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It is the biography of a discreet female leader of the Civil Rights Movement, an exploration of seven decades of protestations and actions as a social worker, a mediator, a teacher... It is about the creation of Black Family Reunion celebrations, Wednesdays in Mississippi, the early work of inter-faith and inter-racial discussions and collaborations among women of all generations, and much more...
Remember when you were a kid and getting new crayons was a big deal? Getting new books holds the same kind of magic for some of us big kids. Every week on Sunday, I post what's new in our box. I think crayons is a pretty cool metaphor for multicultural lit. Every week we receive a book at Color Online is a good week.
I'm excited about this week's donations, which represent an assortment received by the staff! Check these out:
A Beautiful Place to Die, by award-winning screenwriter Malla Nunn, is a "stunning and darkly romantic crime novel set in 1950s apartheid South Africa, featuring Detective Emmanuel Cooper -- a man caught up in a time and place where racial tensions and the raw hunger for power make life very dangerous indeed."
The story is filled with passion, racial tension, power struggle, mystery. That's enough to pull me in. The book is available in the nearest bookstore in hardcover and paperback. :)
Do you remember Waiting to Exhale? And its blockbuster movie?
Getting to Happy is the 15 yrs later sequel. It's about being single when you are in your fifties, being a shopaholic, handling husband number 2 and dealing with life's unwanted surprises.
Planning for her wedding, dealing with her future stepdaughter's mother, and ghost writing vixen Cleopatara Wright's memoir is not enough to keep journalist Alex Maxwell busy. The magazine Alex works for has assigned her to write an article about the glamorous lives of women who married multiplatinum selling hip hop artists. As Alex slowly breaks her way into their guarded personal lives, she fears she may have more in common with them than she'd like. What if this is a glimpse of what her life will be with future husband and rising hip hop star Birdie. Stuck between this new found sisterhood and her obligation to write the truth, Alex is forced to make several major decisions she might end up regretting.
Diribani has come to the village well to get water for her family's scant meal of curry and rice. She never expected to meet a goddess there. Yet she is granted a remarkable gift: Flowers and precious jewels drop from her lips whenever she speaks.
"At her new boarding school in New Zealand, Ellie Spencer is like any ordinary teen: she hangs out with her best friend, Kevin, obsesses over her crush on a mysterious bad boy; and her biggest worry is her paper deadline. The something changes: in the foggy woods near the school, something ancient and deadly is lurking."
Guardian of the Dead takes us on journey in New Zealand, spiced with Maori mythology, romance, betrayal and epic battle. The book came out in April 7, 2010.
"Miranda goes from high-school theater wannabe to glamorous royal fiend overnight (she is a vampire). Meanwhile, her reckless and adoring guardian angel, Zachary, demoted to human guise as the princess’s personal assistant, has his work cut out for him trying to save his girl’s soul and plan the Master’s fast-approaching Death Day gala. In alternating points of view, Miranda and Zachary navigate a cut-throat eternal aristocracy as they play out a dangerous and darkly hilarious love story for the ages."
Cynthia Leitich Smith is known for her extremely culturally diverse work. She is the only woman I know to have Black Indians featured in her book (Jingle Dancer), and Eternal, in addition to the thrill and humor, features an eclectic and well written cast. This is a NYT bestselling book, received from publisher Simon and Schuster.
This book is the last of the Heaven Trilogy. "Shoogy has left home, not sure why and not sure where to go,until she meets Curtis. Curtis is living in a cabin in the woods knowing where he does not want to be -- Iraq. He's been there and does not want to go back. Sweet, Hereafter is a short novel with a powerful statement about love, friendship, teenage angst, and the costs of war.”
Michelle Alexander exposes the practice of Mass Incarceration of Black people both in the past and now, in regard to current legal policies.
Source: Library
Looking Like Me by Walter Dean Myers and Christopher Myers (Illustrator).
"This jumping, jazzy, joyful picture book by the award-winning team of Walter Dean and Christoper Myers celebrates every child, and every thing that child can be."
Source: Library
Love and Vertigo by Hsu-Ming Teo. "This beautiful and moving novel steps between Singapore, Malaysia, and Australia, evoking the life, traditions, and tastes of a forceful Chinese family as well as the hardship, cruelty, and pain. Written in a fresh, contemporary voice tinged with biting humor, this is a story about resilience and a story about migration, but in many ways it is a story about parents' expectations for their children."
Summary:In the city of Enugu, Nigeria, fifteen-year-old Kambili and her older brother, Jaja, lead a privileged life. Their Papa is a wealthy and respected businessman; they live in a beautiful house; and they attend an exclusive missionary school. But, as Kambili reveals in her tender-voiced account, their home life is anything but harmonious. Her father, a fanatically religious man, has impossible expectations of his children and wife, and severely punishes them if they're less than perfect. Home is silent and suffocating.
When Kambili's loving and outspoken Aunty Ifeoma persuades her brother that the children should visit her in Nsukka, Kambili and Jaja take their first trip away from home. Once inside their Aunty Ifeoma's flat, they discover a whole new world. Books cram the shelves, curry and nutmeg permeate the air, and their cousins' laughter rings throughout the house. Jaja learns to garden and work with his hands, and Kambili secretly falls in love with a young charismatic priest.
When a military coup threatens to destroy the country and Kambili and Jaja return home changed by their newfound freedom, tension within the family escalates. And Kambili must find the strength to keep her loved ones together after her mother commits a desperate act.~ from GoodReads.Com
The Review: I was been told to read this book years ago by someone with a reading taste I trust, but for some strange reason I kept on putting it off. Then a couple months ago I was reminded to read this book by the author’s brilliant speech “The Danger of a Single Story” (watch it, especially if you have even the tiniest interest in storytelling) and I was like, how did I not get around to reading her works yet? So I finally checked the book out of the library earlier this month and damn, what a haunting read. Beautiful, intense, and I was a fool for not having read this sooner.
This is a story revolving around the domestic abuse of the narrator’s father. And yet, this is not a story of melodrama angst and heartbreak. Yes, there is a lot of anguish and pain and sadness in this novel, but underneath these painful moments is a spark of joy, and laughter. The premise of the story is not that of a victim enduring abuse, but a girl who gets a chance to step away momentarily from a world in which her and the whole family is subjugated to the mood swings of the father, as Kambili forges a world for herself in which she can start laughing without having her father’s opinions pervading and influencing her every move. Her transformation from the fearful daughter desperate to please her father to a girl who can smile and laugh on her own whim was an extraordinary journey that I’m so happy to have had to pleasure of reading. Purple Hibiscus is the kind of novel that the reader won’t forget soon after reading.
The novel sticks really close to Kambili’s head, so I’m thinking that the potential reader’s enjoyment of the novel is very dependent on much you like or sympathize with Kambili. I personally thought Kambili was a lovely protagonist, and loved being inside her head. I love seeing how timid and quiet she was at first, and then how she grew from thereon out. We’re so in her head and her personal problems and concerns that the problems with the riots and censoring in contemporary Nigeria take a backseat, but I don’t think this is a detriment to the novel at all. Reading from Kambili’s perspective was like having a glimpse at her innermost thoughts, a peek at her private diary, and there’s something so honest about the narration that I just completely fell in love with. This novel does more than just capture an amazingly authentic teenage voice – it moves you with its sincerity and honesty.
I really enjoyed the character interactions in this novel as well. Kambili and Amaka’s rocky cousin relationship was interesting to watch, as they start to step away from their misunderstandings of one another. And the rest of the family interactions were great too. I really liked how family was so central to this novel. It was really interesting to see the contrast between Kambili’s family and her aunt’s family, from the obvious differences (abusive relationship vs. loving relationship etc) to much subtler ways, like how Kambili’s family household is very quiet, versus her aunt’s boisterous laughter that rings around her own household. There was also some very nice class differences explored in this novel, which is nice to see. But my absolutely favourite aspect of this novel was the achingly sweet budding romance between Kambili and Amandi, a priest. Their growing affection for each other felt so natural, and the author captures the emotions of teenage first love so well. If I must compare her portrayals of first love with another YA author, it’d be Jenny Han, but more The Summer I Turned Pretty-esque as oppose to Shug-like. We are convinced by their portrayal of first love because it’s very honest. Also, Adichie writes like a dream, and the way she selects her words to describe that feeling of first love is so perfect and beautifully original.
The afternoon played across my mind as I got out of the car in front of the flat. I had smiled, ran, laughed. My chest was filled with something like bath foam. Light. The lightness was so sweet i tasted it on my tongue, the sweetness of an overripe bright yellow cashew fruit. Pg. 180
Doesn’t that just make you want to pick up the book ASAP?! Even if my not-very-elegantly-phrased review is not convincing you, read it for the beautiful, lush prose, at the very least.
The Verdict: One of the most beautiful pieces of fictive narratives I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading. Painful, sweet, and a spark of hopeful joy – the reader will sink into Kambili’s mindset right away as she forges a life for herself. I’ve been told that as this was Adichie’s first novel, her later works are much better. Which makes me really excited because as her writing is already so amazing here, I can’t wait to see how she tops it in Half a Yellow Sun
Rating: 5/5 Enjoyment: 100%!
Title and Cover Discussion: One of the things I didn’t get to talk about in the review was the purple hibiscus motif, which was subtly woven into the story to lead us to some of the novel’s most memorable scenes. Anyhow, the title is brilliant and if you’re curious about how Adichie uses the purple hibiscus as a symbol, I say read it to find out. 8D As for the cover... I don’t know, I’m really sick of cut-off female faces, and on top of that, the black-and-white photograph doesn’t do it any favours. Another cover has the hibiscus in actual purple, but I don’t really want to rate a cover if I haven’t seen it with my own two eyes. (I find that seeing covers online and in real life is two very different experiences.) Soooooo I’m going to cheat on the cover ratings and drop them. I just don’t feel fair with faulting a cover when there’s another one out there that may be better. It just brings too much attention to the old cover, ya know? Feel free to share your thoughts on the cover, or anything you want.
Bleeding Violet Dia Reeves YA Rural/Town Fantasy Page Count: 454 Simon Pulse reviewer: Ah Yuan
The Summary: Love can be a dangerous thing....
Hanna simply wants to be loved. With a head plagued by hallucinations, a medicine cabinet full of pills, and a closet stuffed with frilly, violet dresses, Hanna's tired of being the outcast, the weird girl, the freak. So she runs away to Portero, Texas in search of a new home. But Portero is a stranger town than Hanna expects. As she tries to make a place for herself, she discovers dark secrets that would terrify any normal soul. Good thing for Hanna, she's far from normal. As this crazy girl meets an even crazier town, only two things are certain: Anything can happen and no one is safe.
The Review: Wow. So much love for this book, I don’t even know where to start! I read the excerpt for the first chapter about a month ago and was really excited about this new novel. (Also the whole bit about this being a novel written for NaNoWriMo. That's pretty cool too.) First of all, I think the reason why I enjoyed this novel so much was because of Hanna. She’s an awesome narrator and definitely my favourite character of the lot. Hanna is i-n-s-a-n-e, not in the oh-she’s-so-quirky-and-interesting but as in she has mental illness. I think Dia Reeves portrayed this aspect of Hanna extremely well, and it spiced up the whole extremely common premise of New Girl Moves to Small Town and Discovers Magical Beings, etc, making this novel stand out. I really liked getting into Hanna’s head, the off-kilter way she would react to things, and just other stuff about her like her purple dresses she sews herself, how the fact that she is biracial (Half-Black, Half-Fin) influences the way she sees herself and her ability to adapt to new situations, her confidence in her looks, and her habit of saying “Unbelievable”. (Er, I could just go on, but I think we all get the fact that I think Hanna is Awesome. =D)
Actually, I just really liked Reeves’ whole approach to this world she created in general, from Hanna’s reactions to seeing stuff (Hanna’s reactions the first few days were like, hmm, I thought I took my pills today, guess they haven’t kicked in yet. *walks past those bloodstained windows like she saw nothing*) to the portrayal of the fantastical in this world. The creatures are batshit scary and feel very real, things that will kill you if you walk down the wrong street. And how the people of the town are deeply influenced by their knowledge of these monsters that lurk their town, how it shapes them from their behavior to what they wear to just, their physical selves and their telltale scars. I bought into the world Reeves’ created completely, and really enjoyed reading about the fantastical side of this novel.
I get the feeling that the biggest character relationship that readers will get into is the Wyatt/Hanna romance. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love me some Wyatt, and the whole “You’re going to hurt him” stuff people keep going on to Hanna about only added to my enjoyment of this couple and their interactions. (Has that star-crossed taste to it, and I love me some star-crossed lovers.) I liked how they both weren’t quite normal, and how they fit together on more or less equal grounds in this relationship that isn’t exactly the healthiest of relationships. But the biggest character interaction that grabbed me by the heart and had me clenching my teeth with the tension and the heartbreaks was with Hanna and her mom, Rosalee. At the end of the day, I read this book for Hanna’s attempts to connect with her mother, and vice versa. I mean, say what you want about Wyatt/Hanna, but in terms of higher stakes and messed-up factor, Rosalee’s estranged relationship with her daughter’s got Wyatt and Hanna’s relationship beat. I loved watching how they pulled and pushed at each other, with Rosalee’s cold attempts to push her daughter away and Hanna’s fierce, fiery desperation to win a place as a daughter in her mother’s heart. They hurt each other and love each other in all the wrong ways and it’s such a broken, shattered, imperfect family but I desperately wanted them to stay together by the end of it. *
The book was a really fast fluid read, and I couldn’t put it down until I was finished every single last word of it. I was delighted by each and every turn the direction of the story went, and the story always manages to shock and put in twists that didn’t feel jarring or out of place. (I did think the Key stuff was a little overdone, but the Key gave me this really awesome mother-daughter interaction scene, so who am I to complain?) The writing was solid and serviceable. It didn’t stick out to me it jarring ways, but at the same time it didn’t wow or stand out for me either. But, honestly? With a cast like this and the crazy town of monster-infested Portero, who’s going to care? I had a blast reading this as Reeves took me for a roller coaster ride, and I enjoyed every second of it. Read it, read it, read it.
The Verdict: Dude, I travelled all the way downtown just so I could buy this on the release day. I had to walk 5 streetlights outside in the freezing cold because the subway shut down and by the time I got to the bookstore, bought it, and came back home, my legs were frozen solid. But was it worth it? DAMN STRAIGHT IT WAS. The year of 2010 just started but I can definitely tell that this is gonna be one of my Top Favourite Debuts of this year. Awesome premise, awesome characters, with one of the ruinous and moving mother-daughter interactions I’ve read in ages plus a nice dash of epic crazy, readers will be in for an amazing treat.
Rating: 4.5/5 Enjoyment: !!!100%!!!
Title and Cover Discussion: I really love the title! It sounds awesome, and I keep associating ‘Violet’ with ‘Violent’ in my mind and it totally fits with the very vicious battles that raged all throughout this novel, and the violence of the characters in general. The only thing is that, I think the violet is referring to Hanna’s dresses, but she never calls them ‘violet’, but ‘purple’. I kinda wished that Reeves went back and changed all the ‘purple’ words into ‘violet’ to have continuity with the title, but this is just a nitpick, really. Now, the COVER. Omfg so gorgeous. If the Simon & Schuster company ever decided to make a poster out of this cover I’d buy it in a heartbeat. I looooove the violet dresses in the background, the font, the colours, EVERYTHING. ♥ ♥ One of the best covers I’ve ever seen.
*I was also amused by all the talk of the “Price fascination” when it came to Rosalee Price and her ability to draw in men to her side. Reminded me of Senjogahara. Those who’ve watched Bakemonogatari will know what I’m talking about.
Due to the lovely Zetta Elliott* linking me, I'm now aware that there's a Chromatic Casting meme going on in the media fandom blogsphere. I've been looking at these posts and they are making me super-duper happy, especially once there started to be Chromatic Casting for popular books, because I think every reader is familiar with the idea that a lot of written text has a white-as-default within them, and I think this Chromatic Casting meme is a fun way of challenging this white default.
That being said, I'd like to invite all YA bloggers to participate in the Chromatic Casting meme. Why YA bloggers? Well, um, YA is kinda my baby and beloved genre, the one genre I always give special attention to when I'm in the library and bookshopping, and a lot of my muses for this Chromatic Casting meme are all for YA Novels. And, you know, because it's more fun to do this kind of stuff with more than one person, I'd LOVE it if YA bloggers wish to join in on this meme. (Come onnnnnnn do this with me!! IT'LL BE FUN *_______*)
BUT ENOUGH TALKING. Let's get to the good stuff. Links to books that got the Chromatic Casting Meme treatment, behold~
Links to other Chromatic Casting Memes can be found here
And because I never do things like this without participating myself, two things:
1) Chromatic!Ash, jdrama-style - While this was done without knowing that this meme was going on, I did it in similar spirits. =D
2) Chromatic!Demon's Lexicon
Vic Chou as Nick
JJ Lin as Alan
Dana Davis as Mae
Daniel Anthony as Jamie
May or may not ETA this with REASONS behind the casting choices. Also, I'm fully aware that I just skipped out on casting all the secondary characters, lol. *got lazy* So here is where I invite readers to think up of their own Chromatic Casting for the rest of the Demon's Lexicon characters. In the meantime I have some ideas for Graceling and Hunger Games Chromatic Casting that I'll be musing over.
*Read her novel A Wish After Midnight!! Reaaaaaaaaad iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit!!
Love and Vertigo by Hsu-Ming Teo. "This beautiful and moving novel steps between Singapore, Malaysia, and Australia, evoking the life, traditions, and tastes of a forceful Chinese family as well as the hardship, cruelty, and pain. Written in a fresh, contemporary voice tinged with biting humor, this is a story about resilience and a story about migration, but in many ways it is a story about parents' expectations for their children."
Bleeding Violet
JJ Lin as Alan
Dana Davis as Mae
Daniel Anthony as Jamie
