When last we left me, I had read six books for the Writers of Color 50 Book Challenge. It looks like those first six books broke down into three novels, one memoir, one graphic novel, and one anthology with a significant number of pieces by writers of color.
Here are the next 11 books I've read, bringing me to a total of 17.
Novels: The New Moon's Arms by Nalo Hopkinson, who was born in Jamaica and Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya, a Mexican American author who was born in New Mexico. Hopkinson's book is set in modern times, and even when the main character was being atrocious I was rooting for her. Anaya's novel is one of the classics of Chicano fiction, set in the 1940s. They're both about magic, and I enjoyed them both very much.
Nonfiction: Hijas Americanas: Beauty, Body Image, and Growing Up Latina by Rosie Molinary. I almost didn't make it through this one, because Molinary's prose didn't click with me. However, the voices of the many Latinas she and her team interviewed shone through in the quotes Molinary highlights throughout the book, and they kept me going.
Anthologies: Revolutionary Voices: A Multicultural Queer Youth Anthology, edited by Amy Sonnie, and Body Outlaws: Rewriting the Rules of Beauty and Body Image, edited by Ophira Edut. I think I would have done better not trying to read either of these straight through. Revolutionary Voices was more diverse in the approaches and themes used by the various contributors, but there were so many pieces that it got overwhelming. Body Outlaws started to feel repetitive towards the end, and I think the final essays didn't make as much of an impact on me because they blended in with earlier ones. However, I found a lot of great writing in both, and a lot to think about.
Memoirs: The Black Notebooks: An Interior Journey by Toi Derricotte, an African-American poet. I can't even describe how powerful and painful this book is. Derricotte, a light-skinned black woman, examines what it means to be black in America and finds a lot of self-hatred and shame. Reviewers seem to think this is controversial, but I couldn't figure out how a black person in America wouldn't have those feelings after all the garbage our culture says about them. Loving in the War Years: Lo que nunca pasó por sus labios by Cherríe Moraga, about being Chicana and a lesbian, was hard for me to get through. I was frustrated by the mix of poetry and prose and by the Spanish that's mixed in throughout, since I am Spanish-impaired. But I got to a passage where she described wondering how much of herself she could bring to her writing before the market got so small that she couldn't sell any books, and I realized I needed to keep going. When I was Puerto Rican: A Memoir by Esmeralda Santiago was a more traditional read, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Children's Books: I Had A Hippopotamus by Hector Viveros Lee is great. We're buying it for the baby. The Road to Mumbai by Ruth Jeyaveeran didn't grab me. I could see what she was trying to do with the story, but the narrative tension just wasn't there. Since we currently read to the kid mostly for our own amusement, our standards are pretty high.
I originally thought I wouldn't include kids books in this challenge, because it seemed like a cop-out since they're so short. But then I remembered I'm raising a middle-class white boy and we need to start early with the diversity and respect.
Short Stories: The Best of Simple by Langston Hughes. What I knew about Langston Hughes before reading this would have filled a thimble, which is really shameful. I only picked up The Best of Simple because I was walking around the library with the baby and it was easily accessible on an endcap. (Do they call them endcaps in libraries?) Honestly, though, I have not had as much fun reading a book in a long, long time. It's a collection of newspaper columns that Hughes wrote about a Harlem "everyman" and his thoughts on women, race, employment, and other day to day issues. I absolutely loved it. Kind of scary how many of the observations on race issues are still 100% true today.
Erg, remind me not to stack up 11 of them before I post next time. I want to say more about some of the books, but I've been working on this for ages and I just want it to be done.
