Ah Yuan's Color Me Brown Links

Color Me Brown is a weekly event that grew out of last summer's Color Me Brown Challenge.

This week, I'm assigned to do CMB and I have some links here that I hope will be of interest to people!

First up, by the way of Bib-Laura-graphy, I was linked to How to Make a Chinese or Japanese Book Cover. A tongue-in-cheek calling out on racist stereotyped ways in which generic covers depict ~*Asian-ness*~. For instance,

Element 4: Female Necks (preferably that of a geisha, but any female neck will do in a pinch)

At Book Love Affair, TJ did a lovely review of Octavia Butler's Kindred. Which of course, reminds me to get cracking on reading more of Butler's works.

Notorious Spinks Talks did a review of The Calligrapher's Daughter by Eugenia Kim, a novel inspired by the experiences of the author's mother. Notorious Spinks starts off the review with this opening paragraph:

Imagine your parents deciding not to name you when the nurse comes around with the birth certificate. As a result, you spend your entire childhood answering to “baby girl,” “lil’ mama,” or just “sweetie.” Then one day, someone calls you “Atlanta,” after your mother’s hometown and from that day on Atlanta is the name you answer to. In spite of answering to this name, you are constantly reminded that for some reason your parents didn’t bother to name their precious baby girl. This is a life similar to Najin, who is named after her mother’s homeland, Nah-jin.

Grabbed me, hook line and sinker. =D

Burst In Front of Your Eyes did a hilarious review of Cindy Pon's Silver Phoenix, which extols a great amount of care in showing how Chen Yong and Ai Ling is the BEST COUPLE EVAR EVAR EVAR. Which I wholeheartedly agree with, and encourage everyone to read this novel if you haven't yet.

Charlotte's Library bring us to the attention of this wonderful sounding MG fantasy novel called Archer's Quest by Linda Sue Park. Sounds exhilarating and exciting, and it's also very timely 'cause it takes place during one day of the Year of the Tiger, andddd guess what year is coming up on the Lunar Calendar? That's right, the TIGER. Woo~ (How excited am I for the Lunar New Year?! *_*)

Our lovely Doret did a review for A Map of Home by Randa Jarrar, wherein she picks out the most awesome quotes to persuade us all that this book is necessary to have in our shelves. (Okay, well, I don't know if I can speak for "us all", but it sure as heck worked on me!)

Our also very awesome Tarie did a review for Malinda Lo's Ash, wherein she shows us how she was able to imagine the cast as Asian. =D More power to Tarie!

For some non-fiction written works that is very much so related to CMB's interest, Racialicious just today put up Protecting the Circle: Aboriginal Men Ending Violence Against Women, wherein we get excerpts of this written collection of Aboriginal men's voices. AND did I mention that they're offering the downloads to this collection for free? Go forth, download and read. Go on, I can wait.

And swinging over to Le Monde Diplomatique, Mridula Koshy's article Kerala: mad about books brings our attention to Indian literature in the vernacular language, with special focus on Malayalam literature. Because it's not always about written works in the English language, Rushdie! (linked via The Hathor Legacy)

Finally, if anyone is interested in reading my piece on diversity, I guest post'ed on just that over at Justine Larbalestier's blog.