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[furyofvissarion]

If You Come Softly - Jacqueline Woodson. Ellie & Miah are two teens in love at Manhattan's exclusive Percy Academy. She's white & Jewish & lives on Central Park West. He's black & a basketball player & lives in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, the son of two separated black celebrities. This book could have been so cliched, but instead it mostly avoided that (the ending, to me, felt heavy-handed). I held my breath a bit throughout the book, nervous for the characters, wanting things to be different.

Woodson deftly portrays some of the ways people of color interact with each other, how that's different from the way they are forced to relate to whites, & how white people, as some of the characters discuss, are rarely forced to be aware that they're white. Ellie's startled realization that yes, even her liberal family--even her queer sister--might object to their relationship, never mind what people at school, people in the street in her wealthy neighborhood, might think, just barely escapes being comical because it rings true. Woodson works in lots of sharp observations on blackness & how it interacts with, variously, maleness, youth, & celebrity. Her mockery of a white kid at school who tries to talk like he's straight out of the hood is hilarious & spot-on.

The book alternates between Ellie & Miah's viewpoints; hers is in first person, his in third, which struck me as a bit odd. Possibly this choice was made due to the ending of the book, but nevertheless, I thought it was weird. I really, really didn't want the book to end the way it did, & though all too realistic, it still felt narratively like it came out of nowhere. I don't know--the point of the ending is that what happened does come out of nowhere all too often; I'm not sure if it felt too heavy-handed to me just because I so much wanted it not to be what happened.

Fruit of the Lemon - Andrea Levy. Faith is the daughter of Jamaican immigrants to England, troubled by racism throughout her childhood & now, as she starts her career working in television. When her parents float the idea of moving back to Jamaica for their retirement, she is shocked. Eventually, after witnessing a hate crime & suffering a nervous breakdown, her parents send her to visit relatives in Jamaica, where Faith eventually feels connected to her family & their history, & gains a more solid sense of self.

The book starts out strong but then peters out a bit. Parts of this book were very funny--the antics of Faith's white hippie roommates, some of her coworkers. And I did feel for Faith, not quite having the words to resist the racism she sees around her.

The second part of the book, Faith's trip to Jamaica, was weaker--much of it is taken up by long histories of individual family members, as told to Faith, complete with family trees so you can tell who's related to who. By the book's end I had trouble remembering who was who, but found the extensive diagrams annoying. As Faith prepares to return to the UK, she descends fully into cliche. Packing her suitcases, now empty of the many items she brought for her Jamaican relatives, she says, "I was taking much more back from Jamaica than I could have ever brought with me." And she's not talking about the "Don't worry, be happy" t-shirts or coffee berries she's bringing back. I appreciate the sentiment--I just felt like this was an instance where the old "show, don't tell" maxim could have been usefully employed.

(That was my 50th book for the 50books_poc challenge, btw! I've been doing the challenge running from IBARW to IBARW, which puts me way ahead of the game this year, heh.)

High Wizardry - Diane Duane. Re-read of the third book in the Young Wizards series. I know some folks laugh at how outdated the technology is in this book -- Apple IICs & floppy disks! -- but to me that doesn't detract from enjoying the story. I liked how Duane works in some hints about unstatedly-gay Tom & Carl, with a few lines about "coming out" (as wizards? Or as... you know?) & how telling the truth can be more difficult but is ultimately the best. Also, I enjoy what a badass Dairine is & how even though she becomes a mother figure in a big big way, she doesn't turn into a stereotype (or, really, even change that much as a person from what we've seen before).

A Wizard Abroad - Diane Duane. Re-read of the fourth book in the Young Wizards series, in which Long Island teen wizard Nita is sent to Ireland for the summer by her parents in a misguided attempt to give her a break from magic & from her partner-in-magic Kit. On the one hand, I'm really tired of books about how mythical & special Ireland is -- I have read so many, & yet cannot recall ever reading one about, say, the magical nature of Bulgaria. On the other, despite my general weariness of these sorts of stories, Duane still draws me in. Also, as an ex-pat I had new appreciation for the culture shock Nita goes through. I suppose if you're going to focus a book on the heroic nature of Ireland you need an epic battle in there somewhere, & Duane does a good job in making it appropriately sweeping & scary.

Window-box Allotment: A beginner's guide to container gardening - Penelope Bennett. Cutesy month-by-month guide to container gardening. Some might like its fluffy hippie tone & its faint exoticism (of the Far East, natch: she even describes an Oriental vs. Occidental seed race). Some might not even care that, when describing names for a particular variety of potato, she blithely lists "N*****'s Toe" as one of them, just one in a list w/all the rest, w/no reminder that, perhaps, this might not be a good name to use for this variety today. Some people might not care, but not me.

The Wizard's Dilemma - Diane Duane. Nita's squabbling with wizardly partner Kit, she's struggling a bit with schoolwork & the social mores of junior high, & most importantly, her mom might die. So yes, this installment of the Young Wizards series has a decidedly darker tone. Nita's agony as she tries to decide the right course of action is compelling. What struck me a lot in this one, as with the last couple, is the emphasis on how wizards must not inflict unnecessary pain or unnecessary deaths. Even viruses, it is argued, have the right to live. Sounds like a philosophy for vegan wizards, yes? And yet...

Twenty Wagging Tales: Our Year of Rehoming Orphan Dogs - Barrie Hawkins. The writing is mediocre at best, but let's be honest: no one reads these kinds of books for the writing, but for the heartstring-tugging, which this book serves up quite well. There were the usual predictable eyerolly moments, like comments about yobs. And one dog, rescued off the street by a Japanese exchange student in London, is named after the student's dog in Tokyo, who is named Tomodachi. Apparently this, even shortened, would be too difficult for Hawkins & his friends, as they translate it by calling the dog Friend instead.

Comments

[nevers.livejournal.com]

i'm glad you liked the woodson book! she is on the board at lava so lava owns all her books and i've read most of them, including that one (agree about the ending). none of them are favorite books of mine, but she seems to write them with a lot of intelligence and compassion and insight, and i love how she works in queer and color issues. that book really helped me think about the ways that color is connected to culture.