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 ( Read more... )

( The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami )

7. Jamaica Kincaid, LucyThis 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 ( Read more... )

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 ( Read more... )

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 ( Read more... )

(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 ( Read more... )

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" -- ( Read more... )

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 ( Read more... )

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 ( Read more... )

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 )