queerlit50 , a comm designed to encourage more reading and sharing of books by queer authors.

It takes for its inspiration the 50books_poc  challenge--imitation being the sincerest form of flattery. Please do spread the word!

So as you may have noticed from my review, I loved Disney's The Princess and the Frog. (Go see it!) But the film does suffer from depressingly common voodoo!fail, in which a complex religious tradition is reduced to a boogeyman to power the story's engine.

So I thought I'd make a list of other stories that incorporate the religions of the African ( Read more... )

Randa Jarrar, whose first novel I recommended here, has a short but cute and moving piece up about her relationship with her son. Plus, I learned from the author blurb that A Map of Home won a 2009 Arab American Book Award. Congratulations to her!

I'm not usually one for food blogs, but I love The Silk Road Gourmet. Author Laura Kelley includes a ( Read more... )

A few years ago, I started an essay comparing and contrasting race and gender in the Harry Potter and Percy Jackson books (two very similar YA fantasy action-adventure series). Now the latter series is complete, but just about everything that needs to be said about race and gender in Harry Potter has been said. So I've focused here on Percy Jackson ( Read more... )

Finally, given the notorious reluctance of many publishers to include people of color in cover art, it’s worth noting that Houghton Mifflin has put two black girls on the US hardcover of M+O4EVR-an arguably darkened Marianne’s skin rather than the usual lightening. (The effect is somewhat diminished, however, by the fact that they are small in size ( Read more... )

The 4th Asian Women Carnival has an utterly awesome theme (“storytelling, or reclaiming ourselves through words”). It is all too true Asian women are too often unheard or dismissed as authorities, even on their own lives. Since I’m not an Asian woman, the theme makes me think about the need to listen to someone else’s story, to cede space to Asian ( Read more... )

( Why you should read Kamila Shamsie's fabulous book )

A friend asked me recently to give her my personal Top Ten YA books. I've concentrated on books of outstanding literary merit published in the last ten years, but of course there are many classics from my childhood that I love.

( The list behind the cut )