This is a vital, riveting anthology that emphasizes the complexity and diversity of minority experience.
Short fiction from a diverse array of writers of color.
Gathering both emerging and established voices, editor Baker has produced a vital anthology whose strength lies in its unwillingness to commit to a single genre or style. Some of the stories, like Courttia Newland's creepy science-fiction adventure "Link," are explicitly political. Newland tells the story of Aaron, a black British college student who possesses mysterious psychic abilities. On the eve of the 2016 Brexit referendum, he encounters other young people of color with similar abilities; soon, they face the temptation of using their powers to punish those who would exclude them. Other stories, like Glendaliz Camacho's haunting "Long Enough to Drown," are less explicitly political. Camacho concerns herself with the particular textures of an Afro-Latinx woman's romantic longing for her dead boyfriend's brother. Brandon's race—he is a white Irish man, "quite the trophy to bring home," as the narrator says—raises important questions about what drives desire. Alexander Chee's "Mine" follows a young gay son of Korean immigrants. Perhaps the most surprising entry comes from Brandon Taylor: His lyrical "Boy/Gamin" follows a young white boy from childhood to adolescence. Written in the urgency of the present tense, the story tracks Jackson's struggle to accommodate his budding desire for other boys. One of those love interests is a young black boy named Eric, about whom Jackson has vivid fantasies. While floating off the Montgomery, Alabama, shore, "he imagines he can feel Eric's fingers on his stomach...he sees Eric's face, long and angular like a dog's, black skin everywhere, green eyes staring over thick lashes. He's beautiful and skinny and Jackson wants to punch him in the nose to make him ugly." This sentence displays the audacious complexity of Taylor's prose as he straddles the confusion of adolescent desire, emerging queerness, and racial difference. Not every story works: Jason Reynolds' "African-American Special" relies too heavily on voice, while Yiyun Li's "A Sheltered Woman" suffers for not having enough space to unfold the mysteries that accumulate around Chinese immigrant Auntie Mei.
This is a vital, riveting anthology that emphasizes the complexity and diversity of minority experience.Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-3494-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 27, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.
Written with quiet dignity that builds to a climax of tragic force, this book about the dissolution of an African tribe, its traditions, and values, represents a welcome departure from the familiar "Me, white brother" genre.
Written by a Nigerian African trained in missionary schools, this novel tells quietly the story of a brave man, Okonkwo, whose life has absolute validity in terms of his culture, and who exercises his prerogative as a warrior, father, and husband with unflinching single mindedness. But into the complex Nigerian village filters the teachings of strangers, teachings so alien to the tribe, that resistance is impossible. One must distinguish a force to be able to oppose it, and to most, the talk of Christian salvation is no more than the babbling of incoherent children. Still, with his guns and persistence, the white man, amoeba-like, gradually absorbs the native culture and in despair, Okonkwo, unable to withstand the corrosion of what he, alone, understands to be the life force of his people, hangs himself. In the formlessness of the dying culture, it is the missionary who takes note of the event, reminding himself to give Okonkwo's gesture a line or two in his work, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1958
ISBN: 0385474547
Page Count: 207
Publisher: McDowell, Obolensky
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1958
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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