furyofvissarion (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
furyofvissarion) wrote2009-06-06 05:09 pm
furyofvissarion) wrote2009-06-06 05:09 pm
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The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian - Sherman Alexie. As amazing as everyone says. And yes, there were funny bits but I found them mostly bittersweetly funny, not like fuckhead Amy Sedaris whose blurb says that she “laughed consistently from beginning to end.” I mean, yeah, I laughed, but along with about a billion times I wanted to cry, & consistent laughter isn't really a reaction I can comprehend.
Junior is a 14-year-old living on the Spokane Indian Reservation. In addition to some medical issues (“I was born with water on the brain”) life on the rez, as you might surmise, is not rosy—there is violence, there is addiction, & Junior's already been to 42 funerals in his short life. In an attempt to get off the rez for good, he becomes the only Indian to go to an all-white school (he often has to hitchhike to & from school, or walks the 22 miles each way). This earns him the hatred both of his community on the rez & of many of the students at his new school.
Alexie doesn't pull any punches about what being poor & being Indian are like—no romanticization here, thankfully, & his commentary is really cleverly blunt. Also, I think the ending struck the right balance between cloyingly unrealistic & completely bleak.
Silver Phoenix - Cindy Pon. Ai Ling, a teenaged girl in mythical China, runs away to find her father, a former government official who's disappeared. On the way, she encounters loads of wacky demons (three-breasted women, etc.!), realizes she has some weird psychic powers, & oh yeah, meets a cute boy who also happens to be mixed-race (Chinese & white, it seems to be). I really liked what a buttkicker Ai Ling turned out to be, & while I resisted the budding romance between her & Chen Yong for a while, eventually I gave in because it was actually v. cute. Chen Yong gets a lot of crap for being mixed-race (& thus inferior), but I also felt like he was exoticized a bit by Ai Ling herself—okay, she's never seen a white person before, so his amber eyes & light hair or whatever will be interesting. It just... I don't know, as a mixed-race person myself it felt a bit creepy. I'm happy to have more mixed people in books! But sometimes I think they go a bit weird (like the way it's treated by Justina Chen Headley, where lots of Asian American girls are like, “Ooooh, I wish I were so lucky as to be hapa like you!”--ack). Anyway—I mostly enjoyed the book, but it felt a little long to me at times. I will check out the sequel whenever it comes out, though.
The Darker Mask: Heroes from the Shadows - Edited by Gary Phillips and Christopher Chambers. After a lot of googling, I have tentatively concluded that I can count this for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
50books_poc, though there are a number of white authors included. The cover text itself was very coy about whether or not this was meant to be stories about POC superheroes: “characters and stories that color a universe beyond those found in previous homages to pulp.... tales of extraordinary folks who have been ignored, marginalized, stereotyped. They may lurk in the shadows of a soon-to-be-gentrified ghetto, the dreary rust belt of the city, or in another dimension or planet entirely.”
I found the stories ranged widely in quality; some were shockingly bad, others were pretty fabulous. Also, several had old-school comics tropes I didn't enjoy (damsels in distress, especially if they are sex workers).
Naomi Hirahara's “Tat Master” was hilarious, about a Japanese tattoo artist in the US, whose usual worst case scenario involves exotification by idiots wanting inaccurate kanji tattoos, but discovers strange things are happening to the people she tattoos. I loved “Henchman,” where Mat Johnson takes a good look at the class privilege involved in who gets to be a “hero” & who gets to be a “villain,” via a down-on-his luck dad w/child support to pay who goes to a temp agency supplying villains with their crews. Walter Mosley (“The Picket”) & Gary Phillips (“And What Shall We Call You?”) both offer do-gooder origin stories I found appealing. Doselle Young's excellent “Housework” rounds out the collection; I appreciated the female protagonist (& the focus on her relationship w/her best friend), the centrality of race & class to the plotline, & some v. amusing bits of dialogue.
Not Without Laughter - Langston Hughes. I was introduced to Hughes' poetry as a young child in school, but I don't think I was aware that he'd written a novel until I stumbled upon this one. Sandy is a small boy growing up with his grandmother & mother in Kansas; it's a fairly straightforward slice-of-life sort of story, which I enjoyed in the beginning of the novel & the last half, when Sandy gets older. Some of the middle dragged, I found.
Hughes did a good job illustrating the complexities of life for Sandy & his family & community: how class, religion, & race all intertwine. All the characters trying to find a life outside the constraints they find themselves in seem to do it, sadly—if they manage it at all—at the cost of alienation (temporary or not) from their families. My favorite character was Sandy's youngest aunt, Harriett, a brilliant dancer & singer who gives up her job at a white country club in disgust, & is usually at loggerheads with her mother for staying out late partying & dancing.
Buxton Spice - Oonya Kempadoo. This is a coming-of-age novel about Lula, a girl growing up in Guyana. There were playful bits about her & her friends exploring their sexuality that I liked (plus one dodgy bit involving a local “madman”), but overall I found it hard to involve myself in this novel too much. My general reaction was, “Meh.”
Junior is a 14-year-old living on the Spokane Indian Reservation. In addition to some medical issues (“I was born with water on the brain”) life on the rez, as you might surmise, is not rosy—there is violence, there is addiction, & Junior's already been to 42 funerals in his short life. In an attempt to get off the rez for good, he becomes the only Indian to go to an all-white school (he often has to hitchhike to & from school, or walks the 22 miles each way). This earns him the hatred both of his community on the rez & of many of the students at his new school.
Alexie doesn't pull any punches about what being poor & being Indian are like—no romanticization here, thankfully, & his commentary is really cleverly blunt. Also, I think the ending struck the right balance between cloyingly unrealistic & completely bleak.
Silver Phoenix - Cindy Pon. Ai Ling, a teenaged girl in mythical China, runs away to find her father, a former government official who's disappeared. On the way, she encounters loads of wacky demons (three-breasted women, etc.!), realizes she has some weird psychic powers, & oh yeah, meets a cute boy who also happens to be mixed-race (Chinese & white, it seems to be). I really liked what a buttkicker Ai Ling turned out to be, & while I resisted the budding romance between her & Chen Yong for a while, eventually I gave in because it was actually v. cute. Chen Yong gets a lot of crap for being mixed-race (& thus inferior), but I also felt like he was exoticized a bit by Ai Ling herself—okay, she's never seen a white person before, so his amber eyes & light hair or whatever will be interesting. It just... I don't know, as a mixed-race person myself it felt a bit creepy. I'm happy to have more mixed people in books! But sometimes I think they go a bit weird (like the way it's treated by Justina Chen Headley, where lots of Asian American girls are like, “Ooooh, I wish I were so lucky as to be hapa like you!”--ack). Anyway—I mostly enjoyed the book, but it felt a little long to me at times. I will check out the sequel whenever it comes out, though.
The Darker Mask: Heroes from the Shadows - Edited by Gary Phillips and Christopher Chambers. After a lot of googling, I have tentatively concluded that I can count this for
50books_poc, though there are a number of white authors included. The cover text itself was very coy about whether or not this was meant to be stories about POC superheroes: “characters and stories that color a universe beyond those found in previous homages to pulp.... tales of extraordinary folks who have been ignored, marginalized, stereotyped. They may lurk in the shadows of a soon-to-be-gentrified ghetto, the dreary rust belt of the city, or in another dimension or planet entirely.” I found the stories ranged widely in quality; some were shockingly bad, others were pretty fabulous. Also, several had old-school comics tropes I didn't enjoy (damsels in distress, especially if they are sex workers).
Naomi Hirahara's “Tat Master” was hilarious, about a Japanese tattoo artist in the US, whose usual worst case scenario involves exotification by idiots wanting inaccurate kanji tattoos, but discovers strange things are happening to the people she tattoos. I loved “Henchman,” where Mat Johnson takes a good look at the class privilege involved in who gets to be a “hero” & who gets to be a “villain,” via a down-on-his luck dad w/child support to pay who goes to a temp agency supplying villains with their crews. Walter Mosley (“The Picket”) & Gary Phillips (“And What Shall We Call You?”) both offer do-gooder origin stories I found appealing. Doselle Young's excellent “Housework” rounds out the collection; I appreciated the female protagonist (& the focus on her relationship w/her best friend), the centrality of race & class to the plotline, & some v. amusing bits of dialogue.
Not Without Laughter - Langston Hughes. I was introduced to Hughes' poetry as a young child in school, but I don't think I was aware that he'd written a novel until I stumbled upon this one. Sandy is a small boy growing up with his grandmother & mother in Kansas; it's a fairly straightforward slice-of-life sort of story, which I enjoyed in the beginning of the novel & the last half, when Sandy gets older. Some of the middle dragged, I found.
Hughes did a good job illustrating the complexities of life for Sandy & his family & community: how class, religion, & race all intertwine. All the characters trying to find a life outside the constraints they find themselves in seem to do it, sadly—if they manage it at all—at the cost of alienation (temporary or not) from their families. My favorite character was Sandy's youngest aunt, Harriett, a brilliant dancer & singer who gives up her job at a white country club in disgust, & is usually at loggerheads with her mother for staying out late partying & dancing.
Buxton Spice - Oonya Kempadoo. This is a coming-of-age novel about Lula, a girl growing up in Guyana. There were playful bits about her & her friends exploring their sexuality that I liked (plus one dodgy bit involving a local “madman”), but overall I found it hard to involve myself in this novel too much. My general reaction was, “Meh.”