Category: In Reading Color

The world of Chain-Gang All Stars is one in which private prisons have absolute control over their populations and have developed an entertainment program that pits prisoners against each other in lethal matches that determine whether they go free or not. Two of the stars of this gladiator-like competition, Loretta Thurwar and Hamara “Hurricane Staxxx,” are also lovers, and one of them is intent on getting her freedom and caring for her fellow inmates. But the powers that be would rather see everyone at each others’ throats. Literally.

This is a 180 in terms of mood from the previous book. It follows Lily, a shy bookworm who hopes to be a children’s book editor, but who has been in the nonfiction department forever now. Then there’s her family, whose goals are vastly different from her own. To escape a reality that isn’t quite going her way, she starts emailing her favorite fantasy author, and the two of them actually foster a friendship that may turn into something more. But then he disappears. Later, Lily needs a date for her sister’s wedding and looks to Nick Brown, her new neighbor who, unbeknownst to her, is the fantasy author she was emailing all those months ago…

Poet Felix weaves in her childhood dyscalculia, a disorder that influences how numbers are understood and interpreted, into her miscalculations in her adult life. This is a clever and raw memoir that will have you in your feelings, even as it makes you laugh.

Even within my life, I remember when horror movies were known for killing the Black person first — who was usually a man — showing how disposable they thought the character, and even Black people as a whole, were. In this new book, the authors explore this very recent history and how far we’ve diverged from it. It’s interesting to see how much sociology lies within the horror genre, and how the fight to be treated equally — or should I say, the reaction to that fight — can be seen in horror’s treatment of The Other through the years. This is such an interesting book.

As soon as it may feel like reforming the inherently crooked system we have in the U.S. is impossible, just remember how ingrained the institution of slavery was at one point in this country, and how it was still abolished. Davis lays out the history of prisons in the U.S. — and how they became a replacement for slavery — and what the world would look like without them.

Like Davis before her, Alexander explains how the caste system didn’t disappear with the abolition of slavery. Rather, it mutated into what we have now — a mix of systems that maintains a certain social order. Prisons have a disproportionate number of Black and Latine men, and are being fed by biased policing, like the traffic stop that resulted in Tyre Nichols’ death.

Also read more about caste and how humans fit others into it in Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson.

Coates is super popular, of course, so you’ve probably heard of this book, so consider this encouragement to read it if you haven’t already. In it, Coates writes a letter to his son — in the same vein as James Baldwin’s letter to his nephew in The Fire Next Time — that explains the concept of race in America and what it means for those of us who possess Black bodies. For such a short read — 152 pages — this packs a lot of visceral writing.

Former beauty queen Xuan Trung loves to ponder her daughters’ futures according to their zodiacs, but the girls prove to be unpredictable. Trac is successful but hides her sexuality, while Nhi searches for love on a mainly white reality show, and Trieu seeks out their family history. As the story travels backwards in time, from their current lives in New Orleans to the lives of their ancestors in Saigon, we see a family with a history that is both epic and haunting.

Side note: if you’re not familiar, the Chinese and Vietnamese zodiacs are similar, except for two details: the Vietnamese zodiac has a cat instead of a rabbit, and a buffalo instead of an ox. So this is the year of the cat in Vietnam, while it is the year of the rabbit in China.

Olivia is poised to take over her grandmother’s matchmaking service based in traditional Chinese astrology, but then it gets slandered by eligible bachelor Bennett O’Brien. Liv tries to give men a wide berth, romantically, but then Bennett and she make a deal: whoever matches the other up with someone they fall in love with loses and has to let the other’s dating service flourish. Definitely won’t get messy.

Iconic Black, queer writer Audre Lorde coined the term “self-care” that the girlies like to use so much these days. But when she spoke of it, she spoke of how radical it was. She reasoned that, being Black, queer, and a woman, systems around the country were built to keep her in a certain state of decrepitude. And to actively push against that and care for herself was an act of rebellion. This collection was published more recently, but the original collection where she spoke about self-care is A Burst of Light.

This is also one of today’s new releases. It has a great mix of the personal story of the twins mixed with activism. They recount growing up on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, one of the poorest communities in the U.S., and the odds they had to overcome as a result. They share tools for self-help that are geared toward women of color that are based in their personal experience as well as psychological research on trauma. Activism is seen as a way to right a wrong, but also as a way to gain healing.

Rukmini, an internet-famous artist, covers Neela’s song and the two meet, forming a friendship. But one’s career flourishes while the other’s diminishes and jealousy forms. Everything comes to a head with one tweet — their friendship is in shambles and one is left without a career. The two are Elmo in the Elmo fire meme, basically.

This novel jumps through time as two women — trans priestess Inanna Au-Set Oya and Maryam, mother of Jesus — set out to heal the world of pain, the effects of colonialism, and misconception. But they’ll have to do so while staying true to themselves.

Aziza El-Amin is the only hedge witch in Blackthorn, Massachusetts, and sees to it that the magical beasties in the area are managed. But things change, of course, and a darkness breaks down the boundary between humdrum human world and the magical fairyland, making previously benign fae shenanigans turn dangerous. She strikes a deal with Leo, another teen in town whose dormant curse kicked in a year ago and has been wrecking his life her since. She gets help patrolling the magic in town and he gets help breaking his curse…except we already know it won’t be that simple.

Between caring for a father with Parkinson’s, an overbearing mother overseas, and her job, Maddie is through. She’s spent, done, and just over it. That’s why when her mother comes back to London from Ghana, she jumps at the chance to get out of the house and make up for being a late bloomer. She’ll finally move, go out for drinks, and be more assertive to get what she wants.

I have not read many queer Muslim books at all, so I’m extra excited for this one. It’s a coming-of-age memoir written by a Muslim girl whose family moves from South Asia to the Middle East. There, she masks her attraction to girls — starting with one of her female teachers — by cracking jokes and trying to have the best grades in class. When she comes across a passage about Maryam in the Quran, who was pregnant but claimed that no man had been with her, she wonders if maybe Maryam liked girls like she did. She starts to question other things about her religion, too, like if Allah is nonbinary since they’re considered to be neither male nor female. This questioning spirit continues once she gets to the U.S. for college, which she notices has some of the same racial issues as her homeland (i.e. colorism). I’m super here for this story of self-discovery!

Kuang only writes bangers, and in this one, June witnesses the death of Athena Liu — who just finished a novel that promises to be a masterpiece about Chinese laborers’ contributions to the Allied forces during WWI. She decides to take her manuscript and claims the story as her own. To take full advantage (because, you know, stealing someone’s book wasn’t enough), she also lets her publisher rebrand her with an Asian-sounding name and an author photo of someone who is racially ambiguous. The book is successful, but June can’t shake the feeling that it could all come tumbling down, and that the truth of Athena is about to be exposed.

This is a retelling of Carrie by Stephen King, but I couldn’t tell you how closely it adheres to the original as I haven’t read it. I’d wager it’s a bit different, though, as its main character is a biracial girl living in the south where there is still a high school that has a segregated prom (yes, for real, and this was inspired by real schools who had segregated proms as late as like 2014).

The story opens up letting us know that a tragedy happened at prom that left many students dead…and that people say Maddy did it. Although they don’t really know how she did it, and she’s since disappeared. The devastating night is first set in motion weeks before, when it’s discovered that Maddy has Black heritage once her hair gets wet and reverts back to its natural curl pattern. Up until that point, she’d painstakingly made sure her hair was straight so she could pass as white. Once her classmates discover this, they start bullying her, the worst of which comes on that fateful night. I listened to this on audio, and I loved how they structured the podcast segments (different chapters of the book are structured as podcast hosts going over the events of the prom night) and how each character had their own narrator. It was so, so good.

This poetry collection is all about frontiers, and how Black people have met and contended with them. Cortez’s family were actually pioneers in the Western U.S., and their legacy is here, as are observations of timeless topics like Black womanhood and identity. Let me gag you real quick with an excerpt from her “Covered Wagon as Spaceship:”

“…how do you come

to be where there are no others, except

science fiction? 

I am a child feeling

extraterrestrial; whose history, untold,

is not enough. 

Anyway, it begins with abduction.”

Here’s another YA fantasy. This one takes place in the Japan-inspired Awara, where magical beings and humans exist together. One day, as Miuko, a innkeeper’s daughter, is carrying out her duties, she gets cursed by a demon. As the curse slowly spreads to the rest of her body, she sets out on a journey to reverse the process that has started turning her into a demon. To succeed, she’ll have to contend with trickster spirits, feral gods, and a demon who disguises himself as a prince. Once she sees how much freedom women are granted within the magical world, she’ll have to decided if the freedom and power that come with being a demon are worth returning to the human world, with its sexist traditions. This is definitely for the girlies who love Miyazaki.

This was such a lovely fantasy ride! It tells the legend of Chang’e, the Chinese goddess of the moon, through her daughter Xingyin. After Xingyin’s presence is hinted at by her magic, she must flee the comforts of her mother, who has been exiled to the moon for offending the Celestial Kingdom. But Xingyin leaves her home with the goal of winning her mother’s freedom. To do so, she’ll disguise her identity, learn alongside the emperor’s son, and fight legendary beasts. The sequel to this is out and I’m sure it’s equally stunning.

If you’ve been reading this newsletter for a minute, you may have noticed my science fiction and fantasy bias. I try to correct for it by including a range of genres, but it’s no surprise that my favorites will be full of the fantastical. And Clark’s world in Master of Djinn is fantastical.

It’s full of djinn, who have returned to an early 1900s Egypt, bringing their magic and engineering with them. Their return is so significant that it elevates Egypt into world power status, to the chagrin of certain European countries. When the members of a secret brotherhood dedicated to the almost mythical man who brought back the djinn, al-Jahiz, are all brutally murdered, the youngest female detective in the Ministry of Alchemy is assigned the case. The streets are saying al-Jahiz, the Master of Djinn, has returned, but Agent Fatma can’t bring herself to believe it. The problem is that a mysterious man saying he’s al-Jahiz can actually control legendary djinn, and it’ll be up to Fatma, the rest of the agency, and all the magical beings she befriends to help her bring peace back to Cairo. Make sure to read the 43-page prequel A Dead Djinn in Cairo before getting into this one (and listen on audio if you can! The performance is *chef’s kiss*).

When Beatriz’s father is executed as part of the Mexican War of Independence in the 1800s, her and her mother are thrown out of the relative life of privilege they’d grown accustomed to. Desperate to change their situation, Beatriz agrees to marry Don Rodolfo Solórzano — nevermind the rumors about what happened to his first wife, the sigils the cook draws above the kitchen threshold, or the handsome priest who may know a thing or two about brujeria.

This retelling of Rebecca had me gagging! I couldn’t listen to it at night outside of my house. I’ve never been frightened by a book to that extent — which I realize may not be saying too much since I’m not a big horror reader.

For the past two years, our unnamed protagonist, a junior in college, has made mistake after mistake. As he and his creepy friend Ozu concoct a revenge plan involving fireworks, he happens to run into someone claiming to be a god. Suddenly, the protagonist is set on a new path, one where he gets to travel through time seeing what would have happened had he made different decisions.

Twenty-five years ago, National Book Award-winning poet Lewis found a huge collection of old photographs under her recently departed grandmother’s bed. Here, she writes poems to accompany these images of Black people living in the 20th century.

Yale and Celine are cousins who haven’t seen each other in 20 years when Celine visits from Hong Kong. That doesn’t stop Yale’s dad from insisting the two of them bond over running a food stall in a night market (lol at dad getting some free labor). When a customer turns up dead after drinking their bubble tea — which was so adorably garnished with some suspicious gold flakes Celine added — the two girls become suspects. They have to work together to clear their names before they end up spending even more time together in the clink.

Twins Koby Hill and Keaton Rutledge were orphaned at two and later separated. When they find each other again as adults, not only is their bond still there, they have shared interests. Those interests lead to them opening a bookstore/soul food cafe, but then Koby’s foster brother is found murdered a week before grand opening. The two work together to help police solve what seems to be an impossible crime.

I’ve recommended this before in this newsletter, but it’s been awhile. And I really love this series, so here we go again! Gethsemane Brown is Black American, a classically trained musician, and currently stranded in a lovely small town in the Irish countryside. She takes a job teaching at an all boys school, and the setting would be picturesque if it wasn’t for the ghost of the former owner of the cottage she’s staying in demanding she solve the case of his wife’s murder and prove his innocence.