I fail at reading 50 books by people of color, but these are the ones I did read.

[minxy]

50books_poc is a community full of book reviews and recommendations. The challenge is to read 50 books, any genre, by an author of color. Many wonderful people are really good at reviewing the books they read on the comm; I am not one of them. This is the only set of book reviews I've written, and I'm woefully short of 50 books, as you see, but it was so worth joining that community. I had a list of scifi/fantasy authors of color (which I link to, below) but I was making my way only haphazardly through it; if I hadn't watched the community, I wouldn't have seen the many recommendations for Colson Whitehead, and that alone has been an invaluable discovery.

The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead. I'm starting with a bang here, because Whitehead is an author more people should know about. THIS MEANS YOU. GO GET THIS BOOK AND READ IT, YOU WON'T BE DISAPPOINTED. For a slightly more well-reasoned argument, and the recommendation that pointed me to this book in the first place, I give you: Rydra Wong's recommendation at 50books_poc. To summarize: fucking brilliant urban world, amazing nuanced protagonist. Fantastic mystery, with action and dialog that all works together, supporting characters that are multi-dimentional, have motivations of their own and no one is perfect, but everyone is interesting. It's fairly shocking to me that this was his first novel. Like, RW, I really want to read more of this author, and thank goodness there is more to read!

Imaro by Charles Saunders. There's a story here with this book. The story starts with a collection of authors gathered at matociquala's journal who write Scifi/Fantasy and are not pinkish-beige in color (her whimsical definition.) I had never heard of 95% of the authors, which, I believe, was the point. During IBARW last year, ltlj posted about a seminal action/adventure story written by and about a black man in the 80s that was underrepresented in the publishing world. In current day updates, the consistently inconsistent marketing was leaving what was one of the first black hero adventure stories in danger of going out of print.

I wanted to like this book, but it is, quite clearly, a man's fantasy adventure. Our hero was big and strong and determined from the start, although I was waiting for the quest to find his place and home to grab me. I put the story down after giving it a hundred pages or so and seeing the most interesting character (to me) walk out on page 6, never to be seen again. I have resold the book to Powell's, though, so hopefully someone who has been looking for just this kind of book will find it with delight. One thing I will say was done exceptionally well, though, was incorporating the landscape of Kenya and Tanzania (since the fictional tribes are based in the Maasai according to the author,) which are magical places without adding in a single fantastic element.

The Living Blood by Tananarive Due. I have the distinct impression that I somehow picked up the middle book in a series or something (I don't read horror very often, so maybe I'm just missing something), but the backstory as it's being fed to me is really interesting. I'm a few chapters in (reading on the buses seems to facillitate my picking up and putting down books in a much more haphazard fashion than I usually do,) and the different sets of characters are already in motion, interesting scientific and emotional plot arcs getting set up. I think the strength of this author is likely to be in her story, since the prose isn't particularly memorable; I am drawn to the incredibly sweet father/son relationship as it's being built up.

East/West by Salman Rushdie. Holy CRAP. This man has won Booker prizes on top of Booker prizes and I can totally see why he's so well known. Even if he has reduced me to incoherence when I think about this collection of short stories. Listen, if you were ever even vaguely interested in the idea of unreliable narrators, this is an incredible work to read for that merit alone. Rushdie crosses class lines, gender lines, caste lines, culture lines, and he'll do it from the point of view outside the story and yet completely failing at objectivity. My favorite story so far is about a woman applying for a visa at the consulate to go to America and marry some man she hasn't seen since her childhood. She's poor, she's orphaned, she's charming and self-controlled, and a scam artist visa seller notices her across a courtyard, waiting for the consulate to open. So many stories, all of them so rich like nothing else. It's like eating chocolate with chili in it for the first time.

Zahrah the Windseeker by Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu. I've just started reading this, and the first person voice is taking me a little while to get into (I think because the voice is a little boring, and the girl is just sort of drifting along at this point, as teenagers do.) Windseeker is a YA novel with an unusual young black woman as a protagonist. She herself less compelling than I might have wished, but the world is intruiguing me quite a lot: shades of Harry Potter (good magic market/dark magic market) are side-by-side with really remarkable world building that incorporates living flora into currency, buildings, communication and even hairstyles sometimes. I'll keep reading.

And now I reveal my random poetry phase:

For colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf :a choreopoem by Ntozake Shange. The strange spelling confuses me, since this was a performed piece originally, but it's something I can get over. Because, because, because. There are sections of this informally organized work that grab a hold of my mind and will not let go. Relevance to suicide? I have no idea, but some of the relationships and the glory of body and life and wonder and style are wonderous. I loved this. I wish I could see it performed.

E-Mails from Scheherazad by Mohja Kahf is contemporary poetry. This is much more formally organized discrete poems, and I'm less grabbed by the amazing novelty of the message. I think, though, that the the way that poems are organized in books sometimes is counterproductive to the experience. In this case, I have a feeling that we're starting big, with big issues and big emotions, and we'll get more subtle with details in later poems.

I have on my list of books to read:

Louise Erdrich's Plague of Doves. I read everything I could get my hands on from Erdrich when I was in high school. I just loved the way she built up the world she was moving in with such an elegant spare language. The worlds she wrote were frequently similar from book to book, though, so they lost some of their novelty for me after mainlining five or six novels. I wonder if my fascination will be reborn, lo these 15 years later. The cover is certainly gorgeous graphic art.

Salman Rushdie's The Enchantress of Florence, because dear GOD, THE LANGUAGE. THE CHARACTERIZATION. THE STORIES.

After Dark by Haruki Murakami. The cover on my copy is kind of trippy. Should be a wild ride, if I could find the time to actually do a little more reading.

I've also, over the course of the year, started reading the LJ's of authors like ktempest (K. Tempest Bradford) and matociquala (Elizabeth Bear) and yhlee (Yoon Ha Lee); I figure that since they write rather wonderfully in blog form, their written work will be fabulous too.

That's it! Wish I'd read more, but there's always next year.

Comments

[aestheticized.livejournal.com]

Oh, definitely read After Dark. I haven't read it yet, but I would hands down recommend anything by Murakami. I've read Kafka on the Shore (read it if you haven't; it changed my life) and half of Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, and I basically want to read anything that man's ever written. It's like a trippy, brilliant brain workout.

These reviews make me really want to read Salman Rushdie. And several other authors/books on your list. I'm definitely bookmarking this page. :D

[http://users.livejournal.com/_minxy_/]

Sweeeeeet. I was intimidated by Salman Rushdie almost because he was so successful, but I found his work to be instantly among my favorites.

Colson Whitehead, on the other hand, *should* be better known than he is. Consider checking him out.

Love the Murakami rec, thank you!

[braintastic.livejournal.com]

I actually just read After Dark - maybe a day ago? It only worked for me up to a certain point. I'm really not sure what it was I disliked, which is rare for me - I think it might have been the way it was narrated. I feel really uneasy about it, because I thoroughly enjoyed some parts and was completely disinterested in others, so I'm not exactly sure what to think. :/

On the other hand, before that I read a collection of his short stories - after the quake - and every single one of them was great. I've re-read them all at least once, and some of them multiple times.

(I got here from ibarw, if you were wondering.)

[http://users.livejournal.com/_minxy_/]

That's actually right in line with some other things I'd heard: that the humor and something else, maybe story? Was as good as ever, but the prose or characterization was uneven for Murakami. I love short story collections, though, so I'll give those a shot even if I'm lukewarm on the book I already have.

Cheers for ibarw! I didn't know if anyone would actually follow the links; it's fun to see.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

The Living Blood is indeed the middle of a series -- it's the sequel to Due's My Soul to Keep and a third book, Blood Colony, just came out a month ago. So long as you don't mind spoiling yourself for some events in the first book, though, I found TLB was quite readable on its own out of order -- I found the second one in a used bookstore and read it before I hunted down the first book, and still found them both quite enjoyable.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_minxy_/]

Awesome. That's fantastic to have confirmed. I'm really glad to hear it!

[stultiloquentia.livejournal.com]

I am really excited about this post, and I'm going to dump a bunch of these titles into my library request queue right away. Thank you so much.

I saw For colored girls who have considered suicide live a few years ago, in a tiny little black box theatre at Wellesley College. The director was lily white with a spectacular fall of blonde hair, and she cast people of all different colours. She hosted a talk-back every single night, and welcomed the hard questions. I loved watching the show, but I remember coming away feeling very peeved with myself for not having auditioned. Because the cast clearly found the experience twenty times more transformative than I did.

It occurs to me that I also have a stack of PoC-authored books I could review. A Discovery of Strangers, Salt Fish Girl, At the Full and Change of the Moon.... Huh, I could do an entire post on Canadian lit alone. *ponders*

[http://users.livejournal.com/_minxy_/]

I'd love to see the book reviews, and ironically, I have your new story open in another tab in my browser right this very moment! Just waiting for me to read the durned thing when I get home! Imagine!

The play sounds like an amazing experience. I can imagine how it would float over and around if you didn't live with it for a while; and that itself would be an interesting experience. I would imagine that the cast who lived and breathed it for months would have found it fairly transcendent, though. Man, that would be a neat experience. And now I want to see For Colored Girls about fifty million times more strongly event than I did before.

for colored girls.

[delux-vivens.livejournal.com]

Relevance to suicide? I have no idea,

The author attempted suicide several years before writing it.