Flooded Lizard Kingdom

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.

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.

The subtitle of this very small book is "Know Your Values and Frame the Debate," and I was expecting it make good on its claim that it's a practical resource for progressives. It's more of a series of essays about the concept of framing, values in politics, and the importance of thinking about identity and values more than policy and programs.

I would definitely recommend reading it - especially since it's only 118 pages - because it made me think about why I believe in the things I do, and it gave me a first step towards learning how to talk about those things without getting mad and losing all clarity of thought.

Here are a few bits that caught my eye:

I think Tom DeLay would be fine with me having this book about his life out for over a week past its due date. He is not a man who cares about playing by the rules.

Lou Dubose, one co-author of "The Hammer: Tom DeLay, God, Money, and the Rise of the Republican Congress," will be a guest speaker at DemocracyFest 2005 here in Austin in June. It should be interesting to hear him talk about politics, because "The Hammer" isn't just a biography of Tom Delay. It's more of a wake-up call about how much the "game" in Washington has changed since Tom DeLay's ilk started their climb.

It's scary stuff. Basically, DeLay and his people have turned Washington into a pay-to-play arena, even more than I thought possible. They're all about power, except when they're about trying to start a war in the Middle East to bring on the Rapture. And the changes they've made aren't just problems right now - they're going to be problems for quite a few years to come.

Here are three items that particularly caught my eye:

Harry Potter book sales have hit 250,000,000. The current population of the United States, according to the Census Bureau, is 292,615,786. Given that three or four people outside the U.S. have bought books, I'm not sure the saturation is that great on this product. Would Bill Gates stand for it if at least 42 million people in this country didn't use Windows?!

BTW, I finished Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon this weekend.

It was very long.

And pretty much about death, rockets, and paranoia.

I think...

Neal Stephenson's appearance at BookPeople on Wednesday would be an excellent opportunity to make him mine. Or at least make him nervous. But I have given up the stalking, so I must content myself with feeling lucky that he is actually interacting with the public.

Reading: Could not finish The System. I would have quit my job in despair. So it's How the Irish Saved Civilization, which is delightfully well written and tends to make me laugh quietly on the bus every few pages. And now I know much more about Rome. And I have realized that I'm just not all that Irish. Really. I'm just too much of a coward and an anti-hedonist. Plus, going into battle *naked*? You could get *hurt*!

Listening: Pete Yorn, The Ukrainians, Cake, Nick Cave, and a few other things that make me feel so alternative...but we all know I sing along to Belinda Carlisle's "Mad About You" when I hear it in the grocery store.

Watching: Agni Varsha was the last movie, I think. I watched the entire thing without realizing that the female lead (Sonali Kulkarni as Nittilai) was also Pooja in Dil Chahta Hai, which I loved loved loved. Agni Varsha struck me as extremely Shakespearian, and I'm just barely educated enough that I said "Aha!" when I saw this on IMDB: "The story is derived from the myth of Yavakri, which is a part of the great Indian epic, the Mahabharata."

I'm also plowing through reruns of Cybill as fast as the chick channel can air them. I don't know why I find sitcoms so reassuring. They are not Shakespearian at all. Shakespearian and reassuring are opposites, though, so maybe that helps explain it.

Reading: The System, by Haynes Johnson and David S. Broder - next to last politics book that C. lent me before she left. Very long, but then I'll know why I have lame health insurance.
(Also Planetary, thanks to I-ROCK, who is probably under the misapprehension he will get it back. Poor fellow.)

Listening: Ashley MacIsaac - the new one only has three good songs, very disappointing after Helter's Celtic. A man who wrote a celtic fiddle tune called "Andy Renwick's Ferret" shouldn't be allowed to do trite love lyrics.
(Also Ministry's Psalm 69, but only the once since I bought it. Today, while writing a grant.)

Watching: Last two movies were Junglee and Greenfingers. The former was fabulous, the latter utterly predictable but mildly charming. I couldn't quite work out the time in Junglee. People get stuck in a snowstorm with only enough rations for a hike up the mountain, and by the time they get back (alive and healthy, with no grocery shopping or hunting/gathering shown) a woman who was six months pregnant when they left now has an infant son. It was a little suspicious. But Shammi Kapoor concinvincingly played a wide range as his character was transformed - by the end of the film I had trouble even recalling the physical appearance of his character at the beginning, he moved and behaved so differently.