Kibkabe Araya's Blog, page 44
May 5, 2017
Tapping That Recommender
May 3, 2017
Harnessing That Twitter Power
April 24, 2017
‘Jane the Virgin’ TV Review: Chapter Sixty
April 23, 2017
Book Review: ‘The Education of Margot Sanchez’ by Lilliam Rivera
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
“The Education of...
April 20, 2017
Book Review: ‘Everything I Never Told You’ by Celeste Ng
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
“Everything I Never Told...
April 2, 2017
Book Review: ‘The Hate U Give’ by Angie Thomas
The Hate U Give by Angie ThomasMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
“The Hate U Give” by Angie Thomas looks into the Black Lives Matter movement from a personal viewpoint of a black teen struggling in two different worlds, and it’s done perfectly.
Starr lives in Garden Heights, the predominantly black side of the city riddled with crime, but attends Williamson Prep in the ritzy white suburb. While she balances her two personalities in these two different places, she gets caught up at a party where a shooting breaks out. She runs out with her childhood friend, Khalil, and they drive off. A police officer soon stops them for something trivial, and for showing attitude, Khalil gets shot and killed for reaching in his car for his hairbrush. The officer mistook it for a gun. And now Starr as the witness struggles with what comes after.
Starr deals with her nurse mother and ex-con father who owns a grocery store in the neighborhood; her old half-brother Seven who feels he has to take care of his other family under siege by a ganglord; her cop uncle; her white girlfriend Hailey who makes racist comments at school; insecurities around her white boyfriend Chris; and all her friends and neighbors in Garden Heights she feels she’s hurting somehow for not knowing how to approach the situation.
The novel explores a real young black girl perspective unheard of in the young adult genre, so it was exciting to read that voice. Her voice is raw, so at first it’s wonky to get used to the slang and how she explains her world, but it comes through fast enough to the point where the reader can get devoured by what’s going on. There are a lot of elements, but it shows real-life situations for a teen girl living in two worlds and seeing her friend die at the hands of a cop. Definitely a must-read for being a genre standout and looking forward to how the book will play out on the silver screen.
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March 30, 2017
Book Review: ‘The Mothers’ by Brit Bennett
The Mothers by Brit Bennett
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Brit Bennett’s “The Mothers” takes on a controversial issue that is usually viewed as an issue between two people but can impact an entire community as the secret unravels with the passage of time.
Nadia loses her mother unexpectedly to suicide and begins to ditch school. She finds herself at a restaurant by the beach where Luke waits tables since they live in San Diego. He’s the pastor’s son at the church they grew up in, and Nadia always had a crush on him, so they begin to have a relationship though Nadia is underaged at 17 while Luke is past 18. During their steamy stint, Nadia becomes pregnant. But she has dreams to go to the University of Michigan and become a lawyer, so she decides to get an abortion. She asks Luke for the funds because he has a job, but he gets the money from an unexpected source.
They move on with their lives, but the impact of the lost child lingers in the background, especially for Luke, who lacks ambition due to football injuries and believes a child could’ve changed everything for him. Nadia acts relieved about the decision because she believes her mother’s future was destroyed by having her at a young age and that’s why her mother shot herself in the head without a suicide note. Years later, when Nadia returns home to visit her lonely father, she finds out her best friend is going to marry Luke. The secret haunts her then. How can she tell her best friend what happened? These dilemmas build up for both Nadia and Luke until they explode and ripples shake up them, their families, and the rest of the church community.
This debut novel is simplistically heartfelt with the characters dealing with the impacts of abortion, depression, suicide and other everyday issues but trying to move past them with making strives and missteps along the way. It also shows how home may not be a source of comfort because that’s where the bad things happened, and every time you return, the bad things resurface in a different way.
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March 28, 2017
Cutting Up
2017 meant the start of querying my new adult novel. I sent out query letters to eight agents in the beginning of January, and now after two rejections — one automated and the other personal, I’m starting over. Mostly by cutting down my novel.
I rushed the querying process. This is the novel I primarily wrote in 2013 and been sporadically giving it attention since then mostly due to my demanding career. I want to get it out the door. With upping my novel intake in 2015, I’ve been reading acclaimed books by youngish authors who obviously remained focused. I want to be a part of the group, too. I stopped querying after I realized my word count may still be too long for a new adult novel at 97,000 words.
These acclaimed novels look like they overstepped acceptable word counts for specific genres because they took longer to devour, so I thought maybe I could get away with the same thing. Then after realizing the silent rejections, I looked back at the document and thought maybe the word count scared agents as well as the lack of a good title.
While I’m still working on a title, I decided to cut chunks out. Since it’s in first person, the character’s stream of consciousness went on too long a lot. It’s an issue other reviewers have told me, so I had cut it before, But now with reading more and studying the way authors write, I noticed there was too much explaining or commenting on inaction rather than keeping it simple with the action.
The character would say something along the lines “I kept it blunt” when she said little in an awkward situation. But her words spelled out she kept it blunt, so it didn’t need to be actually said after her quotes. Taking a break away from the novel has definitely helped with self-editing.
Now with my novel severed at parts with more severing to come to get it down to at least 85,000 words, I hope I can get back to querying with some success. Thanks to the Writer’s Digest “Guide to Literary Agents 2017″ I bought a few weeks ago, my success rate is zero, and it could be higher with several agents asking for work at a time. I’m trying to get on that level.
March 25, 2017
Book Review: ‘White Teeth’ by Zadie Smith
White Teeth by Zadie SmithMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Zadie Smith’s “White Teeth” explores the dynamics between two families, the Jones and Iqbals, between 1970s and 1990s London, and a third family that throws the story off toward the end.
Archie Jones and Samad Iqbal meet while fighting in World War II and reunite 30 years later when Samad, originally from Bangladesh, moves to London with his new wife, Alsana, from an arranged marriage. The day Archie decides to commit suicide - but doesn’t - is when he meets his future wife, Clara, a Jamaican with awful teeth. Alsana and Clara eventually befriend each other when they’re pregnant at the same time with Alsana having twins Millat and Magid and Clara having Irie. The children grow up together, going in different directions while Archie and Samad and Alsana and Clara remain close, almost detached from helping these children grow into adults with the ambition they themselves lacked.
The characters are trying to assimilate in the West with carrying guilt about where their bloodlines will go in the new world. The Iqbals worry about their sons becoming Westernized while Clara worries about her daughter going back to her Jamaican Jehovah Witness roots and Archie not feeling a sense of family history at all. Irie, for example, goes to live with her devout Jehovah Witness grandmother taken care by Clara’s ex-boyfriend convert. Clara ran away from that life. On the other hand, Millat is popular and seen hot at school with juggling girls at all times but goes astray with an Islamic sect that worries his father who struggles with not being the most religious Muslim.
The story turns when these families meet the Chalfants. Irie and Millat get in trouble at school with classmate Joshua Chalfant and create a study group since Joshua has top grades while Irie and Millat need help. Except the Chalfants are the upper class white Jewish Londoners who must save the Iqbals and Jones in crisis. Irie and Millat love being with the Chalfants where mother Joyce is a famous botanist and Marcus a famous scientist, while their parents hate the family for taking their attention.
This is where the novel takes an interesting turn. The white family saving the South Asian and interracial families comes off as offensive, as the adult characters see it this way, but the plot becomes strange when the Chalfants enter the scene. Joyce is annoying with her obsession to save Millat and Marcus is annoying with his obsession to save Magid while Irie doesn’t get the same attention and makes questionable choices as a result. The Chalfants take it upon themselves to help the kids of color to get them on the right track. The white savior motive in stories annoy me personally, but the novel overall is beautifully written with family histories tied in to show how the characters in the present are trying to overcome the obstacles of being first-generation Westerners.
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February 24, 2017
Book Launch Party: The Education of Margot Sanchez
Tuesday night, I attended the launch party for “The Education of Margot Sanchez” by Lilliam Rivera. After hearing buzz around the novel for months, I traded in a night of writing to see a novel officially enter the literary space.
I’m working on a young adult novel with elements of “The Little Mermaid” that will deal with teenage hardships, gang violence, academic pressures, and young love. So when I heard about this novel, I waited with anticipation and luckily received an invitation through my book club.
The story surrounds the title character punished for stealing her father’s credit card to buy designer duds to wear at her prep school. Her punishment is to become one of the cashieristas at her family’s market. Coming of age in the Bronx as a young Latina juggling with class issues and gentrification was a story rarely seen in the young adult genre.
The past two years have exploded with more characters of color ushering a new face to the genre. When I was a teen devouring library books, all the heroines I admired were presumably white, with the race of other characters defined. I saw my personality traits in those characters but wished at least one or two could look like me on the cover and understand my brown-skinned world. With Lilliam Rivera and Nicola Yoon, who presently has both her latest novels on the bestseller’s list at the same time, the game is evolving for the generation of girls looking for characters they can relate to, on a cultural and racial level.
The party attracted around 60 people at Other Books in Boyle Heights, a neighborhood undergoing gentrification, and incorporated the book’s New York flavor with a deejay blasting hip-hop goodies. I usually bail on book launch parties because they take place after a long day at work, but it was nice to see a celebration for a book and the author talking about it with others. I want that someday soon.
