50byPOC #6-10: Sacred Cows, Justice & Her Brothers, Wild Seed, Sweet Whispers, & more.
I have a post all ready for y'all about soup and my weekend, but I think I'm going to save it.
I was going to go to the library and check out some of the books on my reading list, but the new library isn't open Mondays.
I did, however, note that I'm wayyyy behind on my 50books_poc reviews, so here's some capsule reviews to get myself up to date.
#6: Nikki Giovanni, Sacred Cows...and Other Edibles
I didn't like SC&OE as well as other books by Nikki that I've read, but I still enjoyed it. She lost me with multiple essays on baseball. Read the book anyway, particularly for her stuff about how the humanities are our best weapon against racism and bigotry. The stuff on poverty in this book is also particularly poignant; the book was written in the late eighties, but the opening essay in particular could have been written last week.
#7: Virginia Hamilton, Justice & Her Brothers
I read this book while I was away at Uncle Ronnie's funeral. (Actually, that's also when I read Sacred Cows... and Wild Seed.) I loved the hell out of it and it makes me happy that there are sequels.
For the capsule reviews, I leave the plot out: you can check the reviews online if you want those details. This book had everything I like: it is YA, it is a-little-fantasy-a-little-sci-fi, it was written well, it was able to make me feel along with the characters and it compelled me to read further despite the sense of dread it built from very early on that something Terrible was going to happen. This book was published in 1998 (and won the Coretta Scott King Award), so I can't be irritated that I didn't run across it as a child. I can be irritated that it took me ten years to hear about and read it; I think it would have been a superior selection to several books I read in my Young Adult Literature course in college. (I think I may have run across Ms. Hamilton as a kiddo, because the title M.C. Higgins the Great is familiar to me, but I can't say as I remember the book.) Also, Hamilton is a poet. I'm excited to read more of her soon.
#8: Octavia Butler, Wild Seed
I was predisposed to like this book, it being The Great Octavia Butler and all. I've read other stuff of hers before and liked it, but I can't say I liked this book very well.
I haven't read any of the other Patternist novels, and perhaps once I have done so I'll find more affinity for Wild Seed. But I hated Doro so much that I couldn't commit to this book. Anyanwu was an interesting character - and Doro too, in fairness, and it's not that an immortal-and-thus-amoral character couldn't be interesting to me, or that the play between Destroyer and Creator in the novel was badly done. But I was just too disgusted by the shit Doro pulled and kept pulling - the eugenics! the sexism! the rapeyness! - to get all that deep into this book.
That said, I like Butler's style, I've enjoyed her books before, and I did read this one the day we buried my great-uncle, so it's likely to get another shot, once I've read some more Patternist stuff and maybe grasp something I've missed.
#9: Virgina Hamilton, Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush
This is the stuff, now. This book rocked my little world. This book left me in tears - and not little moist easily-brushed-away tears, either. I was on my couch crying like a three-year-old dealing with the sudden demise of Mr. Hooper, y'all.
DarkFantasy.org's POC in Fantasy Roundtable had good things to say about this book, and I've heard good things about it elsewhere. (Like Justice, it also won the Coretta Scott King award.) So when I decided that I needed to take a break last week and read something off the new books shelf, I picked this one up, reasoning that it was short and thus would be finished before I had to go to bed.
I love ghost stories. It's known facts that I love YA. I also love children-doing-for-themselves stories. When I was younger, Dicey's Song was one of my favorite books for this precise reason. It's not that I wanted my staid and uproar-free family to suddenly abandon me, or get murdered, or fall apart...but stories like Dicey's and The Island of Blue Dolphins, etcetera, really fascinated me. (When I ran across Olivia Joules & the Overactive Imagination years later, and the narrator talked about how she felt like she caused her parent's death by romanticizing the life of the orphan in the fiction she read, it resonated; no one ever died, but I definitely remember some guilt over liking these stories so much, since a prerequisite to star in them was a broken home.)
Tree doesn't come from a broken home, although for the first half of the book I wondered if that was going to be part of this story. She has a home, with her brother Dab and her mother Vy...but due to their family's economic needs, Vy stays gone for long periods of time, working, and Tree is left to take care of Dab. So when Brother Rush appears - first on the street, and then in the spare room - it's up to Tree to figure out what's going on, with Brother - a ghost from Tree's family past - and with her own brother, as well.
This book got down inside my guts and stomped around until it was sure I felt things deeply enough. Unlike Justice, this book was around for my childhood...and I wish it had had pride of place next to Cynthia Voight, back in the day.
#10: bell hooks, Feminism is for Everybody
I love this book. People end up borrowing this book from me, whether they like it or not. I've often thought (and may just end up doing it) of asking my bookstore lady how much of a discount she could get me on a bulk order of this book, so I can just start leaving it places.
bell hooks wrote Feminism is for Everybody because she felt the world needed a small, easily digested book on feminism that explained what it is and is not about, and provided an introduction to its basic concepts. Years after it was written, the world still needs this book, or at least to be aware of its existence.
I have used the stuff in FIFEB talking to so many people that I know about feminism, the kind of people whose rudimentary understanding of what it is was gleaned mostly from media backlash portrayals thereof. It's nice to be backed up by the printed word when you're patiently explaining the concept of privilege to someone and how it's of way more concern to the average feminist than foundation garments.
This book is awesome if you have not read it, and if you have I'd like to hear your thoughts on it and if/how it's helped you along the way.
***
10 down on the 50books_poc reading list. Tomorrow, I go to the library hunting Audre Lorde, This Bridge Called My Back, more bell hooks, and other tasty morsels. For the rest of today, I'm working on my POC On Gutenberg findings, I think...more on this project soon enough.
I was going to go to the library and check out some of the books on my reading list, but the new library isn't open Mondays.
I did, however, note that I'm wayyyy behind on my 50books_poc reviews, so here's some capsule reviews to get myself up to date.
#6: Nikki Giovanni, Sacred Cows...and Other Edibles
I didn't like SC&OE as well as other books by Nikki that I've read, but I still enjoyed it. She lost me with multiple essays on baseball. Read the book anyway, particularly for her stuff about how the humanities are our best weapon against racism and bigotry. The stuff on poverty in this book is also particularly poignant; the book was written in the late eighties, but the opening essay in particular could have been written last week.
#7: Virginia Hamilton, Justice & Her Brothers
I read this book while I was away at Uncle Ronnie's funeral. (Actually, that's also when I read Sacred Cows... and Wild Seed.) I loved the hell out of it and it makes me happy that there are sequels.
For the capsule reviews, I leave the plot out: you can check the reviews online if you want those details. This book had everything I like: it is YA, it is a-little-fantasy-a-little-sci-fi, it was written well, it was able to make me feel along with the characters and it compelled me to read further despite the sense of dread it built from very early on that something Terrible was going to happen. This book was published in 1998 (and won the Coretta Scott King Award), so I can't be irritated that I didn't run across it as a child. I can be irritated that it took me ten years to hear about and read it; I think it would have been a superior selection to several books I read in my Young Adult Literature course in college. (I think I may have run across Ms. Hamilton as a kiddo, because the title M.C. Higgins the Great is familiar to me, but I can't say as I remember the book.) Also, Hamilton is a poet. I'm excited to read more of her soon.
#8: Octavia Butler, Wild Seed
I was predisposed to like this book, it being The Great Octavia Butler and all. I've read other stuff of hers before and liked it, but I can't say I liked this book very well.
I haven't read any of the other Patternist novels, and perhaps once I have done so I'll find more affinity for Wild Seed. But I hated Doro so much that I couldn't commit to this book. Anyanwu was an interesting character - and Doro too, in fairness, and it's not that an immortal-and-thus-amoral character couldn't be interesting to me, or that the play between Destroyer and Creator in the novel was badly done. But I was just too disgusted by the shit Doro pulled and kept pulling - the eugenics! the sexism! the rapeyness! - to get all that deep into this book.
That said, I like Butler's style, I've enjoyed her books before, and I did read this one the day we buried my great-uncle, so it's likely to get another shot, once I've read some more Patternist stuff and maybe grasp something I've missed.
#9: Virgina Hamilton, Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush
This is the stuff, now. This book rocked my little world. This book left me in tears - and not little moist easily-brushed-away tears, either. I was on my couch crying like a three-year-old dealing with the sudden demise of Mr. Hooper, y'all.
DarkFantasy.org's POC in Fantasy Roundtable had good things to say about this book, and I've heard good things about it elsewhere. (Like Justice, it also won the Coretta Scott King award.) So when I decided that I needed to take a break last week and read something off the new books shelf, I picked this one up, reasoning that it was short and thus would be finished before I had to go to bed.
I love ghost stories. It's known facts that I love YA. I also love children-doing-for-themselves stories. When I was younger, Dicey's Song was one of my favorite books for this precise reason. It's not that I wanted my staid and uproar-free family to suddenly abandon me, or get murdered, or fall apart...but stories like Dicey's and The Island of Blue Dolphins, etcetera, really fascinated me. (When I ran across Olivia Joules & the Overactive Imagination years later, and the narrator talked about how she felt like she caused her parent's death by romanticizing the life of the orphan in the fiction she read, it resonated; no one ever died, but I definitely remember some guilt over liking these stories so much, since a prerequisite to star in them was a broken home.)
Tree doesn't come from a broken home, although for the first half of the book I wondered if that was going to be part of this story. She has a home, with her brother Dab and her mother Vy...but due to their family's economic needs, Vy stays gone for long periods of time, working, and Tree is left to take care of Dab. So when Brother Rush appears - first on the street, and then in the spare room - it's up to Tree to figure out what's going on, with Brother - a ghost from Tree's family past - and with her own brother, as well.
This book got down inside my guts and stomped around until it was sure I felt things deeply enough. Unlike Justice, this book was around for my childhood...and I wish it had had pride of place next to Cynthia Voight, back in the day.
#10: bell hooks, Feminism is for Everybody
I love this book. People end up borrowing this book from me, whether they like it or not. I've often thought (and may just end up doing it) of asking my bookstore lady how much of a discount she could get me on a bulk order of this book, so I can just start leaving it places.
bell hooks wrote Feminism is for Everybody because she felt the world needed a small, easily digested book on feminism that explained what it is and is not about, and provided an introduction to its basic concepts. Years after it was written, the world still needs this book, or at least to be aware of its existence.
I have used the stuff in FIFEB talking to so many people that I know about feminism, the kind of people whose rudimentary understanding of what it is was gleaned mostly from media backlash portrayals thereof. It's nice to be backed up by the printed word when you're patiently explaining the concept of privilege to someone and how it's of way more concern to the average feminist than foundation garments.
This book is awesome if you have not read it, and if you have I'd like to hear your thoughts on it and if/how it's helped you along the way.
***
10 down on the 50books_poc reading list. Tomorrow, I go to the library hunting Audre Lorde, This Bridge Called My Back, more bell hooks, and other tasty morsels. For the rest of today, I'm working on my POC On Gutenberg findings, I think...more on this project soon enough.