Flooded Lizard Kingdom

Here is information about the Writers of Color 50 Book Challenge. Basically, it's just what it sounds like. I had really wanted to do the Anti-Racist Action Group run by Carmen Van Kerckhove of New Demographic, but with the baby I didn't know if I could commit 100%. So the Book Challenge is my next best thing. I'm not sure I can manage deep cultural commentary on each one in my current state, but I'm enjoying the books so far and I think it will be good for me.

My first books:

1. American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yuang. This is an amazing graphic novel that C-Man brought home from the library. I read it at 2am while feeding the baby, and in fact the baby got some bonus naptime in my lap because I didn't want to stop reading until I was done. Three stories that combine to communicate the pain of discrimination, especially the internal damage. However, not depressing at all.

2. Sassafrass, Cypress, and Indigo by Ntozake Shange. Is it cheating to count something you've already read? I hadn't read it in a long time, so I'm including it anyway. Three African-American sisters figuring out how to be in the world of 1960s America. I think in high school I would have stopped reading this after a few pages because I would have thought the way it was written was too strange (code for non-white, since white was normative) - words spelled "wrong," recipes mixed into the narrative? Thankfully I was slightly less racist by the time I found it.

3. The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai. Pankaj Mishra reviewed it for the New York Times and said "Although it focuses on the fate of a few powerless individuals, Kiran Desai's extraordinary new novel manages to explore, with intimacy and insight, just about every contemporary international issue: globalization, multiculturalism, economic inequality, fundamentalism and terrorist violence." I completely agree. But honestly, I got tired by the end. Slow pace, lots of details, my own sleep deprivation...

4. Listen Up! Voices from the Next Feminist Generation, edited by Barbara Findlen. I'd read the first edition, and it was great to read the new essays and to refresh my memory of the original ones. This is what any book that purports to be about feminism should look like. White women are not the center of the universe.

5. Getting Mother's Body by Suzan-Lori Parks. The writeup on the back said something about how it was amazingly original. I can't agree, as it seems quite clearly related to As I Lay Dying. However, I don't think that's a bad thing. It's like Parks took a cultural myth and came up with a completely new vision for the basic elements. I was annoyed by most of the characters at first, but I stuck with it, and in the end I was glad I did.

6. All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes by Maya Angelou. This is one installment of Angelou's autobiography, which apparently spans six volumes. (How did I not know this? I only knew about I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings.) Traveling Shoes covers a period in her life when she lived in Ghana in the 1960's. It was a time and place I knew nothing about, and I enjoyed seeing it through her eyes.