Literary Fiction by People of Color discussion
Read And Recommended
I felt the same way about Freshwater, Nadine...loved it and the uniqueness of it. I haven't ventured into Pet, so can't speak to that one. I've seen this one mentioned, but hadn't paid attention to the fact it was Emezi again. I'll have to consider it...so thank you, Faith.
Nadine wrote: "Faith wrote: "My review of The Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezihttps://www.goodreads.com/review/show..."
Thanks for the review, Faith! [book:Freshwat..."
The description of Pet doesn't really appeal to me.
Considering the subject matter was nothing new to me, I thought she did a decent job with the material. Good review!
Carmel wrote: "I felt the same way about Freshwater, Nadine...loved it and the uniqueness of it. I haven't ventured into Pet, so can't speak to that one. I've seen this one mentioned, but hadn't paid attention to..."You're welcome.
Mocha Girl wrote: "Considering the subject matter was nothing new to me, I thought she did a decent job with the material. Good review!"Thanks.
Faith The description of Pet doesn't really appeal to me..."Generally I don't read middle grades lit, but because it was Emezi..... I thought it was condescending to kids, which totally undercut the social message. My review. I have read a few middle grades books and adored some, like The Assassination of Brangwain Spurge - the pictures and story are both amazing. I'm curious to know how actual kids have felt about Pet, as opposed to grownups who loved Freshwater....
Nadine wrote: "Faith The description of Pet doesn't really appeal to me..."Generally I don't read middle grades lit, but because it was Emezi..... I thought it was condescending to kids, which totally undercut ..."
The link goes to the book rather than to your review, but I did find your review. I don't usually read middle grade books either, except for Jason Reynolds.
A lovely, powerful, unique memoir about a reality not shared by most neurotypical people, by a man who is a published poet and a university professor: The Secret Life of a Black Aspie: A Memoir.
I highly recommend Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson.This book is just brilliant!
Very readable and informative!
Beverly wrote: "I highly recommend Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson.This book is just brilliant!
Very readable and informative!"
I am tapping my foot impatiently because I'm 267 on our library's waitlist; OTOH, I'm so happy that so many people are checking it out and -- hopefully - reading it. I"m glad to hear that you enjoyed it, too.
Carol wrote: "Beverly wrote: "I highly recommend Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson.This book is just brilliant!
Very readable and informative!"
I am ta..."
I had two people in my Virtual Silent Book Club read this book. They gave it very high marks. One person believes it should be required reading in the school system. Enjoy Reading, 📚
I agree. CASTE deserves a wide audience and serious discussion. It affected me profoundly.
Beverly wrote: "I highly recommend Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson.This book is just brilliant!
Very readable and informative!"
I agree, it’s brilliant. Her analysis of the 2016 election made me very worried though.
I agree and have convinced my local book club to read it as our December BoM.
This isn’t literary fiction, but it was terrific. Overground Railroad: The Green Book & Roots of Black Travel in America by Candacy A. Taylor. My review https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I just read an incredibly disturbing book that I think I recommend. Crosshairs by Catherine Hernandez. It's a dystopian political fantasy (barely) set in the near future in an authoritarian Canada.
"All You Can Ever Know" by Nicole Chung is a lovely memoir with beautiful writing. It's about Chung's transracial adoption - her birth parents are Korean and her adoptive parents are white - and about the narratives adopters and adoptees tell themselves. Highly recommended. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3...
Mod
This is good to hear. I saw her in conversation with fellow Canadian, David Chariandy a while back and was interested in reading her. Particularly Scarborough.
Sarah wrote: ""All You Can Ever Know" by Nicole Chung is a lovely memoir with beautiful writing. It's about Chung's transracial adoption - her birth parents are Korean and her adoptive parents are white - and ab..."Good to see this recommended. I have it and have been thinking of reading it sometime before year end.
Anabasis is a very short story by Amal El-Mohtar and is free online. How "she persisted", I don't know. A must-read.
5★ Link to review of Anabasis (with a link to the story)
PattyMacDotComma wrote: "Anabasis is a very short story by Amal El-Mohtar and is free online. How "she persisted", I don't know. A must-read. 5★ Link to revi..."I've never heard of refugees walking to Canada through the snow to seek asylum in a hopefully more welcoming country. Thanks for the links. The story was powerful in all it said with such brevity.
Not fiction but a terrific resource we should find and share.This is a terrific, informative eye-catching graphic book for kids, teens, adults - folx - with advice and actions for everybody: This Book Is Anti-Racist: 20 Lessons on How to Wake Up, Take Action, and Do the Work by Tiffany Jewell.
It should be in all schools and libraries.
5★ Link to my review of Anti-Racist, 20 Lessons with some of the artwork.
Laurie wrote: "PattyMacDotComma wrote: "Anabasis is a very short story by Amal El-Mohtar and is free online. How "she persisted", I don't know. A must-read.I've never heard of refugees walking to Canada through the snow to seek asylum in a hopefully more welcoming country. Thanks for the links. The story was powerful in all it said with such brevity. "
I'd never heard of it either, Laurie. I think the attitudes and feelings about borders and eligibility and kindness must be the same everywhere, though.
Michelle Obama is an excellent example of "Nevertheless, she persisted", which has become a feminist cry. In her memoir, Becoming, she takes us from Chicago's Southside to Ivy League universities to the White House.Great read, great audio as well.
5★ Link to my review of Becoming
Beverly wrote: "I highly recommend Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson.This book is just brilliant!
Very readable and informative!"
I’m reading it now, and i am fascinated by it.
Bernie wrote: "Beverly wrote: "I highly recommend Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson.This book is just brilliant!
Very readable and informative!"
I’m reading it now, and i am fascinated by it..."
I read her Pulitzer Prize winner, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration and was captivated by her use of personal stories to illustrate many of her facts and discussions - it was a terrific read. I've ordered this book now, and I really look forward to reading it. Thanks for the pointer.
I've enjoyed articles by Ta-Nehisi Coates and wish I'd liked The Water Dancer as much as everybody else has. The slave trade was (and still is) appalling. Sorry I'm a bit late for the group discussion.
3.5★ Link to my Water Dancer review
As late as the 1960s, Australian Aboriginal children with white blood were forcibly removed from their black families, who were considered incapable of taking care of them. The White Girl is a fictional story about a grandmother and her very fair granddaughter, by Indigenous author Tony Birch. Thought-provoking (and infuriating).
3.5★ LInk to my White Girl review
I have listened to an Australian podcast who mentioned that book and few others about this dark part of history.
Electra wrote: "I have listened to an Australian podcast who mentioned that book and few others about this dark part of history."There are more and more books and articles and reports about Australia's shameful past, Electra. It's a pity so much has been lost already, but there are efforts to save the cultural heritage now (at last).
This is about Rwanda, by someone who lost so many people in her famliy.Igifu means hunger, and Scholastique Mukasonga's five stories show what a weapon it is.
5★ Link to my Igifu review
These have probably been discussed already but have had a good run in the past few weeks and would recommend quite a few things.Most recent is a selection of Ralph Ellison stories, The Black Ball moving and direct, my review:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
A collection, "I Will Not Be Erased": Our stories about growing up as people of colour reminded me a little in concept of The Good Immigrant but all articles by young women and non-binary people of colour talking about their experiences growing up,
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Lote a really entertaining debut novel by Shola Von Reinhold which also deals with serious issues about the erasure of black artists from history, as well as references to Virginia Woolf and a whole host of other literary material,
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
included in the publisher’s Jacaranda ’20 in 2020’ pledge
https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...
And Johny Pitts excellent Afropean: Notes from Black Europe which won the Jhalak Prize
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Also think you would include this as Asian-American? Brandon Shimoda's The Grave on the Wall inventive and moving account of finding out about the experiences of his grandfather coming to America, being interned during the war and his own attempts to work out his identity and travel to Japan to trace his family's history. But in doing so exposes key moments in Japanese-American history in wider terms:https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I just got finished listening to Zikora by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.I so enjoyed this novella.
It reminded me how much I miss reading Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, especially her fiction.
Mocha Girl wrote: "I enjoyed it also!"Zikora (ebook) is free through Amazon Prime - or $1.99 if you're not a Prime member.
Nadine wrote: "Mocha Girl wrote: "I enjoyed it also!"Zikora (ebook) is free through Amazon Prime - or $1.99 if you're not a Prime member."
and audible the audio book is also free if you are a prime member or if you are an audible member it is less than $2.00
I am following Robert Jones, Jr. for a while now on facebook. He is a writer and an author from New York City and will be publishing his debut novel January 5, 2021. Maybe his upcoming book The Prophets is an interesting book for the group discussion: http://www.sonofbaldwin.comA singular and stunning debut novel about the forbidden union between two enslaved young men on a Deep South plantation, the refuge they find in each other, and a betrayal that threatens their existence.
Isaiah was Samuel’s and Samuel was Isaiah’s. That was the way it was since the beginning, and the way it was to be until the end. In the barn they tended to the animals, but also to each other, transforming the hollowed-out shed into a place of human refuge, a source of intimacy and hope in a world ruled by vicious masters. But when an older man–a fellow slave–seeks to gain favor by preaching the master’s gospel on the plantation, the enslaved begin to turn on their own. Isaiah and Samuel’s love, which was once so simple, is seen as sinful and a clear danger to the plantation’s harmony.
With a lyricism reminiscent of Toni Morrison, Robert Jones, Jr., fiercely summons the voices of slaver and enslaved alike, from Isaiah and Samuel to the calculating slave master to the long line of women that surround them, women who have carried the soul of the plantation on their shoulders. As tensions build and the weight of centuries–of ancestors and future generations to come–culminates in a climactic reckoning, The Prophets masterfully reveals the pain and suffering of inheritance, but is also shot through with hope, beauty, and truth, portraying the enormous, heroic power of love.
In the virtual silent book club everyone brings their own book or E-reader and reads together quietly for an hour, then we all nerd out about books afterward.We kick off the meeting with a quick round of introductions where everyone says their name and a little about what they're reading. We love hearing about what people are reading (often in their other book clubs).
If you think you maybe interested in the virtual silent book club follow this thread below for the next scheduled date:
https://www.goodreads.com/event/list_...
Enjoy Reading,
La Tonya 📚
Just finished the Harlem Renaissance classic Black No More by George S. Schuyler. I enjoyed it very much. Very good satire, lampooning everything and everyone. Written in 1931, it is surprisingly readable and prescient in 2020. Don't know what that says about racial and social progress these last 90 years. A timeless classic. Highly recommended.I'm also listening to These Ghosts Are Family by Maisy Card and I am finding this debut so far to be great!! Well worth my time and attention.
I just finished The Heart of a Woman: The Life and Music of Florence B. Price by Rae Linda Brown, which is about both of those topics. Florence B. Price was the first black American woman to have a piece performed by an orchestra, and it was a major one to boot--if you haven't studied classical music, you can just go to youtube and listen to some of what is discussed to hear what is being written about.If you're interested, I wrote a much longer review than normal (I usually write fairly short ones) and included a few links to some of her music https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Gabriel Bump's Everywhere You Don't Belong won the $15,000 Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence.A sharply funny debut novel that introduces an irreverent comic voice. - Kirkus Reviews
A debut novel about what it means to grow up young and black on the south side of Chicago when it feels like your choices are slim to none.
Sounds good Bevery, thanks for the rec.
Beverly wrote: "Gabriel Bump's Everywhere You Don't Belong won the $15,000 Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence.A sharply funny debut novel that introduces an irreverent comic voice. - ..."
Just placed a library hold on it - sounds like just the book I need right now :)
Literary Fiction by People of Color
Books mentioned in this topic
What Remains After a Fire: Stories (other topics)What Remains After a Fire: Stories (other topics)
Indian Country (other topics)
Indian Country (other topics)
The Death of Vivek Oji (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Kanza Javed (other topics)Kanza Javed (other topics)
Shobha Rao (other topics)
Shobha Rao (other topics)
Akwaeke Emezi (other topics)
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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show..."
Thanks for the review, Faith! Freshwater is one of my all time favorite books, but I had such a dislike of Pet that I didn't know what to expect for Oji. Now I'm feeling better about it :)