Vaught, Susan - Stormwitch
Won the Carl Brandon Kindred award this year, given out for YA works of speculative fiction that deal with issues of race and ethnicity.
I loved this book. Ruba has just lost her Grandmother Ba and moved from Haiti to Mississippi to live with her Grandmother Jones, who thinks Ruba's magic is witchery. Mississippi in 1969 is still reacting to Freedom Summer, and Ruba has a difficult time adjusting to a world in which she is a colored and a second-class citizen, despite the laws being changed. She doesn't understand Grandmother Jones and why she won't fight more, and to top it all off, an ancestral enemy is on its way to attack her new home.
I loved this book, and even though the narrative is your normal coming-of-age story, complete with the guardian who is more than what she seems, it feels fresh and new because of the Haitian background and because it's set in 1969 Mississippi. Also.... I am biased because the Civil Rights Movement is something that has embodied bravery and courage and doing what's right for me for so long that reading about the aftermath, reading about people's reactions to it... there's no way I couldn't not love it. (I feel rather odd claiming the Civil Rights Movement and Martin Luther King, Jr., given that I learned about them in Taiwan, and again... everything is more complicated) But I loved Grandmother Jones, who does have courage of a sort that Ruba has to learn to understand, and I loved Ruba, who is a warrior through and through.
And I loved learning about the Dahomey Fon of Africa and Ruba's ancestors, and I am sad that reading fantasy and sf that draws from the Civil Rights Movement and African folklore is still so rare for me that it's a delightful surprise. I need to read more of it.
Also, I had a little frisson of delight when I noticed that the book, which I got via inter-library loan, is from the new San Jose Martin Luther King, Jr. library.
Links:
- minnow1212's review
I loved this book. Ruba has just lost her Grandmother Ba and moved from Haiti to Mississippi to live with her Grandmother Jones, who thinks Ruba's magic is witchery. Mississippi in 1969 is still reacting to Freedom Summer, and Ruba has a difficult time adjusting to a world in which she is a colored and a second-class citizen, despite the laws being changed. She doesn't understand Grandmother Jones and why she won't fight more, and to top it all off, an ancestral enemy is on its way to attack her new home.
I loved this book, and even though the narrative is your normal coming-of-age story, complete with the guardian who is more than what she seems, it feels fresh and new because of the Haitian background and because it's set in 1969 Mississippi. Also.... I am biased because the Civil Rights Movement is something that has embodied bravery and courage and doing what's right for me for so long that reading about the aftermath, reading about people's reactions to it... there's no way I couldn't not love it. (I feel rather odd claiming the Civil Rights Movement and Martin Luther King, Jr., given that I learned about them in Taiwan, and again... everything is more complicated) But I loved Grandmother Jones, who does have courage of a sort that Ruba has to learn to understand, and I loved Ruba, who is a warrior through and through.
And I loved learning about the Dahomey Fon of Africa and Ruba's ancestors, and I am sad that reading fantasy and sf that draws from the Civil Rights Movement and African folklore is still so rare for me that it's a delightful surprise. I need to read more of it.
Also, I had a little frisson of delight when I noticed that the book, which I got via inter-library loan, is from the new San Jose Martin Luther King, Jr. library.
Links:
- minnow1212's review