let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open
2025 on Tumblr: Trends That Defined the Year
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@readpoc2016
Music-themed books: Rita Dove's Sonata Mulattica, a dazzling narrative poetry collection about George Augustus Polgreen Bridgetower, a virtuoso for whom Beethoven wrote. Also, Alexander Chee's The Queen of the Night; I'm currently in the middle of this historical novel (with a dash of magic realism!) about a soprano in the mid-nineteenth century.
Thank you very much for the recs!
Hey, do you have any recs for books with musical themes?
Here are some recommendations we’ve reblogged in the past that either involve writing in verse or musical themes
Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson: A novel in verse. Raised in South Carolina and New York, Woodson always felt halfway home in each place. In vivid poems, she shares what it was like to grow up as an African American in the 1960s and 1970s, living with the remnants of Jim Crow and her growing awareness of the Civil Rights movement. Touching and powerful, each poem is both accessible and emotionally charged, each line a glimpse into a child’s soul as she searches for her place in the world. Woodson’s eloquent poetry also reflects the joy of finding her voice through writing stories, despite the fact that she struggled with reading as a child. Her love of stories inspired her and stayed with her, creating the first sparks of the gifted writer she was to become.
The Crossover by Kwame Alexander: Josh Bell and his twin brother Jordan are awesome on the court. But Josh has more than basketball in his blood, he’s got mad beats, too, that tell his family’s story in verse, in this fast and furious middle grade novel of family and brotherhood.
Big Freedia: God Save the Queen Diva by Big Freedia & Nicole Balin: From the eponymous star of the most popular reality show in Fuse TV’s history, this no-holds-barred memoir tells the story of a gay, self-proclaimed mama’s boy who exploded onto the formerly underground Bounce music scene, a hip-hop subgenre, and found acceptance, healing, self-expression, and stardom.
Echo by Pam Munoz Ryan: Music, magic, and a real-life miracle meld in this genre-defying masterpiece. Lost and alone in a forbidden forest, Otto meets three mysterious sisters and suddenly finds himself entwined in a puzzling quest involving a prophecy, a promise, and a harmonica. Decades later, Friedrich in Germany, Mike in Pennsylvania, and Ivy in California each, in turn, become interwoven when the very same harmonica lands in their lives.
Kiss of the Fur Queen by Tomson Highway: It follows the story of two Canadian brothers, a musician and a dancer, starting before conception, through growing up and being sent to residential school and the abuse they suffered there, on into high school and the difficulties of adult life.
Please let me know if you can think of any other musical-themed books!
49 More Books by Lesbian Writers of Colour
Novels/Short Stories/Biographies
1. Mecca Jamilah Sullivan, Blue Talk and Love 2. Michiyo Fukaya, A Fire Is Burning: The Life and Writings of Michiyo Fukaya 3. Lydia Kwa, Colours of Heroines 4. Nice Rodriguez, Throw It To The River 5. Vickie Sears, Simple Songs: Stories by Vickie Sears 6. Carole laFavor, Along The Journey River 7. Nikki Baker, In the Game 8. lê thi diem thúy, The Gangster We Are All Looking For 9. Yoshiya Nobuko, Yellow Rose 10. Gwendolyn Bikis, Your Loving Arms 11. Willyce Kim, Dancer Dawkins And The California Kid 12. Ma-Nee Chacaby, A Two-Spirit Journey: The Autobiography of a Lesbian Ojibwa-Cree Elder
Poetry/Plays
13. Nikky Finney, Head Off & Split 14. Dawn Lundy Martin, Life in a Box is a Pretty Life 15. Letta Neely, Juba: Poetry 16. Ekua R. Omosupe, Legacy 17. Merle Woo, Yellow Woman Speaks: Selected Poems 18. Victoria Lena Manyarrows, Songs from the Native Lands: Poetry 19. Pamela Sneed, Imagine Being More Afraid of Freedom Than Slavery: Poems 20. Luz María Umpierre, I’m Still Standing: Thirty Years of Poetry 21. Janice Gould, Doubters and Dreamers 22. Kate Rushin, The Black Back-Ups: Poetry 23. Stephania Byrd, 25 Years of Malcontent 24. Jhoanna Lynn B. Cruz, Women Loving: Stories and a Play 25. Claudia Rodriguez, Everybody’s Bread 26. Rita Wong, Monkeypuzzle 27. Sharon Bridgforth, Love Conjure/Blues 28. Doris Davenport, Madness Like Morning Glories: Poems 29 Constance Merritt, A Protocol for Touch 30. Avotcja, With Every Step I Take 31. Shelly L. Hall, Alum 32. Becky Birtha, The Forbidden Poems 33. Samiya Bashir, Where the Apple Falls 34. Akhaji Zakiya, Inside Her 35. Maria Irene Fornes, Plays 36. J.P. Howard, Say/Mirror Poems and Histories 37. Denise Uyehara, Maps Of City And Body: Shedding Light On The Performances Of Denise Uyehara 38. R. Erica Doyle, Proxy
Anthologies Etc.
39. Tibok: Heartbeat of the Filipino Lesbian 40. Afrekete: An Anthology of Black Lesbian Writing 41. Compañeras: Latina Lesbians: An Anthology 42. Chicana Lesbians: The Girls Our Mothers Warned Us About 43. Between the Lines: An Anthology by Pacific-Asian Lesbians of Santa Cruz, California 44. Zanele Muholi: Faces and Phases 2006-2014 45. Lez Talk: A Collection of Black Lesbian Short Fiction 46. Piece of My Heart: A Lesbian of Colour Anthology 47. The Very Inside: An Anthology of Writings by Asian & Pacific Islander Lesbians 48. Facing the Mirror: Lesbian Writing from India 49. Does Your Mama Know?: An Anthology of Black Lesbian Coming Out Stories
NOTES
*if anyone is misidentified, please tell me and i’ll amend the list. *zanele muholi’s book is a collection of her portraits of black lesbians and transmen.
LINKS
50 Books by Lesbian Writers of Colour Goodreads List
Review of Jazz by Toni Morrison
Book: Jazz
Author: Toni Morrison
Rating: 5*
Joe Trace – in his fifties, door-to-door salesman of Cleopatra beauty products, erstwhile devoted husband – shoots dead his lover of three months, the impetuous, eighteen-year-old Dorcas. At the funeral, his determined, hard-working wife, Violet, who is given to stumbling into dark mental cracks, tries with a knife to disfigure the corpse. Passionate and profound,Jazz brings us back and forth in time, in a narrative assembled from the hopes, fears and realities of black urban life.
Continuing with my reading of Toni Morrison novels in their publication order I moved onto Jazz. I feel like out of all the books of Morrison I’ve read so far this one is most similar to Tar Baby and I’d say it’s probably my favourite now. This is the best book about sex I have ever read. Every time I read Morrison’s books I’m struck anew at the magic and authenticity of her portrayal of human relationships. The narrative style of this book is really interesting because we never really get introduced to the narrator or find out who is telling the story. I found this book so touching and the descriptions of the feelings of being in, falling out of, and being desperate for love. Maybe it’s because it’s Spring and the sun is out, or maybe it’s because I feel like I’m healing and ready for love again but I was reading this book and I found myself just constantly day-dreaming about love and looking at people and thinking about what life would be like with them. I imagine this book made me walk around like the heart-eyes emoji. Now, don’t get me wrong, this book was pretty sad and it doesn’t necessarily end well (although probably constitutes a happy ending by Morrison’s standards at least)- but just the intensity of her writing about love and sex just sears the heart. As well as love this book examines issues of race, beauty, the Fall, pain, the city, women, madness, motherhood, fatherhood, childhood, and death. I thoroughly recommend this book and it’s perfect for Spring. It’s got some of the most gorgeous lines in it I’ve ever read and as ever, Morrison deftly and sensitively portrays the inner lives of her characters.
June is Roma and Traveller History Month, which began as an effort to educate people about these culturally rich, diverse, vibrant, oppressed, underrepresented, and misunderstood ethnic groups most commonly referred to as “Gypsies.” Let’s start … [Read More]
This list of Romani women authors might be specially interesting to those doing a @readpoc2016 project.
Thank you for the link!
#AusYAChallenge Day 16: a cover with a person on it
I absolutely LOVE Little Paradise by Gabrielle Wang, and think it’s a shame that this book isn’t more well-known! Set in Melbourne and Shanghai during World War II, it’s the beautifully told story of a young Chinese-Australian woman who falls in love with a Chinese soldier, and the challenges she goes through when they are separated.
This novel is based on the true story of how the author’s parents met; isn’t that cool? This is an actual photograph of her mother on the cover (you can see the original here) and the inside covers, above, feature her actual designs (drawn when she was fourteen).
i want to read more women's poetry do u have any suggestions?
Audre Lorde – The Black Unicorn if you don’t want to buy The Collected Poems. Unapologetic, angry, and political without losing the personal edge that makes her a necessary read for women outside her experience. Try A Woman Speaks, The Women of Dan Dance with Swords in Their Hands to Mark the Time When They Were Warriors, Sister Outsider, Need: A Choral Of Black Women’s Voices, there are so many. Her nonfiction writing on poetry, race, sexuality, etc. is also spectacular. Try Sister Outsider to start with.
I am deliberateand afraidof nothing.
Ada Limón – Bright Dead Things. There are poems like Prickly Pear & Fisticuffs and During the Impossible Age of Everyone where you cheer.
If we could light up the room with pain, we’d be such a glorious fire.
Scherezade Siobhan – Father, Husband. My favorite Tumblr poet. Unafraid to write of topics that would fall to cliché in lesser hands. Her vocabulary is amazing in it’s width and breadth through not alienating, she wields it with precision. Try Brown Girl Missing, Survival Kit, Fight Like a Girl (fragment, sorry).
today ididn’t ache for the knife of your voice.
Cecilia Vicuña – I mostly like her in fragments but that’s because I read her book which covered her unique performances. At turns frustrating and rewarding.
I’m not really hereI’m only the shapeof the emptinessthat holds me
my top 15 books by women of color
I’ve been wanting to do a rec list like this for a long time, and now that I’m on vacation, I finally have time! So, without further ado, here’s a detailed list of my favorite books by women of color and why they’re awesome. #readwomen and diversify your shelves! Asterisk (*) indicates a Children’s or YA title.
Keep reading
review - A Return to Arms, Sheree L. Greer
@readpoc2016 Was this book recced already?
I was lucky to come across this title on Netgalley’s LGBT category and having my request accepted. Activism? The #BlackLivesMatter movement? Women loving women? The issues and prejudice one finds inside the very circles that should make them feel included and safe? All written by an author who knows exactly what she’s talking about? Yes. Yes, yes, yes.
my rating: ★★★★
It had a slow start for me, but that’s probably just because I’m used to fantastic fiction, not because it’s not interesting. The sheer organic honesty of this book will totally get your attention eventually. The awful realism of scenes like that where the car with four black people is stopped by a policeman is tenser than final magic battles from fantasy books, because it happens. It happens all the time. And you feel as cornered and terrified and angry and wild as Toya feels. Actually, scratch that; Greer’s writing will make you feel everything as Toya feels: the incredible energy of a rally like a vibration in your chest, the confusion and frustration of a closeted relationship, the frozen emptiness when the ones you’d always stand up for fail to stand up for you.
She bent over at the waist, and when she stood, she brought her voice, and the voices of a million others with her, the depth of it reaching beneath the blood-stained ground, the scorched earth, the width of it reaching out to the coasts, diving down and bringing up the voices of ancestors from beneath the ocean floor.
review on Goodreads
I don’t think anyone has brought up this book yet; thanks for tagging us in your review!
by Nisi Shawl As I write this it’s February — Black History Month in the U.S. and Canada — for a few more days. As you read it, that official month is officially over. But just as black history didn’t just occur in the February of any given year, it takes more than a mere month to encompass it. Eve
There's currently a movement in sci-fi and fantasy encouraging readers to seek out more diverse books. But what to read?
There’s currently a movement in sci-fi and fantasy encouraging readers to seek out more diverse books. But what to read? Well, there’s Kindred, by Octavia Butler, but surely everyone knows about Octavia Butler, right? Maybe everyone is tired of being told to read Kindred? Have other books featuring POC characters been published since 1979? In fact, yes! Here are six of them: fantasy, science fiction, and YA, all published within the past few years. If you haven’t read Octavia Butler, start there. If you want something new, read on.
Disabled Black History: Shining A Light on Disabled Black Authors & Their Work
Disabled Black History: Shining A Light on Disabled Black Authors & Their Work
In continuing with the theme of Black History Month 2016 by shining a bright light on disabled Black authors, this week will focus on the literary works of disabled black trailblazers from the past and present, young and old.
Searching for literature written by and/or share the stories of disabled Black people can be a needle in a haystack situation: these bodies of work are not easily found,…
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Just added 50 books and 5 new category themes to @WOCInRomance !!
Check it out ! http://www.wocinromance.com/browse-books/ 😄 😘💋 🔥
Hi! I was wondering if anyone could recommend some 18th/19th century authors? Thanks!
Here are a few I found with a little googling!
William Wells Brown
Sophia Alice Callahan
Frederick Douglass
Alexandre Dumas, pére
Olaudah Equiano (a.k.a. Gustavus Vassa)
Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins
Samson Occom
Lucy Terry Prince
Alexander Pushkin
Ignatius Sancho
Victor Séjour
Táhirih
Ueda Akinari
Frank J. Webb
Phillis Wheatley
Harriet E. Wilson
Feel free to add additional authors/recommendations!
Book Review: The Shadow Hero, story by Gene Luen Yang, art by Sonny Liew
Rating: 9/10
I read The Shadow Hero last year but didn’t review it at the time. After a thoroughly enjoyable reread I’m keen to share my thoughts. Plus, it’s the Lunar New Year today (8th of February 2016), and as good a time as any to be celebrating Asian writers and artists.
The Shadow Hero is the origin story of the Green Turtle, a superhero created by Chinese-American cartoonist Chu F. Hing in the 1940s. Rumour suggests that Chu wanted his character to Chinese, but his publisher refused. As a result, Chu masked the Green Turtle and almost never showed his face in the comics – either he had his back to the reader, or is partially obscured. Maybe it was so he could nevertheless imagine him as Chinese?
Whilst those rumours were never confirmed, Yang and Liew took this premise and establishes the Green Turtle as Chinese-American in his origin story, The Shadow Hero. The main character, Hank Chu, is the son of Chinese immigrants who live in Chinatown, San Incendio (a fictional, coastal city). Hank initially wants to live an ordinary life as a grocer like his father. But after an encounter his mother has with a superhero, the Anchor of Justice; trouble with a group of thugs in Chinatown that is larger than expected; and the discovery of secrets from his father’s past, Hank is propelled on the unlikely path to become a superhero.
First off, Sonny Liew’s artwork in The Shadow Hero is stunning. The character designs are unique and distinctive, the colours can be both beautifully vibrant and soft and sombre at the appropriate moments, and the backgrounds vividly bring Chinatown and San Incendio to life. This played no small role in immersing me in the story and drawing out strong emotions at engaging moments. Graphic novels with great artwork encourage me to reread them multiple times; The Shadow Hero definitely falls into this category.
The Shadow Hero is also the perfect example of how to pull off a plot with depth and fantastic twists and turns. Many intriguing, disparate elements are present throughout the story. For example, the book begins with four spirits communing in concern over the end of imperial rule in China, and this is later weaved into the story in an extremely clever way. Surprises are abound and I was always keen to find out more about the characters, or to see what would happen next. On a related note, the wit and humour of the book had me laughing out loud several times. I especially loved Hank’s mother; Hank also had some great lines, especially during the action sequences.
The cultural and historical elements of the story were also well depicted. I’ve always felt that we get our best stories when East and West meet (yes, I know that as an Asian-Australian I’m the most biased person ever in saying this); this is not an easy thing to do well, but The Shadow Hero walks this line perfectly. It is, as the back cover says, ‘a loving tribute to the long, rich tradition of American superhero comics’; it is also set in Chinatown, amongst characters who are immigrants and navigating America from their personal challenges and perspectives. I’m not sure I would categorise this as a book about the 'immigrant experience’, but it is certainly an essential part of the story and is done in a celebratory and unique way.
My only criticism is that I wish Hank had been given more characterisation; whilst I understood and felt for him in every scene, a deeper connection was lacking in comparison to the other characters. More internal conflict and growth (though not completely absent) would have helped with this.
As someone who’s seen literally one Marvel film and never read any other superhero comics in my life, The Shadow Hero has become one of my favourite books; so don’t be turned off if this isn’t what you’re accustomed to reading. Recommended for anyone who likes fast-paced stories with unending twists and who is intrigued by the Chinatown setting. It’s hard to imagine anyone disliking this.
@firstsecondbooks @readpoc2016 @weneeddiversebooks
I’m over at Romantic Times Book Reviews today talking about #BlackWomenInRomance
10 Genre Fiction Books by Authors of Color You Won’t Regret Picking Up | Strand Books
