in particular; it's more a tale of an extended family and their struggles with obsession. To me it really echoed One Hundred Years of Solitude, with that same languid feeling and sprawling nature of the story.
Zacarius is monofocused on the search for gold in the mountains. His father Julio searches through the Kabbalah to find God's perfect order. Their obsessive desires come close to destroying their families, their wives Estela and Marina, and Zacarius's children. Between and around those obsessions lie stories of Jewish mysticism and Catholic intolerance, the love of nature and the love of order, how clinging too hard can destroy something, and how dreams coming true sometimes fall apart.
I thought the book was a little jumpy in places, but it was really a lovely story. Like an impressionistic painting.
Fuck Fascists Factor: 4--fascists have major problems. If there was a white person in this book, I don't remember them. Oh, wait, there's an Irish priest. But he's kind of a jerk. Also, Jewish people are awesome and don't deserve to be persecuted.
Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass, Meg Medina
Piddy Sanchez is minding her own business when someone tells her that Yaqui Delgado wants to kick her ass. Piddy's never met Yaqui. Piddy doesn't even know what Yaqui looks like. Piddy definitely doesn't know what she did, or what she can do to make it better. All she can do is avoid Yaqui, try her best at school and her weekend job, search for information about her unknown father, and hope everything turns out for the best.
This book is primarily about bullying, but it's also Piddy's coming of age as she probes into her past and tries to set up her future. It was hard for me to read, because the bullying gets really bad, but Piddy is a really sympathetic character, even at her most teenage, and I wanted to see if she could get out of this intact. Piddy and her community of women (there are very few male characters) are warm and strong and trying, and even Yaqui is very understandable and sympathetic in her awfulness. Finally, everyone in this book is Latinx, but the book isn't especially about being Latinx: it's background, casual. I am a white girl, so I don't know if this is an appreciable thing, but as a lesbian, it's really nice to see books where women are queer and the story's not about that, so I thought I'd include it anyway.
Fuck Fascists Factor: 4--fascists have major problems. I mean, It's about brown American women standing up to bullying.
Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
I read this book in three days. Not just because the meeting was coming up and I have a really bad habit of playing book club chicken, but because it was that engrossing.
Americanah is possibly Adichie's most famous book, and certainly an excellent one. It is the story of Ifemelu, a Nigerian girl who falls in love with a boy named Obinze. Eventually, she moves to America to study, and is separated from Obinze when his visa is refused. Years later, Ifemelu returns to Nigeria and reunites with Obinze, now wealthy, married, and a father. The novel mostly follows Ifemelu-- we do get little side looks into Obinze's life without her, but it is her journey, her struggles and triumphs and pains, that define the story.
This is a sprawling story, and one that doesn't really resolve well, but then what about life resolves well? There's a sense that everything continues, that we don't see everything but we see enough, that this is just a small segment of a much larger story, which is an accomplishment in a book that runs nearly five hundred pages. I couldn't really tell you what it's about, specifically: immigration, race, love, strength, homecomings, where home is to begin with, life. Suffice to say that it's a great book, and definitely one I'd recommend.
Fuck Fascists Factor: 5--fascists will froth at the mouth. In addition to this being a story about a black immigrant woman doing her own thing, Adichie strongly critiques race and race relations in America.
This entry is crossposted at http://bookblather.dreamwidth.org/422460.html. Please comment over there if possible.