Category: Race
-
Shortcomings by Adrian Tomine
Shortcomings is a graphic novel about cranky 30-something Japanese-American man (Ben) whose relationship with an idealistic 30-something Japanese-American woman (Miko) is strained by his constant negativity and his undeniable interest in white women.
-
Lightning Strike by Catherine Asaro
Rating: 3/5, average This one I read with the local book club. I probably wouldn’t have picked it up otherwise, and I might have even skipped it if I didn’t know it was by a woman writer with a PhD in Chemical Physics. The cover on Amazon looks really cheesy, but the writing isn’t too…
-
Women, Race & Class by Angela Y. Davis
Rating: 5/5, excellent This book should be required reading—especially for white feminists! Angela Y. Davis’s Women, Race & Class is a classic feminist text. It came out in 1981 but it’s just as relevant today, and I think it will be evergreen because of its well-referenced discussion of black history. Women, Race & Class is…
-
I Rise: The Transformation of Toni Newman
Rating: 4/5, good I picked up this book because I saw Toni Newman on a Zoom call with Charlie Jane Anders and a lot of other trans and nonbinary authors. There were so many cool authors and good books to pick from it was a little overwhelming (the call included Alok Vaid-Menon, Meredith Talusan, Vivek…
-
The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
Rating: 4/5, good Diverse Reading Challenge #4 This book was originally published in 1984 and it’s been a standard in classrooms. I’ve definitely seen it around, though I was never assigned it. We did read Sandra Cisneros’s story “Eleven” in class in 7th grade, and I loved that story. I think The House on Mango…
-
The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
Rating: 5/5, excellent Diverse Reading Challenge #3 I don’t know why I slept on this book so long. It came out February 8th, 2017 and it was a huge hit, with a movie adaptation that came out in 2018. I’ve heard so many great things about it, and it 100% lives up to the hype!…
-
Sula by Toni Morrison
Diverse Reading Challenge #1 Rating: 4/5, good Sula is a modern classic. It was published in 1973 and is Morrison’s second novel after The Bluest Eye. I tried to read Beloved in college (it was assigned for Helene Moglen’s Gothic Imagination class – by the way, there’s a colloquium in her honor happening in March) but…
-
Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente
Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente Rating: 4/5, good When this was published last year (2018), it took the Twitter world by storm. It seemed like everybody was posting about it, but I didn’t buy it when it first came out because the premise didn’t appeal to me. It’s a scifi novel about some Earthlings…
-
The Invisible Man by H. G. Wells
The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells Rating: 5/5, excellent WARNING: This review contains spoilers! This book is a touchstone for me. I read it the first time in middle school, and it really resonated with me. The Invisible Man is a very irritable, impatient, smart person. He reminds me a lot of myself and my…