Thursday, February 4, 2010

Vasilly's Color Me Brown Links

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

As a reader, I'm forever looking for reviews of great books that I should be reading. This week I've found a lot of great links to share with Color Online readers.

I just finished reading a great post about YA books, whitewashing, and diversity by Colleen Mondor over at BookSlut. The article features quotes by authors Kekla Magnoon, Zetta Elliot, Tanita Davis, and more. I enjoyed the mentions of great books Mondor felt more people should read.


Swapna over at S. Krishna's Books reviewed Bombay Time by Thrity Umrigar. Swapna is also the host of the South Asian Authors Challenge.

Rebecca over at Rebecca Reid is the host of The Classics Circuit blog. Every month bloggers all over the blogisphere read a book by a particular author or theme and post their thoughts. This month's theme is the Harlem Renaissance. There are nine posts going up this week about books by authors from Nella Parson to Ethel Waters, Langston Hughes to Zora Neale Hurston. Make sure to visit the blog every week to stay informed on new reviews.

Jodie at Book Gazing posted her thoughts on The Mariposa Club by Rigoberto Gonzalez. From Jodie's review this sounds like a great book. There's also the case of whitewashing with this book. The Mariposa Club is about four gay teenage boys. On the cover is only three really light boys when the characters are described as two being light and two are dark-skinned. There's also the issue of the last character being missing from the cover. The missing character is a boy who wear's missing clothing and identifies with being a woman. Jodie wrote two great posts reviewing the book and also her issues with the cover. Think of the two posts as this week's must-read.

4 comments:

Jodie said...

Thanks for the mention Susan. I'm not totally sure there are two light characters, didn't quite clarify that with the author. One is white, with British ancestors, two are dark Latino, but one guy I couldn't find reference to his skin colour, he is described by his weight and as goth, but he can tan whereas it's often said that the white guy can't sit outside because he burns in the extremly hot weather. But in any case the author and I are both clear these guys on the cover are not right and do not reflect the right skin colour of the characters he wrote and it makes me really confused and annoyed that the guy in womens clothing is just erased by a press that activley champions GLBT fiction.

Unknown said...

I enjoyed all of the links. Thanks for sharing!

Vasilly said...

The fact that the cover doesn't reflect the color and gender of the characters is horrible. Publishers really need to stop trying to think for readers and let readers think for themselves.

Color Online said...

Thanks Vasilly!