Thursday, June 30, 2016
Monday, June 27, 2016
Black, White, Other: In Search of Nina Armstrong (a review)
By: Joan Steinau Lester
Zondervan (September 2011)
Nina Armstrong's parents have just divorced and if that weren't enough everyone around her seems to be changing right before her eyes. Her Dad is suddenly super militant about being Black and her White mother seems so wrapped up in herself she doesn't have time to be her Mom. She might find some peace with her baby brother Jimi, if he weren't turning into a tiny version of "New Dad" spouting nonsense about white people even though Jimi's half-white too.
When Jimi makes a mistake Nina's not sure she can clean up and her friends start drawing lines in the sand Nina isn't sure she'll be able to choose between her white side and her black. Ninth grade couldn't be tougher, but with the manuscript of her great-great-grandmother's escape from slavery she just might make it.
This is one of those "issue" books, but that doesn't mean that it's bad. Just like applesauce, it's good and good for you. Lester crafts a well-written story and captures the spirit of 15-year old Nina quite well. She seems age appropriate and the book will work well for 7th to 10th grades. It's a short read, and those kids who read well will have no problem. If you work at a school it's a great book club book especially if you're dealing with an onslaught of bullying and want to generate allies.
Some of the language seems a bit outdated, but the feel of the book is still universal and it has a happy ending even if things don't resolve like she thinks they should. I like that things are never simple for her. Privilege is never having to think about who you hang out with or whether someone thinks you're going to steal in a retail store. I think that publishers sometimes think that they can check the diversity box if they have a biracial main character, but they miss out on the complexity of that experience if you never touch on what it is like to become racially aware as a teenager or even sooner.
This book is for:
- Younger teens struggling with what "race" means
- People who like coming of age novels
- Anyone looking for an entry point into a discussion or solution to bullying
Discussion Questions:
- Do you think Nina should have forgiven Jessica for her betrayal?
- Why weren't Claudette or Jessica searched in the store by the owner? Brainstorm about the choices each of the girls made and what would have happened if Nina accused Claudette or if Jessica stood up for her friend?
- Discuss why Jessica might think that black people are "scary" or "ghetto". Where do you think she got these stereotypes?
- Young Sarah wonders if there will be white people in heaven. Discuss the messages that Master Armstrong delivers during his Sunday services with the slaves. Why do you think he avoids the sections about Moses?
- Nina's mom says she's really not white, what does she mean?
If you like this, try:
Black, White and Jewish by Rebecca Walker is the perfect foil for this fiction tale. The daughter of famed The Color Purple novelist Alice Walker and her Jewish lawyer father, Rebecca split her summers between her bohemian existence with poets and the absence of a curfew with her mother in California and her suburban existence with her Dad and her half-siblings in perfect suburbia on the East Coast. Enjoy!
Soundtrack:
America is a melting pot and who better to kick off this novel than the legendary biracial rocker, Lenny Kravitz.
Lenny Kravitz
American Woman
Saturday, June 11, 2016
Chocolate Dipped: Writing While White and Common Literary Blunders
Sooo, I'm in the midst of my reading season for the Peach and I am always on the lookout for diverse books, especially those that speak to the teenage girl within me. She's black and bookish, by the way. As you may have noticed from perusing the shelves at the local Barnes and Noble, that teenage girl doesn't usually get to see herself that often in the pages she reads. She's suburban, her parents are divorced, but her Dad is still around and hes' a good Dad. She goes to a good school and she's got her eyes on college. She's not "urban" and struggling to deal with the 'mean streets' in any way. This girl in YA pages is rare indeed. Try to find a book with a main character of color, written by a person of color and you are searching for plutonium my friend.
For many reasons I'm not interested in going into right now, many white authors have been tapped or have answered the call for diverse books and have written books with main characters of color. Kudos to these allies. All kids deserve to see their realities or their fantasies in print. The problem is that the desire to reflect these lives may sometimes exceed the ability to "authentically" depict these characters.
Here are a few pitfalls that I've seen in my reading. They make your characters seem inauthentic and make it clear you don't share the background of your character.
#1: They are all alone.
If I'm reading a book and the main character is Black or Latino or Asian or all three or a variation and they are the only person of color in their friend group I'm willing to bet good money that the author is White. This tells me that you dipped your character in chocolate or gave the a little tan and called it a day. One multi-layered character of color isn't enough and writing non-stereotypical support characters takes some effort and know-how. People of color have learned that there is safety in groups in hostile territory. Even in the suburbs of Virginia we tend to cluster together. Maybe you've noticed this. You should have. To isolate your character means that she is avoiding other POC for some reason. You'll need to make that reason clear, otherwise it's a red flag.
#2 Mama ISN'T her first name.
By and large, communities of color hold their elders in high esteem. For the most part they don't call their parents by their first names. Close friends of parents may even be called 'Uncle' or 'Auntie' out of respect. This is regardless of the child's relationship with the parent. They are honorifics that are immovable. If your character is calling their mother Beth, it's a red flag. Explain it. Was the girl raised by her grandmother and the mother just came back in the picture. If there is not explanation then your character starts to stink of alienness.
#3 They notice their skin.
Brown folks don't notice how brown their skin is. A Latina character should never say, "I looked down at my tawny skin." What? She'd just look at her skin. The same goes for hair. "I pulled a rubber band around my kinky hair." No! No! She'd just put a rubber band in her hair. We don't identify ourselves by our noticeable physical differences from white folks.
#4 Talking back.
See #2. Yelling at parents, slamming doors in parents faces, and other aggressive behaviors are 'generally' ( I say this, because it is not all households, but I'm referring to cultural norms) frowned upon. By frowned, I mean not tolerated without swift and severe consequences. If your main character of color comes home late from a night out and stomps up to her room after yelling at her Mom about being overprotective and slams her bedroom door. The authentic follow up to that could be anything from Mom kicking the door down to Mom ordering child to sleep on the porch to Mom taking the door off the hinges. The inauthentic follow-up action is to cut to the next day as Mom goes to work without saying 'goodbye'. This is a glaring misstep. It is a wide cultural difference that will not go unnoticed.
#5 Ignoring White Stereotypes.
There are stereotypes about White people and White culture. Just as you would avoid having your character sit down for a lunch of fried chicken and watermelon before their tap dancing lesson, you don't want to inadvertently have your character do something that may mark them as 'chocolate dipped'. For example, there is a saying that white kids do drugs and black kids sell drugs. If your character of color is big into acid, heroin, cocaine, etc. That is a marker that your character is inauthentically Black. Statistically, and anecdotally kids of color do far less drugs than white kids and if they do they usually aren't hard drugs. There are lots of reasons for this, some economic, but honestly the 'drug' talk isn't really a quiet topic in our households. The legal system is not kind to brown kids and those with any wits about them aren't really down to 'experiment' that often, the consequences are far too high and far too likely to make it worth the risk.
Also, I've seen a lot of character work around eating disorders. This is not a common problem in Black communities. It happens, we are not a subspecies, but it's much more common to have a Black or Latina girl want a bigger butt or thighs than be concerned about her weight. It might be more believable to add a concern about hair texture or skin tone, but you'll have to do your research. All of this is about research. It isn't easy speaking for someone else. You really CAN'T overthink it.
I invite dialogue, so let me know if I'm completely off base or if you've noticed other missteps in the literature.
Honestly, all of this would be avoidable if more writers of color were given the chance to publish mediocre stories about people of color. I don't review books that I don't think are good, or at least good enough so these are just a few of the mistakes I've seen in my readings. No shade.
For many reasons I'm not interested in going into right now, many white authors have been tapped or have answered the call for diverse books and have written books with main characters of color. Kudos to these allies. All kids deserve to see their realities or their fantasies in print. The problem is that the desire to reflect these lives may sometimes exceed the ability to "authentically" depict these characters.
Here are a few pitfalls that I've seen in my reading. They make your characters seem inauthentic and make it clear you don't share the background of your character.
#1: They are all alone.
If I'm reading a book and the main character is Black or Latino or Asian or all three or a variation and they are the only person of color in their friend group I'm willing to bet good money that the author is White. This tells me that you dipped your character in chocolate or gave the a little tan and called it a day. One multi-layered character of color isn't enough and writing non-stereotypical support characters takes some effort and know-how. People of color have learned that there is safety in groups in hostile territory. Even in the suburbs of Virginia we tend to cluster together. Maybe you've noticed this. You should have. To isolate your character means that she is avoiding other POC for some reason. You'll need to make that reason clear, otherwise it's a red flag.
#2 Mama ISN'T her first name.
By and large, communities of color hold their elders in high esteem. For the most part they don't call their parents by their first names. Close friends of parents may even be called 'Uncle' or 'Auntie' out of respect. This is regardless of the child's relationship with the parent. They are honorifics that are immovable. If your character is calling their mother Beth, it's a red flag. Explain it. Was the girl raised by her grandmother and the mother just came back in the picture. If there is not explanation then your character starts to stink of alienness.
#3 They notice their skin.
Brown folks don't notice how brown their skin is. A Latina character should never say, "I looked down at my tawny skin." What? She'd just look at her skin. The same goes for hair. "I pulled a rubber band around my kinky hair." No! No! She'd just put a rubber band in her hair. We don't identify ourselves by our noticeable physical differences from white folks.
#4 Talking back.
See #2. Yelling at parents, slamming doors in parents faces, and other aggressive behaviors are 'generally' ( I say this, because it is not all households, but I'm referring to cultural norms) frowned upon. By frowned, I mean not tolerated without swift and severe consequences. If your main character of color comes home late from a night out and stomps up to her room after yelling at her Mom about being overprotective and slams her bedroom door. The authentic follow up to that could be anything from Mom kicking the door down to Mom ordering child to sleep on the porch to Mom taking the door off the hinges. The inauthentic follow-up action is to cut to the next day as Mom goes to work without saying 'goodbye'. This is a glaring misstep. It is a wide cultural difference that will not go unnoticed.
#5 Ignoring White Stereotypes.
There are stereotypes about White people and White culture. Just as you would avoid having your character sit down for a lunch of fried chicken and watermelon before their tap dancing lesson, you don't want to inadvertently have your character do something that may mark them as 'chocolate dipped'. For example, there is a saying that white kids do drugs and black kids sell drugs. If your character of color is big into acid, heroin, cocaine, etc. That is a marker that your character is inauthentically Black. Statistically, and anecdotally kids of color do far less drugs than white kids and if they do they usually aren't hard drugs. There are lots of reasons for this, some economic, but honestly the 'drug' talk isn't really a quiet topic in our households. The legal system is not kind to brown kids and those with any wits about them aren't really down to 'experiment' that often, the consequences are far too high and far too likely to make it worth the risk.
Also, I've seen a lot of character work around eating disorders. This is not a common problem in Black communities. It happens, we are not a subspecies, but it's much more common to have a Black or Latina girl want a bigger butt or thighs than be concerned about her weight. It might be more believable to add a concern about hair texture or skin tone, but you'll have to do your research. All of this is about research. It isn't easy speaking for someone else. You really CAN'T overthink it.
I invite dialogue, so let me know if I'm completely off base or if you've noticed other missteps in the literature.
Honestly, all of this would be avoidable if more writers of color were given the chance to publish mediocre stories about people of color. I don't review books that I don't think are good, or at least good enough so these are just a few of the mistakes I've seen in my readings. No shade.
Thursday, June 9, 2016
Freedom's Just Another Word (a review)
by: Caroline Stellings
Publisher: Second Story Press (September 2016)
ISBN:1772600113
Set in 1970 Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Freedom focuses on the life of "Easy", short for Louisiana, a biracial blues aficianado who is dead set on escaping her tiny town to make it big in the Blues world. Obsessed with Janis Joplin, her life changes when a chance encounter with the legend leaves her with an invitation to Texas and the slimmest of chances at stardom. Now, all she has to do is find a way to get there and not lose herself in the process.
At just 232 pages, this is a quick read and as I've said before (if you follow me on twitter @srmilesauthor) we can't say we've made it until the shelves are full of girls about black girls on road trips. Admit it, it's a thing. Girl gets a pal, they go out in search of a concert or a guy or the ocean, hijinks ensue. Tons of them line the shelves with pictures of blond girls in a convertible with their hair blowing in the wind on the cover. This isn't that, and thank goodness for it. We get to know Easy, who is sassy and headstrong, but still silly and blind to things that should be obvious. We get to follow her on an adventure that probably wouldn't be possible in today's connected world. Though, traveling by car to recently desegregated Texas might be more dangerous than embarking on a road trip without your cell phone these days.
Race is a factor in her everyday life (micro agressions by her neighbors and outright racism are presented in a few well placed scenes), but I feel the heart of the story lies in the difference between dreams and reality and youth and maturity. We see things differently from afar. Janis on the cover of her albums is quite different from Janis on the stage of a bar in Austin with blood seeping from fresh track marks on her arm. So what do we do when we see our dreams up close? That's what we get in the book, what happens when reality comes into view? Is it still worth the obsession? What are we willing to give up for it?
This book is perfect for:
- People who love memoirs about America's recent past
- Music lovers
- Suckers for a road trip story
Discussion Questions:
- Easy's parents move to Canada because of an incident that happened in their hometown. What kinds of repercussions could they have expected if they stayed?
- Many people are upset over the new interstate system and its effect on Route 66. What were they really afraid of? What beloved aspect of your life do you see disappearing before your eyes? What will your children never know about?
- Easy's obsession with Janis Joplin recognizes that Janis is broken in many ways, but she doesn't recognize the same thing in Marsha. Mother Superior seems to see something there. Why do you think she suggests that Marsha, Easy and Roy make the final leg of the trip?
- Easy decides not to sing at the bar. Do you think she made the right decision?
- Discuss what kind of life you think Easy had after the close of the book.
If you like this try:
I'll Meet You There by Heather Demetrios (Georgia Peach Book Award nominee for 2016-17)
Soundtrack:
Janis Joplin
Tuesday, June 7, 2016
#Booktube Just Got More Colorful!
Sooo, I've joined the YouTube community and I'll be posting there with my new show, The Best Book Ever Written. Of course, you'll still get awesome reviews here, but go and subscribe!
Saturday, June 4, 2016
Six of Crows (a review)
Published: Henry Holt and Co. (September 2015)
ISBN:978-1627792127
In Ketterdam there are things that lurk in the night and city streets are not safe for child or man. Greed is king and Kaz wears the crown as the Barrell's most notorious thief and gangleader. He's wily and ruthless and he never lets a mark get away with a full pocket. For that reason he's been hired to lead a gang of six to break the most wanted scientist in the world out of the most notorious prison in the world. A man who has supposedly created a drug so powerful it turns Grisha (those born with supernatural powers) into drug addled all powerful slaves. If Kaz succeeds he'll finally have the kind of money to buy the thing he wants most in the world. Revenge.
Six of Crows blindsided me because I hadn't read her other works in the Grishaverse, but I must say that you don't need to. It definitely stands alone and if I weren't knee deep in reading season I'd be pining for the second installment. I felt the same way about The Wrath and the Dawn and its sequel.
So little time. It's clocking in at 400+ pages and I read them all. You don't know how much of a statement that is. I stayed up late turning pages and I dreaded the end. It's five stars.
There is a lesson being taught here about how to include diversity in your fantasy without being condescending or cursory. Each character is given a full backstory and that includes a racial makeup. What sets this story apart is that the darker skinned characters aren't subservient to or being oppressed by the lighter skinned characters, nor are they closer to nature in some sort of mystical way that makes them superior or inferior to anyone. They have belief systems that attach them to their country (Inej) without it being some sort or racial quirk. Nor are they more aggressive than their counterparts (I'm looking at you GOT fans). If you're a white writer and wondering how to include diversity you should definitely take a look. I'll have to go back and read, but I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that the main character, Kaz, is of color. There are some fan-based illustrations floating around, but that could just be how I'm reading it.
Of course, I encourage you to play with race as you read any book. Whatever is in your mind's eye is just fine and can add some flavor to your reading.
This book is perfect for:
This book is perfect for:
- Those who love impossible odds
- Anybody itching for an ensemble cast
- A guy who hasn't been able to find anything to meld his love of crime novels and Tolkien
Discussion Questions: (beware of spoilers)
1. Kaz wears gloves because of an aversion to touching human flesh. We know this because of a horrible escape from death he made as a young boy. What other kinds of psychological "ticks" could have emerged from his escape?
2. The Grisha are in hiding in most of the Grishaverse, despite having incredible power. Is there something in human nature that makes us fear those who are different?
3. The money is supposed to be the draw for the six members of the team, but everyone has their true motives. Discuss the ulterior motive of each member.
4. There are whispers of romantic feelings among all of the members. Which is your favorite couple or potential couple?
5. Matthias is racked with guilt about betraying his country and his order. Are his feelings valid or are they misplaced?
6. Kaz is an anti-hero in that he displays few of the characteristics of a traditional hero in that he is a avowed thief, criminal and killer. Why should the reader root for him despite his ruthless criminality?
7. Kaz has a limp caused by an injury in his past. We don't often see characters with disabilities, especially those as ruthless as Kaz. What kinds of feelings does this inspire in the reader? Would he seem more vicious without it? What about the need for his gloves? Would he be a hero or a demon without either of these traits?
If you like this, then try:
Graceling by Kristin Cashore has a strong protagonist with a killer edge and you won't be disappointed with the subsequent books in the series.
Soundtrack:
At first read I thought something large and circus-like like Panic at the Disco, but soaring vocals are better suited to the dramatic highs and lows of the story.
Lungs
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