The Tragic Mulatto and Great by Sara Benincasa (Review)

I'm steeped in books that are to be considered for the Georgia Peach Award and Great by Sara Benincasa was among them. I must admit that I wasn't enticed by the book flap, which described, yet another foray into the rich and entitled lives of WASPy teens during a Summer in the Hamptons, but what I found after the first chapter was a LGBTQ retelling of The Great Gatsby. Here is the good, bad and ugly.

The Good: Inventive and juicy, Great follows Naomi, an angsty Chicago-bred girl as she spends another Summer with her super-successful Paula Deen/Racheal Ray-esque mother in the Hamptons. We're told that she has two lives. One with the down-to-earth folks in the city and her Dad and another with the super-rich with her mother in the Hamptons every Summer. It's fun to see how the Gatsby character is reimagined in an 18-year-old fashion blogging lesbian, and even though you have an idea of the frame of the story the twists in the road seem fresh.

The Bad: Aren't we tired of WASPy teen settings among the children of the Senators? In addition, the endless references to the beautiful people as being pale and thin are old and untrue. We're supposed to feel snarky about it as it comes out of the mouth of our "outsider" main character, but it just reaffirms the stereotype of blonde, tall and thin as the epitome of beauty. I disagree! It would have been interesting to set the scene in Texas old money or the cutthroat world of competitive ice dancing.

The Ugly: Unfortunately you run into problems when you just swap out one character for another in a story. All placements aren't equal and when an adult male is replaced by a social climbing "outsider" teen lesbian then the story transforms into something other than a commentary on love and money. The tragedy isn't placed at the feet of the class system but at the character's sexuality. You could argue that Great is a tragic mulatto story.

From Wikipedia:

The female "tragic octoroon" was a stock character of abolitionist literature: a light-skinned woman raised as if a white woman in her father's household, until hisbankruptcy or death has her reduced to a menial position and sold.^[2] She may even be unaware of her status before being so reduced.^[3] This character allowed abolitionists to draw attention to the sexual exploitation in slavery, and unlike the suffering of the field hands, did not allow slaveholders to retort that the sufferings of Northern mill hands were no easier, since the Northern mill owner would not sell his own children into slavery.^[4]The "tragic mulatta" figure is a woman of biracial heritage who must endure the hardships of African-Americans in the antebellum South, even though she may look white enough that her ethnicity is not immediately obvious. As the name implies, tragic mulattas almost always meet a bad end.

Our Gatsby, Jacinta, is doomed from the beginning, not because of a strar-crossed love, but because she's gay, and therefore doomed from the beginning. This is problematic when there are so few love stories between girls in YA. If there were other representations I might throw up my hands and say, eh, it's just a good story.

Bottom Line: Is it a good story? Definitely. I wouldn't review it if it weren't. Is it a good book? Maybe not. I'll definitely put it in my love story and LGBTQ display, but I probably won't handsell it too much because of the problematic depiction of the viability of teen homosexual relationships.

I could be totally wrong. Tell me your thoughts. After, all, who am I to speak for the LGBTQ community.


Note to publishers: The appeal in the book is the retelling and the LGBTQ aspect. None of that is mentioned in the flap. Are you being deliberately obscure?

Advocacy in Action - #weneeddiversebooks and the school library

We've all been galvanized by the twitter campaign #weneeddiversebooks and a lot of us have added tweets, but to make an impact we need to make an economic dent. The main challenge to diverse books is the publisher's excuse that they don't sell. Now this reason rings false to my ears when we understand that most books aren't bestsellers, nor are they expected to be. The bottom line is that an agent and editor liked it and submitted it and fought for it. Without agents and editors that relate to the writers with diverse stories then those with the power to publish will never see them. From there we have to hope and pray that the publisher doesn't have some internal bias, aversion or blindness afforded by privilege and push it further. Once the embattled story has made it through that process it is up to the market to respond. That is where librarians come in.

We have to make a commitment to these books. We have to seek them out and feature them prominently. We have budgets, we have purchasing power and that means we have a voice. One way you can ensure that you get the titles featuring people of color, feminist heroines, and  LGBTQ protagonists is to cancel your subscriptions. That's right, let Junior Library Guild and Follett know that while you'll still be purchasing, you won't be relying on them to make selections for you because they don't provide enough diverse titles. And to make an impact you have to tell them WHY you're cancelling. They are guaranteed dollars with the subscription and they won't want to let you go. Next year they'll be putting the pressure on publishers to provide them with diverse titles.

The hard part from there is actually finding the titles you want to put on your shelves. This is where the internet comes in. There are a number of places you can go. Here are a few of my faves:

http://thebrownbookshelf.com/

http://www.leeandlow.com/

http://www.cbcdiversity.com/

http://www.ala.org/glbtrt/award/honored

http://www.ala.org/alsc/awardsgrants/bookmedia/belpremedal

You can also join a listserv to connect with other librarians who are like minded. They are always good to tap for recommendations:

• equilibr@ala.org   ACRL Racial & Ethnic Diversity Committee
• ascla-igtl@ala.org   ASCLA Tribal Librarians Interest Group

•  yalsa-lockdown@ala.org  Discusses issues unique to librarians working with incarcerated youth.
•  ya-urban@ala.org    YALSA serving YA’s in large urban populations
• glbtrt-reviewers@ala.org   GLBTRT Reviewers list

Finally, start networking with people on twitter. Here are a few to follow:

@yalsa
@diversityinya
@uncommonya
@_DiversifYA
@leeandlow

The Writer's Voice - Willow Born- Query and 250

I hope this letter finds you well. I'm reaching out to you in light of your passion for young adult novels with lyrical voices and fantastic settings. I'm also betting that a Southern Gothic with witches, imps, war-mongering angels, and a time-traveling black female heroine that saves herself in the end is a cocktail you can't resist.

Years ago, witch hunters came to Carolina and devoured the Willows. Sixteen-year-old Collette, a powerful empath, was one of them. A part of a long line of witches that stretches back as far as the slave auctions of Charleston, she was especially gifted.

Decades later, a series of strange kidnappings prompts a member of her secret coven to make a plea for help and Collette is chosen to answer the call.  But things have changed. Angels have come out of the divine closet and everyone is on the lookout for the supernatural.

Snatched from the Void, she has to choose between a normal life and following the warrior path of the Willows, a coven she didn't know she belonged to. Soon, problems pile sky-high as she struggles to keep the boy who could blow her cover at arm’s length and her sanity as family secrets come to light in the midst of a serial killer.

In the end it all comes down to destiny, death  and the grey places between good and evil. But then again, when you’re Willow Born death can be just the beginning.

WILLOW BORN is a 77,000 word stand-alone Paranormal Fantasy with series potential. Fans of Maggie Stiefvater’s Shiver and  Cassandre Clare’s City of Bones will be delighted with the book’s mix of supernatural drama, romance and Southern fantasy.

My main occupation is as a high school librarian in Atlanta, Georgia and I set all of my novels deeply in biscuit-and-sweet-tea country. Please note that this is a multiple submission. 

First 250

PART ONE – I’m Beginning to See The Light

Lake Murray, South Carolina One Summer Night

The imp prowls anxiously behind the ancient Willow tree, his muscles rippling under his too-tight feline skin. He knows the old witch isn’t as skilled as he needs her to be, but the pickings these days are slim. She’s the best of what’s left.

Warm breeze scatters scorched sections of the day’s newspaper, creating tiny cyclones around the bonfire. A photograph of a young girl with thin dreadlocks floats on dusty air before lighting and turning to ash. 

Miss Collins picks up her bottle of hooch. She drinks quickly, spitting the rest into the flames. The cat who is anything but a cat chases the darkness to keep hidden, shielding his emerald eyes from the flares. 

"They call them ‘Dolls’, Lord! ‘Dolls’! It is the coven who hears their cries." The old witch wails into the darkness as starlight dribbles like sweat through the boughs of the tree.

Herb perfumed smoke rises thickly to the heavens. This is what he’s been waiting over half a century for. This night. This spell.

"Lord, fourteen precious girls have gone missing, then dead. My task is great, but your mercy is greater. I come to you a daughter of Odion, the first of our kind!"

At this she pulls the tree-shaped dagger from her waistband. Without taking her eyes from the sky she slices open her palm and flings the first drops of blood into the flames. Glittering blue flares erupt where blood meets ash.

#WeNeedDiverseBooks