![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
furyofvissarionPopco - Scarlett Thomas. Re-read. Nothing else to say that I haven't said before: I still adore this book & find it immensely comforting & inspiring.
Wild Meat and the Bully Burgers - Lois-Ann Yamanaka. Re-read. A beautiful & heart-wrenching novel about growing up poor in Hawaii, and the slow realization that you're not white, but everything white is clearly held up to be superior & there's nothing you can do about it, & the friction this causes with your family (whose 'fault' the non-whiteness is). The last chapter of the book just makes me bawl. I did find it interesting & depressing to see how Lovey, the main character, had instinctive sympathy towards, & affection for, non-human animals, & yet was forced to deny these tendencies several times (absent referent!).
Short Girls - Bich Minh Nguyen. I loved Nguyen's memoir Eating Buddha's Dinner, so I was stoked to see that she had a novel out. I wasn't disappointed: this is a smart and poignant read.
Linny and Van Luong are two Vietnamese American sisters; plain, studious Van stayed in their childhood home of Michigan to work as an immigration lawyer, while pretty Linny, the type of girl that elicits comments about wasted potential from teachers, moves to Chicago to flit from job to job.
Their father is an unsuccessful inventor obsessed with what he sees as the disadvantages of being short in US society. Seeing his daughters scramble to get items from high cabinets as children, he invented the Luong Arm, a grabber-type object to help short people reach things that are high up. As the story opens, he's decided to become a US citizen, convinced it will aid his quest to appear on a reality TV show about inventors.
Van & Linny are drafted to help their father throw a citizenship party and audition for the TV show, a process which opens old wounds. Nguyen captures well the shame & confusion that children of immigrants often have about the quirks of their parents, & the pain of realizing, as adults, the cost that being an Other in the US can take on one's parents & one's self. I really loved this!
"Lesbians" in East Asia: Diversity, Identities, and Resistance - Edited by Diana Khor and Saori Kamano. This anthology collects together writings on "lesbians" (the term appears in quotes to problematize it; as several of the authors explain, some women who have emotional/sexual attraction to women don't identify as lesbians) from Japan, Korea, mainland China, & Hong Kong. As the editors note, there isn't an abundance of such material available in English, particularly by Asian women themselves. Like any academic anthology, some of the pieces were less compelling than others, but in general, very interesting. Of particular note: Yuriko Iino's piece on how the Japanese lesbian community makes invisible the presence of Korean lesbians living in Japan; and Ji-eun Lee's piece on how boy band slash fanfic is used by young iban (queer, as translated by Lee) girls to explore their identities in Korea.
Wind Follower - Carole McDonnell. Such a bad book! Pretty much the only bright spot was having two POC protagonists. I was warned about the political dodginess -- about which more in a bit -- but the writing was also just painful. Lots of made-up fantasy language thrown in really clunkily -- if you need a long glossary at the back of the book to explain all the words you've used, you're not doing a good job. Also, in places, the text has the made-up word followed immediately by the English word, so you have people saying things like, "Indeed! Indeed!" or "So you say! So you say!" or worst of all, "Truly, truly! Truly, truly!" The book alternates between the first-person viewpoints of the two main characters, but their voices were indistinguishable to me & if I picked up in the book in the middle of the chapter I often had to flip back to the start to remind myself who was speaking. Lots of telling, not showing, & also things like Satha, the main female character, avowing that she isn't naturally curious, when on the previous page she spends time wondering about ancient languages & which ones might be used in old songs.
Anyway -- onto the plot & its dodginess. I am not the audience for Christian fantasy, but I think many Christians would find this book offensive. Basically Loic, the male main character, believes in the Creator, not the spirits that most everyone else around him does, & eventually his quest becomes to spread this religious truth to all the tribes, who are described with David Eddings-esque essentialist racism (for example, one tribe a character mentions is "slanty-eyed" & later on someone from this tribe is described as inscrutable). These groups are shown to be spiritually false because they
Now, I'm not really up on religious doctrines generally but even I can see the insults to other faiths McDonnell works in! There's also anti-abortion rhetoric, bits about the evilness of women, & an apology for colonialism: the blonde, light-skinned Angleni are the ones who have this true faith, & Loic is told that they will conquer the land but hey, they're bringing you the true religion at least! I'm sure there's more to say about this book but I can't be bothered to go through all the pages I turned down to mark crap. Oh, there's also the fact that Loic tries to kill Satha (they're married) after Satha is raped, but she doesn't stop loving him & they are reunited in love at the end of the book. Ugh.
Bone Crossed - Patricia Briggs. Well, I didn't think I would read this one, after the last one disgusted me in how it dealt with rape. I got a galley of this for a dollar, though, & read it in one day while I was sick with a cold. It was better than I expected. Mercy is still recovering from being raped, & now she's gotten a nastygram painted on her garage door that means basically that the vampires will no longer protect her, & thus she's fair game for any supernatural creatures who want to kick her ass. There were still things that irked me about the story, but I was surprisingly absorbed reading it.
White Witch, Black Curse - Kim Harrison. I've felt like the Rachel Morgan series was very uneven, with a slow start that finally really grabbed me after about 4 books, & then it got a bit trudge-y again. This one delivered, though, & displayed what I enjoy most about these books: the sometimes strained but ultimately very deep friendship between Rachel & her two sidekicks: Jenks the pixy & Ivy the vampire (who's in love w/Rachel but also is desperate for her blood). Rachel messing around w/demon magic comes back to kick her even more in this book; I like the way she ultimately decides to deal, emotionally, with accusations of being evil.
River's Daughter - Tasha Campbell. I really enjoyed this short novel. Gail Richards is a mixed-race girl growing up in a US frontier town; she & her mother love the creek that runs nearby, but everyone else fears & hates it, especially Gail's racist & abusive dad. The story is based around a fairy tale trope that I'm not particularly fond of (& that I feel is overused), but despite this, I was really drawn in. Campbell's writing is engaging, if at times still a little bit inexperienced in spots. I loved Gail & her mother. I look forward to reading more from Campbell.
Lesbians Talk: Making Black Waves - Valerie Mason-John & Ann Khambatta. A slender book of essays from 1993 on being black & a lesbian in the UK. "Black" here is used to mean "person of color" generally--a usage I'm not sure is in common currency right now. Based on interviews the authors did, the topics covered range from coming out (which they curiously capitalize, even mid-sentence: Coming Out) to how racism affects their relationships (or lack of) with white women, to the words these women use to identify themselves, etc. Of course the most depressing thing is how much of what they say regarding racism among queer communities could've been written yesterday. I didn't feel like this book told me much that I hadn't already read elsewhere but I can certainly see how back in 1993 it would've been a vital text.
Wild Meat and the Bully Burgers - Lois-Ann Yamanaka. Re-read. A beautiful & heart-wrenching novel about growing up poor in Hawaii, and the slow realization that you're not white, but everything white is clearly held up to be superior & there's nothing you can do about it, & the friction this causes with your family (whose 'fault' the non-whiteness is). The last chapter of the book just makes me bawl. I did find it interesting & depressing to see how Lovey, the main character, had instinctive sympathy towards, & affection for, non-human animals, & yet was forced to deny these tendencies several times (absent referent!).
Short Girls - Bich Minh Nguyen. I loved Nguyen's memoir Eating Buddha's Dinner, so I was stoked to see that she had a novel out. I wasn't disappointed: this is a smart and poignant read.
Linny and Van Luong are two Vietnamese American sisters; plain, studious Van stayed in their childhood home of Michigan to work as an immigration lawyer, while pretty Linny, the type of girl that elicits comments about wasted potential from teachers, moves to Chicago to flit from job to job.
Their father is an unsuccessful inventor obsessed with what he sees as the disadvantages of being short in US society. Seeing his daughters scramble to get items from high cabinets as children, he invented the Luong Arm, a grabber-type object to help short people reach things that are high up. As the story opens, he's decided to become a US citizen, convinced it will aid his quest to appear on a reality TV show about inventors.
Van & Linny are drafted to help their father throw a citizenship party and audition for the TV show, a process which opens old wounds. Nguyen captures well the shame & confusion that children of immigrants often have about the quirks of their parents, & the pain of realizing, as adults, the cost that being an Other in the US can take on one's parents & one's self. I really loved this!
"Lesbians" in East Asia: Diversity, Identities, and Resistance - Edited by Diana Khor and Saori Kamano. This anthology collects together writings on "lesbians" (the term appears in quotes to problematize it; as several of the authors explain, some women who have emotional/sexual attraction to women don't identify as lesbians) from Japan, Korea, mainland China, & Hong Kong. As the editors note, there isn't an abundance of such material available in English, particularly by Asian women themselves. Like any academic anthology, some of the pieces were less compelling than others, but in general, very interesting. Of particular note: Yuriko Iino's piece on how the Japanese lesbian community makes invisible the presence of Korean lesbians living in Japan; and Ji-eun Lee's piece on how boy band slash fanfic is used by young iban (queer, as translated by Lee) girls to explore their identities in Korea.
Wind Follower - Carole McDonnell. Such a bad book! Pretty much the only bright spot was having two POC protagonists. I was warned about the political dodginess -- about which more in a bit -- but the writing was also just painful. Lots of made-up fantasy language thrown in really clunkily -- if you need a long glossary at the back of the book to explain all the words you've used, you're not doing a good job. Also, in places, the text has the made-up word followed immediately by the English word, so you have people saying things like, "Indeed! Indeed!" or "So you say! So you say!" or worst of all, "Truly, truly! Truly, truly!" The book alternates between the first-person viewpoints of the two main characters, but their voices were indistinguishable to me & if I picked up in the book in the middle of the chapter I often had to flip back to the start to remind myself who was speaking. Lots of telling, not showing, & also things like Satha, the main female character, avowing that she isn't naturally curious, when on the previous page she spends time wondering about ancient languages & which ones might be used in old songs.
Anyway -- onto the plot & its dodginess. I am not the audience for Christian fantasy, but I think many Christians would find this book offensive. Basically Loic, the male main character, believes in the Creator, not the spirits that most everyone else around him does, & eventually his quest becomes to spread this religious truth to all the tribes, who are described with David Eddings-esque essentialist racism (for example, one tribe a character mentions is "slanty-eyed" & later on someone from this tribe is described as inscrutable). These groups are shown to be spiritually false because they
concerned themselves with small matters, such as what happened to the dead, what day and where to worship, what food to eat. There were some clans who created new books to 'explain' or supplement the Lost Book. There were others who removed portions that didn't suit them..... An Ibeni prophet also, angry that his ancient enemies--and not his own people--had been given a book from God, created a version which he called The Ibeni Recitation, professing it was the true uncorrupted version of the Lost Book. This self-styled prophet gathered followers to himself, declaring he was the Creator's only prophet.
Now, I'm not really up on religious doctrines generally but even I can see the insults to other faiths McDonnell works in! There's also anti-abortion rhetoric, bits about the evilness of women, & an apology for colonialism: the blonde, light-skinned Angleni are the ones who have this true faith, & Loic is told that they will conquer the land but hey, they're bringing you the true religion at least! I'm sure there's more to say about this book but I can't be bothered to go through all the pages I turned down to mark crap. Oh, there's also the fact that Loic tries to kill Satha (they're married) after Satha is raped, but she doesn't stop loving him & they are reunited in love at the end of the book. Ugh.
Bone Crossed - Patricia Briggs. Well, I didn't think I would read this one, after the last one disgusted me in how it dealt with rape. I got a galley of this for a dollar, though, & read it in one day while I was sick with a cold. It was better than I expected. Mercy is still recovering from being raped, & now she's gotten a nastygram painted on her garage door that means basically that the vampires will no longer protect her, & thus she's fair game for any supernatural creatures who want to kick her ass. There were still things that irked me about the story, but I was surprisingly absorbed reading it.
White Witch, Black Curse - Kim Harrison. I've felt like the Rachel Morgan series was very uneven, with a slow start that finally really grabbed me after about 4 books, & then it got a bit trudge-y again. This one delivered, though, & displayed what I enjoy most about these books: the sometimes strained but ultimately very deep friendship between Rachel & her two sidekicks: Jenks the pixy & Ivy the vampire (who's in love w/Rachel but also is desperate for her blood). Rachel messing around w/demon magic comes back to kick her even more in this book; I like the way she ultimately decides to deal, emotionally, with accusations of being evil.
River's Daughter - Tasha Campbell. I really enjoyed this short novel. Gail Richards is a mixed-race girl growing up in a US frontier town; she & her mother love the creek that runs nearby, but everyone else fears & hates it, especially Gail's racist & abusive dad. The story is based around a fairy tale trope that I'm not particularly fond of (& that I feel is overused), but despite this, I was really drawn in. Campbell's writing is engaging, if at times still a little bit inexperienced in spots. I loved Gail & her mother. I look forward to reading more from Campbell.
Lesbians Talk: Making Black Waves - Valerie Mason-John & Ann Khambatta. A slender book of essays from 1993 on being black & a lesbian in the UK. "Black" here is used to mean "person of color" generally--a usage I'm not sure is in common currency right now. Based on interviews the authors did, the topics covered range from coming out (which they curiously capitalize, even mid-sentence: Coming Out) to how racism affects their relationships (or lack of) with white women, to the words these women use to identify themselves, etc. Of course the most depressing thing is how much of what they say regarding racism among queer communities could've been written yesterday. I didn't feel like this book told me much that I hadn't already read elsewhere but I can certainly see how back in 1993 it would've been a vital text.