Reading Wednesday
Dec. 11th, 2019 02:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabbyI almost forgot!
Just finished: Pet by Akwaeke Emezi. The last 30 pages did not disappoint. This book is brilliant. One of the best things I've read all year and this is even with my biases regarding YA fiction as a marketing category. But seriously, go read it. It's inventive, the characters are compelling (what is someone who has grown up without oppression like? How does someone traumatized by the role they played in a successful revolution adjust to post-revolutionary life? In a children's book!!), and the writing is gorgeous. TW for childhood sexual abuse and a very gory scene at the end, but very much framed in a way that feels non-gratuitous and safe for young readers.
Currently reading: Antisocial by Andrew Marantz. This is a short-term hold, so I'm hoping I can get through it in the next two days. It's about the alt-right and techno-utopianism, and he's done some impressive embedded journalism with some deeply awful people. It's quite a good read so far.
Just finished: Pet by Akwaeke Emezi. The last 30 pages did not disappoint. This book is brilliant. One of the best things I've read all year and this is even with my biases regarding YA fiction as a marketing category. But seriously, go read it. It's inventive, the characters are compelling (what is someone who has grown up without oppression like? How does someone traumatized by the role they played in a successful revolution adjust to post-revolutionary life? In a children's book!!), and the writing is gorgeous. TW for childhood sexual abuse and a very gory scene at the end, but very much framed in a way that feels non-gratuitous and safe for young readers.
Currently reading: Antisocial by Andrew Marantz. This is a short-term hold, so I'm hoping I can get through it in the next two days. It's about the alt-right and techno-utopianism, and he's done some impressive embedded journalism with some deeply awful people. It's quite a good read so far.
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Date: 2019-12-11 11:10 pm (UTC)Re: *
Date: 2019-12-12 12:08 am (UTC)And I was thinking that one of the early breaks I felt from conventional femininity was an over-identification with male characters and a lack of interest in the sorts of books that get pushed at girls. When I got older, I realized that this was because most literature aimed at young girls at the time was 1) centred around domesticity, and 2) featured contemporary settings and realistic stories, and I was interested in adventure and alternative universes and so on. While I had no problem identifying with Lucy Pevensie or Alice, I had no interest in reading about, say, Laura Ingalls. And that's children's lit; there were even sparser pickings when I outgrew that.
Then I was thinking about YA literature about marginalized identities, and how rare it was then (and only slightly less rare now) to see a Black lead in a book that was not about The Black Experience. Not that this isn't important, but I know for a fact that there are little Black girls out there who want to imagine themselves exploring space or picking up a sword and kicking some ass. I'm struggling to think of a book, aimed at kids or adults, where there was a trans character whose story didn't literally or metaphorically revolve around being trans—let alone a trans character in a fantasy/near-future setting.
And here is this book where the main character is a little Black non-verbal trans girl, and it is not about her identity at all. It's about a child who teams up with a weird creature that came out of a painting to hunt a monster. She could be a little cis white girl who speaks, and it would not change the storyline in any significant way.
I'm thinking of myself as a little girl who wasn't like the other girls and who was interested in politics and art and monsters, not farmsteading on the frontier, and how much I would have bonded with this character (who is not like me in so many ways! But that wouldn't have prevented me from identifying with her). And there will be all kinds of kids who will read this book because they like stories about monsters and revolutions and feel like it was written for them.
ANYWAY IT'S REALLY GOOD sorry about the long rant
Re: *
Date: 2019-12-12 12:38 am (UTC)I HAVE WRAAPPED MY SOUL IN THIS RANT
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Date: 2019-12-12 01:17 pm (UTC)At some point the writer name drops Jemsin & I think that was a wise decision & a mistake. It's wise because more people aught to know & she's right to give Jemsin that credit. It's a mistake because when a you invoke a better writer in your book you're kind of forced into her shadow as comparisons are then suggested.
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Date: 2019-12-12 04:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-12-13 02:52 am (UTC)I do need to point out that Emezi is non-binary and their pronouns are they (which I didn't know until I was reviewing Freshwater.
I loved the namedrop of Jemisin. I thought it was great worldbuilding. Think of all the white authors who namedrop other well-known white authors. Like if I mentioned in my novel that a character is reading Shakespeare, no one in their right mind would think that I was comparing myself to Shakespeare; I'm saying something about the character and their tastes, or showing that they are a high school student and this is mandatory reading on the curriculum. Emezi isn't inviting a comparison to Jemisin—like very few authors are as good as Jemisin!—they are painting a picture of a future society in which Jemisin is rightly recognized as the important author that she is (and that she's apparently written something that's appropriate to be read to a small child).
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Date: 2019-12-13 02:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-12-13 08:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-12-14 02:05 am (UTC)