Category: In Reading Color

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In Reading Color

Escaping War

Welcome to In Reading Color, a space where we focus on literature by and about people of color.

I was worried about quite a few things as we brought in 2022, but Russian invasion was definitely not one of them. Alas, here we are. The outpouring of support I’ve seen for Ukraine has been heartening, at least. Eileen Gonzalez compiled an excellent list of books to help understand how we got to this moment. So far, 400,000 Ukrainians have been able to get away from conflict, but I’ve started to see issues arising concerning African, Asian, and Middle Eastern students being able to leave the country. I hope everyone is able to get to safety soon.

As native Ukrainians and those who have chosen to make Ukraine their home continue to leave conflict, they are having to adapt to everything that comes with being in a new country. I think that regardless of country of origin, this experience involved many of the same things for many people. Because of this, I’ve made a short list of middle grade, YA, and adult books that speak from the perspective of displaced people.

cover of Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhhà Lai

Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhhà Lai

This middle grade novel in verse shows how ten-year-old Hà must leave all she’s ever known to escape the war of Vietnam. Her family finds a sponsor in America and moves to Alabama, where Hà finds bullies, bland food, and a language that is difficult for her to pick up. There is a good amount of humor to be found in this book as Hà adjusts to her new life.

cover of We Are Displaced by Malala Yousafzai

We Are Displaced by Malala Yousafzai

There are over 68.5 million people who are displaced, and this collection of stories gives faces and names to that statistic. It starts with Yousafzai telling of how she had to leave her native Pakistan when she was just eleven. At fifteen, she was shot by the Taliban for protesting about her and other girls’ right to go to school. Here, her story takes up only a small portion of the book, with the rest being given to the stories of other girls— from Columbia to Yemen— who have been displaced.

cover of Igifu by Scholastique Mukasonga, translated by Jordan Stump

Igifu by Scholastique Mukasonga, translated by Jordan Stump

This takes place during the Rwandan genocide and is another collection of stories, but this time partially fiction and partially autobiographical. Hunger has such a constant presence in characters’ lives that it’s personified as Igifu, “a cruel guardian angel.” A child searches for nourishment at the bud of a flower, a woman recounts her life before the war and after, and a young man remembers his father and the wealth that cattle promised in another time. Zadie Smith has said the collection “rescues a million souls from the collective noun genocide.”

cover of Exit West by Mohsin Hamid

Exit West by Mohsin Hamid

Nadia wears a burka so men don’t notice her. Saeed is quiet. The two meet and become lovers who both try not to be noticed. They only wish to smoke their ganga and take their shrooms in peace as war begins to break out in their unnamed country. The country not having a name serves to show how it could be any country that is experiencing violent upheaval. Once Nadia and Saeed find out there are portals that can take them out of danger, they use them to flee west, first to London and then California. This move takes something from them, though, as they suddenly find themselves in a new world that lacks the happiness and warmth of their home.

Make sure to get your own Read Harder Book Journal from Book Riot to track your reading for the year!

A Little Sumn Extra

Jan. 6 Report Will Be Published as Book

Memoirs to look forward to in 2022

Goodies to celebrate Sailor Moon’s 30th anniversary

Kelly Jensen details what kind of advice vintage books offered teens

Oklahoma Attorney General drops obscenity investigation of books

Here’s a list of  horror novels and novellas written by Black women

Here are some Queer Black Romances to read

Don’t forget you can get three free audiobooks at Audiobooks.com with a free trial!

Thanks for reading; it’s been cute! If you want to reach out and connect, email me at erica@riotnewmedia.com or tweet at me @erica_eze_. You can find me on the Hey YA podcast with the fab Tirzah Price, as well as in the In The Club newsletter.

Until next time,

-E

Categories
In Reading Color

The Book That Inspired the Harlem Renaissance

Welcome to In Reading Color, a space where we focus on literature by and about people of color.

I moved around quite a bit during my time as an undergrad student in NYC. It was part of school policy that we changed dorm rooms every year, which was irritating but let me experience different neighborhoods in Manhattan. My favorite neighborhood I lived in, though, was actually the one I moved to after I had stopped living in the dorms, in my last year at school. I lived in the 140s in Harlem, just a few blocks away from a small bridge that connected to the South Bronx.

What surprised me about living in Harlem was how similar to the South it was. Physically, it was very different of course, but interacting with the people carried a pleasant familiarity with it, one that I hadn’t realized I’d been missing living in other neighborhoods in lower Manhattan. This makes sense as much of Harlem was populated by the Great Migration, when millions of Black Americans journeyed from the South in search of jobs and opportunity.

This migration was largely responsible for what would become known as the Harlem Renaissance. The Harlem Renaissance was a period of time between the mid 1910s to the 1930s, by some accounts, that saw a great explosion of Black culture centered in Harlem.

I love the Harlem Renaissance. For all the obvious things it did for Black culture, like giving it its own stage, but also for how it contained The Black Experience. Black literature, art, music, and philosophy were explored and in conversation with each other. Differing viewpoints on ideologies were expressed and there was a thriving queer scene that had what we now know as drag balls— Langston Hughes called them “Spectacles in Color” and described them as a “ball where men dress as women and women dress as men,” where, awards were given to the most lavishly dressed.

In addition to Langston Hughes, many other authors of classic Black literature were active during this time, like W.E.B. DuBois, Zora Neale Hurston, Nella Larsen, Claude McKay, and Marcus Garvey. But there was one author in particular who many credit as having written the book that ushered in the Harlem Renaissance, especially as it related to literature, and that was Jean Toomer.

Toomer’s Cane was written in 1923 to some critical acclaim, but wasn’t widely read. This might have been because it didn’t quite have the stereotypical portrayal of Black people that many white audiences wanted to see, nor did it drown itself in the respectability that many Black audiences wanted. Instead, it showed southern Black people as full people. Nuanced and complex. The experimental structure of Cane lent itself to this feeling of complexity, with its mixture of prose in the form of vignettes and poetry.

Penguin Classics cover of Cane by Jean Toomer

The triptych starts in the rural Black South, where it explores the vulnerability of Black women and men, with an emphasis on sexuality and self-actualization, or a lack thereof. The destructive nature of racial hatred is shown, as is self-destruction. Men fill emotional voids with sex, alcohol, and a desire for material goods, and women are “ripened too soon.”

The second part of the novel sees the move from the warm-blooded, sensual South to the North. With the move, what Black people gain in opportunity they lose in spirituality and connection to their past. The conformity deemed necessary for city living further robs them of confidence. The final section of the book is about a Black schoolteacher in the south, who recounts his previous life in New York as a distant memory. The structure is similar to a play’s, with its titular character Kabnis struggling with his racial identity.

I think of Toomer himself when I think of this character. Toomer was born into a multi-generationally mixed family of light-skinned people in D.C. and could move in and out of Black and white circles, sometimes identifying as white and other times as Black. And then there were times when he identified as neither, and said he was part of a new, truly American race. Once his work Cane came to be identified as a Negro masterpiece, he retreated somewhat from writing, resenting the label. He didn’t want his work, and by extension himself, to be seen as inherently Black.

Normally, I bristle at the practice of some lighter-skinned and mixed people donning their Black hats when it suits them, only to distance themselves at other times from Blackness. But reading a little more about Toomer’s thoughts on race has made me a bit more sympathetic. I can start to see how he felt that racial labels were way too restrictive and harmful for the individual. Having preconceived narratives projected onto people by society and themselves makes people into these simple, monolithic concepts, which takes away the complexity that being human brings with it. Among other things, this stifles creativity, the last thing a writer wants.

Still, I can’t help but wonder if Toomer hadn’t reacted so strongly to being labeled “Negro” and his subsequent withdrawal from writing if he wouldn’t have produced more works as influential as Cane. Alice Walker said of the book, “It has been reverberating in me to an astonishing degree. I love it passionately, could not possibly exist without it.” Its impact is undeniable.

Make sure to get your own Read Harder Book Journal from Book Riot to track your reading for the year!

A Little Sumn Extra

More Harlem Renaissance reading:

Other reading:

The queer revolution of children’s lit

Interesting facts about LeVar Burton

The most successful book thief in American history

A fun quiz to find out which book genre you are

Don’t forget you can get three free audiobooks at Audiobooks.com with a free trial!

Thanks for reading; it’s been cute! If you want to reach out and connect, email me at erica@riotnewmedia.com or tweet at me @erica_eze_. You can find me on the Hey YA podcast with the fab Tirzah Price, as well as in the In The Club newsletter.

Until next week,

-E

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In Reading Color

The Case For More Black Elves, News, and New Releases

Welcome to In Reading Color, a space where we focus on literature by and about people of color.

In tired, are-you-still-on this news, there has been backlash against the diverse casting in the new Lord of the Rings series. There’s a Black dwarf princess and an Afro-Latine elf, and the racists are big madT. I have to admit my… I don’t know, maybe I should refer to it as naïveté, because I really thought people were over this. I mean, we are in the middle of a pandemic still, and there are disaster-fires of various severity still going on all over the world. People are still taking the time to be mad about a fictional world not having all white people in it, though. I can’t.

l remember years ago when the Hunger Games movies were coming out and people were mad that Rue was cast as a Black girl, even though she was Black in the books. More recently, John Boyega in Star Wars and Halle Bailey as the future Little Mermaid also ruffled racists’ feathers. The logic against diverse casting in a lot of these complaints always seems to be that these non-white characters wouldn’t have existed in middle earth/space/undersea. All of the other non-realistic elements— like the existence of mermaids, magical elves, sci-fi wars in space, etc.— are perfectly acceptable, though. Plus, these people never seem to keep that same energy for when white people are playing Black or other non-white characters. Just say you don’t want to see non-white people and go.

Another argument against swapping races for TV and movie adaptations is simply that it’s not canon, which may be tempting for some to accept as a valid argument. That is, until you start accounting for all the times white actors have played non-white characters and no one batted an eye. This article by HuffPost is a few years old, so it doesn’t have more recent examples, but the side-by-side comparisons make such a good case. Non-white erasure has been so prominent in Hollywood that giving a few actors who aren’t white the chance to play traditionally white characters is just the beginning of fixing a system that is so dangerously discriminatory.

Still, there are some people of color who think that instead of putting non-white characters where there were none before, we should just produce more works by authors and screenwriters of color. I personally think we need to do both. We need that different perspective that comes from non-white writers, but we should also continue to diversify previously non-diverse scripts and books because there is still discrimination— that has been going on for decades— concerning whose scripts get chosen. What do you think?

A Few New Books Out

Middle Grade

A Comb of Wishes by Lisa Stringfellow

Rima’s Rebellion: Courage in a Time of Tyranny by Margarita Engle 

Young Adult

Cold by Mariko Tamaki

Cherish Farrah by Bethany C. Morrow

cover of Cherish Farrah by Bethany C. Morrow

Lulu and Milagro’s Search for Clarity by Angela Velez

Ophelia After All by Racquel Marie

Sunny G’s Series of Rash Decisions by Navdeep Singh Dhillon 

You Truly Assumed by Laila Sabreen

Reclaim the Stars: 17 Tales Across Realms & Space by Zoraida Cordova

The Chandler Legacies by Abdi Nazemian

Make sure to get your own Read Harder Book Journal from Book Riot to track your reading for the year!

Adult

Moon Witch, Spider King by Marlon James cover

God Is a Black Woman by Christena Cleveland

Homicide and Halo-Halo by Mia P. Manansala

Jawbone by Mónica Ojed

Nobody’s Magic by Destiny O. Birdsong

Moon Witch, Spider King by Marlon James

The Almond in the Apricot by Sara Goudarzi 

Don’t forget you can get three free audiobooks at Audiobooks.com with a free trial!

A Little Sumn Extra

The cast of Washington Black looks really good so far!

Take it back to the ’90s with these series you should read this year

Glory Edim Launches Well-Read Black Girl Series

Jaime Herndon reread Fahrenheit 451 and compares it to the current state of book banning and censorship that’s going on

Here are some South Asian books to read this year

Here are some Affrilachian poetry collections to get into

DC shows its lineup for 2022 movies, one of which is Black Adam, played by The Rock

ZORA NEALE HURSTON bookmark

I’m a sucker for a nice bookmark, and this one featuring Zora Neale Hurston is deliciously vintage. $12

Erika Hardison’s list of bookish Black Etsy shops has a lot of other cute things, like washi tape that has a super kawaii Meg Thee Stallion in cowboy chaps (!!).

Thanks for reading; it’s been cute! If you want to reach out and connect, email me at erica@riotnewmedia.com or tweet at me @erica_eze_. You can find me on the Hey YA podcast with the fab Tirzah Price, as well as in the In The Club newsletter.

Until next week,

-E

Categories
In Reading Color

New-ish Children’s, YA, and Adult Black History Books

Welcome to In Reading Color, a space where we focus on literature by and about people of color.

Okay, so I don’t know about you, but I’ve already started seeing the “not during Black History month, smh” tweets/social media comments and they are sending me. The response to something, anything, remotely negative surrounding Black people never fails to make an appearance during February, and it always tickles me when I come across it. Now, the times I’ve chuckled at this is when it’s said about something somewhat light-hearted. But even when it’s meant as a joke, I think it’s a great example of Black people’s ability to make anything into something funny.

I say anything because, as I’ve expressed in this newsletter before, heritage months are necessary to supplement a great deficit that exists in history curricula nationwide, but a lot of Black history focuses on trauma. This is understandable, as a lot of Black American history is trauma-filled, but it isn’t the only thing to learn and is certainly not the key takeaway.

The books I’ve included today either talk about lesser known topics in Black history, or about well-known topics in a new way, showing the struggle but also how we’ve been able to spin our circumstances into something positive.

cover of The 1619 Project: Born on the Water by Nikole Hannah-Jones

The 1619 Project: Born on the Water by Nikole Hannah-Jones and Renée Watson, illustrate by Nikkolas Smith

This picture book is a companion of Nikole Hannah-Jones’s The 1619 Project, and tells the story of a little Black girl’s heritage through verse. It starts out with her in class, frustrated because she can not complete a school assignment where she has to trace her family history. Her grandmother tells her about her heritage, but starts in a flourishing West Africa that hasn’t yet been tainted by colonialism. What follows is the journey from an African home to American bondage, with many of the harsh details adapted to a younger audience. Four hundred years of Black American history is detailed, so it is condensed, but still worth a read, with an art style that is expressive and full of movement.

cover of Evicted!: The Struggle for the Right to Vote by Alice Faye Duncan

Evicted!: The Struggle for the Right to Vote by Alice Faye Duncan

I was surprised when I first heard about this book because I had never heard about Tennessee’s Fayette County Tent City Movement . And… I’m from Tennessee, smh, but here we are. This is another book that combines poetry, prose, and illustrations to tell the story of the late 1950s in West Tennessee from a kid’s perspective. In Fayette County, Jim Crow ruled, with segregation and voter discrimination in full effect. When Black landowners organized voter registration drives to help other Black people to vote, the effort was met with violence. White landowners evicted Black sharecroppers, forcing them to live in tents, and shop owners refused to sell them groceries and other vital items. This all led to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which legally ended voting discrimination.

freedom book cover

Freedom!: The Story of the Black Panther Party by Jetta Grace Martin, Joshua Bloom, and Waldo E Martin

This book is both a thoroughly researched and intimate account of the Black Panther Party from its inception in the late ’60s to its final offices being closed in the early ’80s. Iconic pictures of members and vital moments further flesh out the movement and show how the party was able to do things like provide free breakfast to thousands of school children, which FBI head J. Edgar Hoover tried to end by spreading the rumor to parents that the food would give their children STDs. The U.S. government would go on to establish a free breakfast program for kids that now feeds over 14 million students.

cover ofSouth to America by Imani Perry

South to America by Imani Perry

Ever since I moved to the Northeast as a native southerner, I’ve noticed how inaccurate the overall portrayal of the South is. Perry starts to set the record straight here in this book, which is equal parts memoir, history, and travel nonfiction. She addresses the nastiness of the South that is typically attributed to it (and for good reason), but also includes its beauty and how the U.S. as we know it today is rooted there. She journeys back home to Alabama to explore her ancestors, detouring to include artists, immigrants, and southerners from all walks of life. An interesting way, I think, that she describes the South is that it is “conservative in the sense of conservation.”

cover of A Terrible Thing to Waste: Environmental Racism and Its Assault on the American Mind by Harriet A. Washington

A Terrible Thing to Waste: Environmental Racism and Its Assault on the American Mind by Harriet A. Washington

The author of Medical Apartheid is back to once again educate and infuriate. Washington shows how the conversation around Black, Indigenous, and Latine intelligence and achievement hasn’t been looked at correctly, and how environmental factors have been negatively influencing both these things for decades. She shows how it’s not just class-based, either, as middle-classed Black American households with incomes between $50,000-$60,000 live in areas that “are more polluted than those of very poor white households with incomes less than $10,000.” She gets into topics like neurotoxins, nutrition, birth control, and all other environmental factors that have resulted in public health issues for communities of color.

Make sure to get your own Read Harder Book Journal from Book Riot to track your reading for the year!

A Little Sumn Extra

The Violin Conspiracy is the February Good Morning America Book Club Pick

How much do you know about world geography? Get into this game fellow Rioter Kelly Jensen shared with me last week

Rioter Chris M. Arnone writes about some lesser-known Harlem Renaissance writers

Here’s another by the Arnone that talks about how the topics presented during the Harlem Renaissance resonate 100 years later

Jessica Pryde writes about how libraries are recognizing Black History month

Here are some interesting facts about Zora Neale Hurston you may not know

A fun Sailor Moon character quiz

Don’t forget you can get three free audiobooks at Audiobooks.com with a free trial!

Thanks for reading; it’s been cute! If you want to reach out and connect, email me at erica@riotnewmedia.com or tweet at me @erica_eze_. You can find me on the Hey YA podcast with the fab Tirzah Price, as well as in the In The Club newsletter.

Until next week,

E

Categories
In Reading Color

News and New Middle Grade, YA, and Adult Releases!

Welcome to In Reading Color, a space where we focus on literature by and about people of color.

In Color Readers! How have you been faring so far this winter? The East Coast and Midwest has been having some gnarly weather the past few days. I’ve been hearing from some people how they’ve even been having pipe issues and below freezing temperatures. I hope that wherever you’re reading from, your pipes are treating you right, and the temperature is respecting you!

I’m super excited to celebrate our first Black History Month together, and this month has so many great books coming out that have been authored by Black people! I’m. HYPE. Below are some of the many great books coming out this month that I think you should check out.

cover of Cameron Battle and the Hidden Kingdoms by Jamar J. Perry

Middle Grade

Cameron Battle and the Hidden Kingdoms by Jamar J. Perry

Freewater by Amina Luqman-Dawson

Omar Rising by Aisha Saeed

Wishing Upon the Same Stars by Jacquetta Nammar Feldman

cover of And We Rise by Erica Martin

Young Adult

And We Rise by Erica Martin

No Filter and Other Lies by Crystal Maldonado

Squire by Nadia Shammas and Sara Alfageeh

The New Girl by Jesse Q Sutanto

This Woven Kingdom by Tahereh Mafi

cover of Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson; white font over multi-colored paint swishes that create the face of a Black woman in the center

Adult

Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson

Black Girls Must Be Magic by Jayne Allen

The Family Chao by Lan Samantha Chang

Broken Halves of a Milky Sun: Poems by Aaiún Nin

Don’t Cry for Me by Daniel Black

Carolina Built by Kianna Alexander 

Ramón and Julieta by Alana Quintana Albertson

Didn’t We Almost Have It All: In Defense of Whitney Houston by Gerrick Kennedy

The Family She Never Met by Caridad Pineiro

Black Love Matters by Jessica P. Pryde

What the Fireflies Knew by Kai Harris

Make sure to get your own Read Harder Book Journal from Book Riot to track your reading for the year!

A Little Sumn Extra

a bookmark showing a Black girl with her face obscured by the book she's reading. She's sitting with her knees to her chest, and is wearing a shirt and shorts in a burnt orange color with turquoise socks.

How cute is this bookmark from a Black-owned Etsy shop? $10

Don’t forget you can get three free audiobooks at Audiobooks.com with a free trial!

Thanks for reading; it’s been cute! If you want to reach out and connect, email me at erica@riotnewmedia.com or tweet at me @erica_eze_. You can find me on the Hey YA podcast with the fab Tirzah Price, as well as in the In The Club newsletter.

Until next week!

-E

Categories
In Reading Color

Throwback Tuesday: Topics in History You May Have Never Heard of

Welcome to In Reading Color, a space where we focus on literature by and about people of color.

I feel like History, as it’s mostly presented North American media, tends to focus on the same few topics from white men’s perspectives. This has, of course, gotten better in recent years, but I’m still amazed at how so many movies, shows, and books still like to focus on the same few topics (I know enough about WWII, okay?!), especially whenever I first learn of some major historical moment or figure that I had never heard of before. My most recent mindblown-by-history moment came as I was gathering books for the latest Hey YA Extra Credit episode (which airs tomorrow, January 26th) where I discussed YA books with activism. Because of Banned Book Club by Kim Hyun Sook and Ryan Estrada, I first heard of the military regime that ruled over South Korea in the ’80s.

Here are a few more books that take you to interesting places in history that should be talked about more:

cover of The Fortune Men by Nadifa Mohamed

The Fortune Men by Nadifa Mohamed

In 1952, Mahmood Mattan was accused of murder and eventually executed in Wales. This was par for the course for murder cases at that time, so why was this significant? Because he was innocent. The Muslim Somalian immigrant initially hadn’t taken the charges seriously when a female shopkeeper was murdered and the authorities were looking for someone to pin it on. He had chalked interest in him as the perpetrator up to the same racial prejudice that saw him unable to find work other than being the occasional sailor. Although he had his vices, like gambling —which his Welsh wife had kicked him out for— he always vehemently maintained his innocence in the murder. This is historical fiction, but is based on the true story of the last hanging in Wales.

cover of Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharthi

Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharthi, translated by Marilyn Booth 

What do you know of Oman? If you’re like me, next to nothing. And that makes sense when you consider how this is the first book by a woman from Oman to be translated into English. And, uh, this was first published in 2010, with the English translated edition having been published in 2019, so… yeah. If you’re sitting and reading this with a surprised pikachu face, know I had the same face when I first found that out.

Celestial Bodies is a tale of Oman that is both past and present. It shows how the roles of politics, gender, and class factor into the personal through the interworkings of families. We’re introduced to three sisters— Mayya, Asma, and Khawla — who hail from a well-off family, but each have their own views of marriage. We’re shown Mayya’s life, after she marries Abdullah, who was raised by Zarifa— his father’s slave. We also learn of Zarifa’s life, whose mother was born on the day slavery was supposed to have been abolished, and who was later sold as an enslaved teenager and married off to another enslaved person from Africa. The novel takes us through Oman’s pastoral and patriarchal, slave-holding past (slavery having only just been abolished in the country 1970), and brings us into its present.

cover of The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste

The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste

The Shadow King shows the fortitude and resourcefulness of one young Ethiopian woman during the second invasion of Ethiopia by Italy in the 1930s, right before WWII. The dark cloud of Mussolini looms overhead as orphaned Hirut tries to adapt to life as a maid in the house of Kidane, an army officer. Kidane’s behavior towards Hirut turns from pleasant to cruel as his sexual harassment of her is met unfavorably. Hirut finds herself in a totally new world living in the officer’s house, and as the war takes shape, she and other women— like Kindane’s wife Aster— want to do more for their country than nurse the wounded.

The titular Shadow King character comes as a result of Hirut’s brilliant idea to replace Emperor Haile Selassie, who has gone into exile, with a lookalike who has been trained to speak and act like him. With Hirut at his side as his guard, a man who was formerly a peasant maintains the morale of his country as the Shadow King, even inspiring more women to join in the fight against the more technologically advanced Italian army.

cover of The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee by David Treuer

The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee by David Treuer

Bury Me at Wounded Knee gets an update by Treuer. Whereas many people see Native American history as reaching its apex at the 1890 battle, Treuer shows just how rich and varied Native life and history has been since. He mixes reporting with memoir and interviews with elders to show the continued efforts by the U.S. government to destroy Native culture— specifically Ojibwe in Treuer’s case— and seize Native lands, and how this has susequently been met with resistance. One such instance of resistance was the American Indian Movement of the 1970s that was started by urban Native tribes, although it had some trouble gaining support with those living in rural areas. With The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee, Treuer takes what’s commonly thought of as Native American history and fleshes it out, telling a story of continued persecution, resistance, and pride.

Make sure to get your own Read Harder Book Journal from Book Riot to track your reading for the year!

A Little Sumn Extra

Here are the winners for the ALA’s Youth Media Awards, which includes the Newbery, Caldecott, and Printz awards

Little Free Library’s Action Book Club has an environmental theme

Lebron James is producing a series that will be based on The Crossover by Kwame Alexander

Kelly Jensen highlights some interesting metal bookmarks

This article on Khalil Gibran, the third best selling poet in history, and his widely popular book The Prophet

Don’t forget you can get three free audiobooks at Audiobooks.com with a free trial!

Thanks for reading; it’s been cute! If you want to reach out and connect, email me at erica@riotnewmedia.com or tweet at me @erica_eze_. You can find me on the Hey YA podcast with the fab Tirzah Price, as well as in the In The Club newsletter.

See y’all!

-E

Categories
In Reading Color

In the Spirit of Activism

Welcome to In Reading Color, a space where we focus on literature by and about people of color.

Reading color friends! Yesterday was MLK day and I think that for the past few years, many have felt that the history surrounding Dr. King was firmly in the past. That we were in a post racial America, and that it was safe to look back on the civil rights movement as a by-gone era with completely foreign motivations. Thankfully, many of those people have been woken up and it is now better understood how the past has firm ties to the present. The things that Dr. King and his contemporaries fought for still exist today, but only may have changed form.

Here are some books that encompass that same spirit of activism, social justice, and stepping outside of one’s experience that Dr. King stood for:

cover of Voice of Freedom- Fannie Lou Hamer by Carole Boston Weatherford

Voice of Freedom: Fannie Lou Hamer by Carole Boston Weatherford

This children’s book is a great introduction to Fannie Lou Hamer, who was a contemporary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. but was from a much different background. Where he was educated and coached to be a leader within the civil rights movement, Hamer was the 20th child of sharecroppers in Mississippi, and had a sixth grade education. Even with these beginnings, she rose to be a leading voice within the movement. Her voice and message of what Black people suffered was so strong that a speech she gave at the Democratic National Convention in 1964 garnered nation-wide support, despite President Johnson interrupting it.

cover of This Book Is Anti-Racist by Tiffany Jewell

This Book Is Anti-Racist by Tiffany Jewell

Tiffany Jewell is an anti-racist and anti-bias activist, and with this book, she has given readers an actual guide to taking down the beast that is racism, starting with the self. She educates on the current usage of terminology that is used in reference to marginalized identities, dispels misconceptions around race, and offers activities at the end of each chapter that encourage self reflection. This is marketed a little more towards young adults, but should be suitable for all ages.

cover of Disability Visibility edited by Alice Wong

Disability Visibility edited by Alice Wong

Disabled activist Alice Wong gives a voice to the 20% of the American population that is disabled. Through the various essays, blog posts, eulogies, Congressional testimonies, and other writings that comprise Disability Visibility, Wong demonstrates the complexity of being disabled. Among the disabilities given visibility here are blindness and deafness, generalized mental illness, autism, fibromyalgia, and more. There’s also an excellent YA version of this book as well: Disability Visibility (Adapted for Young Adults).

cover of How We Fight White Supremacy by Akiba Solomon

How We Fight White Supremacy by Akiba Solomon and Kenrya Rankin 

Solomon and Rankin are journalists who have gathered a collection of essays and musings from well-known Black people from various professions about what exactly white supremacy is. They also cover grassroots organizing for how to combat it, partially by highlighting its blatant as well as its subtle forms. Among the contributors here are Ta-Nehisi Coates, Harry Belafonte, Tarana Burke, Reverend Dr. Valerie Bridgeman, Patrisse Khan-Cullors, and others. The conversation here is started by Black thinkers, but the message is meant for everyone with a mind to fight white supremacy.

Don’t forget you can get three free audiobooks at Audiobooks.com with a free trial!

A Little Sumn Extra

The kids are truly all right: this group of teens started a book club to discuss banned books amidst recent book bannings.

Danika talks about the Streisand effect and what that means for censorship.

In securing the bag (for charity) news: Xiran Jay Zhao auctions off books they sat on for the National Cervical Cancer Coalition. Listen, get in where you fit in. I’m not mad.

cover of The Christmas Princess by Mariah Carey

Carina talks about reading 100 books in a year and how you can miss her (!) with doing that again. I don’t blame you, sis. What is the biggest number of books you’ve read in a year and would you want to read that number again?

Speaking of number of books being read, here are some great (short) books to kickstart any reading goals you may have.

Mariah Carey is publishing her first children’s book,The Christmas Princess . It should be out in October this year.

If you haven’t heard already, Maya Angelou is the first Black woman to be on the U.S. quarter.

Thanks for reading; it’s been cute! If you want to reach out and connect, email me at erica@riotnewmedia.com or tweet at me @erica_eze_. You can find me on the Hey YA podcast with the fab Tirzah Price, as well as in the In The Club newsletter.

See you next week!

-E

Categories
In Reading Color

Self-Care is the Best Care

Welcome to In Reading Color, a space where we focus on literature by and about people of color.

How do you feel about New Year’s resolutions? Do you look forward to making them each year and subsequently forgetting them within two months sticking to them? Or, have you come to see the rush to join gyms, etc. around this time every year to be exhausting and a little trite? The past couple years, I’ve found it a little more helpful for me to set intentions throughout the year, rather than just once at the beginning of it. With that said, I still appreciate what the turning of the year can mean for what ever progress I want to make. I also appreciate how many New Year’s resolutions have been restructured the past few years. It seems like they’re all moving to incorporate more self-care. Resolutions around weight management, for instance, have been shifting to feeling good in and about your body rather than solely focusing on weigh loss.

Below are some books I hope will be helpful in achieving some of the desired changes for your new year.

cover of Yoke: My Yoga of Self-Acceptance by Jessamyn Stanley

Yoke: My Yoga of Self-Acceptance by Jessamyn Stanley

Yoke is a thoughtful look at how yoga is practiced in the western world. Through personal essays, Stanley uses humor and honesty to deliver some insightful truths about racism, wellness, and loving your body and self. For more of a how-to yoga book by Stanley, check out Every Body Yoga. She also has classes (including a 2 week trial) if you’re interested.

cover of You Are Here by Thich Nhat Hanh

You Are Here by Thich Nhat Hanh

Zen monk Thich Nhat Hanh has been helping the world to better understand Buddhist teachings and practices for decades now. In You Are Here, he uses a retreat he led for Westerners as a foundation to show how to attain mindfulness, which can be used in meditation practices, or otherwise incorporated into everyday life.

cover of The Body Is Not an Apology by Sonya Renee Taylor

The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love by Sonya Renee Taylor

“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation and that is an act of political warfare.” — Audre Lorde

The concept of self-care as we have been seeing it used the past few years has been somewhat appropriated. When Audre Lorde made the case for unapologetically taking care of herself, it was to further combat the systems of oppression that would see a Black, queer and female body destroyed. The Body is Not an Apology has similar energy. In it, Renee Taylor makes the case that physical human bodies are just as varied as our personalities, and that our ability to see and accept this diversity has been thrown off balance. A poet and activist herself, she shows how we can radically accept ourselves, thereby preserving bodies and minds that oppressive systems might otherwise break down.

cover of Do Nothing by Celeste Headlee

Do Nothing by Celeste Headlee

You know how there’s always a push to do more? To increase productivity, focus, or some other work-related thing? Well, award-winning journalist Celeste Headlee makes the case for how we need to have several seats. In Do Nothing, we’re shown the value in reconnecting with some quintessentially human aspects of ourselves: our creativity, our capacity to reflect, our social life. Funnily enough, taking a load off, relaxing, and reconnecting with these things can actually make you more productive, but that’s an aside. Read this to “recover [your] leisure time” and take a load off.

Don’t forget you can get three free audiobooks at Audiobooks.com with a free trial!

A Little Sumn Extra

Rebecca Hussey writes about a new study that shows that nearly 1 in 3 Americans are reading ebooks

Here’s a great list of YA books like Firekeeper’s Daughter

Toni Morrison’s short story Recitatif will be released in February. It’s been out, but this one will feature an introduction by Zadie Smith.

What some Black authors have to say about recent book bans

Roxane Gay is launching a new podcast

Tressie McMillan Cottom is writing a newsletter for the New York Times. She also covered Jason Isbell’s Nashville Ryman residency and compiled a playlist where he chose a Black woman performer to open for him almost every night for a week in December.

How much do you know about the trendy new word game Wordle?

A Malcolm X Biography donation was rejected by a Tennessee prison

Here’s news that sounds like the premise of a novel: A manuscript thief was caught

Thanks for reading; it’s been cute! If you want to reach out and connect, email me at erica@riotnewmedia.com or tweet at me @erica_eze_. You can find me on the Hey YA podcast with the fab Tirzah Price, as well as in the In The Club newsletter.

Until next time,

-E

Categories
In Reading Color

New Year, New Books, Who’s This?

Welcome to In Reading Color, a space where we focus on literature by and about people of color.

Reading Fam! The new year is here and I think it’s interesting how everyone just can’t believe it (myself included). Despite the looming uncertainty with the Omarion (lol) variant, and vaccines, etc. I remain hopeful. One of the few good things the pandemic has brought for some people has been the opportunity for them to sit back and reflect, giving them a chance to reinvent themselves if they see fit. I think the turn of the new year still holds this promise of newness and self-betterment, and if these new releases are any indication of the year to come, I’m looking forward to it.

Get into the spirit of the new year, and all the (good) new things it can bring, with Cakes da Killa, and read on for some fire new releases:

cover of To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara

To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara (Jan. 11)

In Yanagihara’s highly awaited new novel, three stories converge in compelling ways, with recurring themes of illness, disability, queer love, family, and class. This 700-page tome divides the narratives and takes place in an alternate America. The first is set in 1893, in a New York that is part of the Free States where people may marry whomever they want. The son of a wealthy family is set to marry another distinguished family’s son, but he’d rather be with a penniless music teacher. Next, we see New York in 1993 during the AIDS epidemic, and a young Hawaiian man’s struggle to hide his past from his older partner. Finally, there is the year 2093, where plagues and totalitarianism run the world, which feels a little too close to being real, if I’m being honest.

cover of Olga Dies Dreaming by Xochitl Gonzalez

Olga Dies Dreaming by Xochitl Gonzalez (Jan. 4)

Olga and her brother Prieto outwardly seem to have everything. But you know how that goes. She’s a bougie wedding planner for whom “Tinder” literally means “the stuff that starts fires” because her own love life is a hot mess. He, meanwhile, is a congressman who’s battle against gentrification is being negatively influenced by his status as a closeted gay man. The two struggle with themselves and their identities as their mother— who abandoned them as children to join a radical political party— storms back into their lives as Hurricane Maria gears up to devastate Puerto Rico.

cover of Brown Girls by Daphne Palasi Andreade

Brown Girls by Daphne Palasi Andreade (Jan. 4)

As planes fly overhead, and subways rumble below, the daughters of immigrants settled in Queens, NY find each other. These brown girls promise each other lifelong friendship as they try to be the dutiful daughters their parents demand them to be. But, the promise of love, adventure, and other skylines sometimes lead them away from each other and the home they’ve always know. Brown Girls is a poetically told rendering of the eclectic borough as seen through the eyes of girls of color coming of age.

cover of Bibliolepsy by Gina Apostol

Bibliolepsy by Gina Apostol (Jan. 4)

Primi Peregrino’s parents drown at sea when she is eight, leaving her and her sister to be raised by a collection of eccentric family members. Literature provides a foundation and is the backbone of Primi’s upbringing. As a result, she becomes obsessed with it and those who make it. She finds herself seeking out places where writers, poets, bookstore owners, and anyone else tangentially related to books gather in order to sleep with them. Primi’s odd, escapist quest is juxtaposed by the beginnings of a revolution to overthrow the Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines in Apostol’s humorous novel that is available for the first time in English.

cover of Civil Rights Queen by Tomiko Brown-Nagin

Civil Rights Queen by Tomiko Brown-Nagin (Jan. 25)

In Civil Rights Queen, Brown-Nagin gives Constance Baker Motley her well-deserved flowers. She was born and grew up during the Great Depression to a blue-collar family. It was expected that she’d have a respectable life as a hair dresser. Instead, she went to law school at Columbia in 1944, was the first Black woman to argue a Supreme Court case, defended Martin Luther King Jr. in Birmingham, helped in the Brown vs. The Board of Education case, helped to rid the U.S. of the evils of Jim Crow, and so much more. There were so many women and queer people who held such instrumental roles in the civil rights movement in America, but are barely mentioned. It’s nice to see them getting their shine.

Don’t forget you can get three free audiobooks at Audiobooks.com with a free trial!

A Little Sumn Extra

Have we properly brought in the new year if we don’t see what the stars have to say? Here are some astrology-based book recs.

Here are some reading challenges to set for yourself in the new year

Here’s our 2022 Reading Log to keep track of said book challenges

An interesting Japanese bookstore that only sells one book

Thanks for reading; it’s been cute! If you want to reach out and connect, email me at erica@riotnewmedia.com or tweet at me @erica_eze_. You can find me on the Hey YA podcast with the fab Tirzah Price, as well as in the In The Club newsletter.

Until next time,

-E

Categories
In Reading Color

Cozy Reads That Sleigh

Welcome to In Reading Color, a space where we focus on literature by and about people of color.

My friend and I just watched Almost Christmas last night, which stars Mo’Nique and Danny Glover, and it made us start comparing other movies and songs we like to listen to around the holiday season. We realized that we both liked Home Alone and The Nightmare Before Christmas. As far as songs were concerned, though, we disagreed a bit. He didn’t really care for some of those jazzy Christmas songs from the ’40s and ’50s, while I find them to be pleasantly nostalgic.

I’m all for making new traditions with new movies, songs, and books, though. A more recent song I look forward to playing is Mariah Carey’s All I Want For Christmas Is You, which always trends on Spotify around this time. There have been some more fun holiday song releases lately that I’ve been into as well. Lil Nas X’s Holiday and Big Freedia’s Tis The Season are both campy, fun songs that put me in the spirit of the season in… another way 👀.

As for reading traditions, I love to read books that either mimic the season or are lighthearted romances or mysteries. The ones I’ve chosen below fit the latter description and are perfect for reading in between family gatherings, or snuggled up by yourself when you just don’t want to be bothered.

cover of A Deadly Inside Scoop by Abby Collette

A Deadly Inside Scoop by Abby Collette

Having just completed an MBA, Bronwyn Crewse returns home to Chagrin Falls, Ohio to take over and renovate the family ice cream shop. She has plans for the menu to return to its heyday when it was filled with her grandmother’s homemade recipes, but fate has other plans. The store has a bad reopening, and she finds a body. Sis can’t catch a break. Thing is, the guy who died isn’t exactly well-liked by the Crewse family, which complicates things. General amateur sleuthing hijinks ensures, but with the nice addition of a cast of quirky, fun characters.

cover of A Lot Like Adiós by Alexis Daria

A Lot Like Adiós by Alexis Daria

Both Gabe and Michelle reconnect after their careers need a refresh and not having seen each other for over a decade. Back in the Bronx, where their families lived next to each other, they were the best of friends. But then Gabe decided to leave Michelle and his family abruptly for L.A. There, he runs a successful celebrity gym, the same gym whose marketing Michelle has been hired to reconfigure. The two of them working together has each of them confronting their past, family pressures, and, most importantly, the chemistry between them. This’ll make the cold days a lot warmer, ifyouknowwhatimean.

cover of Arsenic and Adobo by Mia P. Manansala

Arsenic and Adobo by Mia P. Manansala

Lila Macapagal moves back home to get her ish together after a break up. Now, though, she has to contend with trying to save her Auntie Rosie’s restaurant, and the judgement (and love!) that comes from well-meaning Filipino Aunties. When a local food critic shows up who just so happens to be her bitter ex, he winds up face first in her family’s cooking, dead. She’s the prime suspect, and has to figure out who really murdered him before the landlord evicts her family’s restaurant from his building. Luckily, she has Longanisa (her Dachshund), gossiping Aunties, and a little love interest to help her through it all.

cover of Act Your Age, Eve Brown by Talia Hibbert

Act Your Age, Eve Brown by Talia Hibbert

This is the third in the utterly delightful Brown Sisters trilogy by Hibbert. I would strongly suggest you read all three, but if you want to get a taste first, you might as well start with the most recent one (you don’t really have to read them in order). Plus, it gets extra cozy points for taking place in a bed and breakfast in the English countryside.

Certified Walking DisasterTM Eve Brown wanders upon a bed and breakfast after having been told by her parents to get her life together. Turns out, the very organized, always in control owner Jacob needs a cook ASAP for an upcoming festival. After blatantly (rudely?) refusing Eve’s application, she accidentally hits him with her car and stays to help run his business while he’s taken to the hospital for a broken arm. Pretty soon, the whirlwind that is Eve, with her natural charm and sunshine-like demeanor, is running his kitchen and even staying in his spare room. The very serious Jacob finds that his cold exterior might be melting…just a little. The banter between these two is genuinely fun, and it’s the rare romance that has a neurodivergent love interest. When I tell you this was such a joy to read. Also, it gets real hot.

Don’t forget you can get three free audiobooks at Audiobooks.com with a free trial!

A Little Sumn Extra

Here are some more diverse holiday romances

The best children’s books of 2021

Here’s a fun quiz on the classics

The 2021 Hugo Award winners were announced

an article on ghost stories and Christmas

Thanks for reading; it’s been cute! If you want to reach out and connect, email me at erica@riotnewmedia.com or tweet at me @erica_eze_. You can find me on the Hey YA podcast with the fab Tirzah Price, as well as in the In The Club newsletter.

See you next week!

-E