#fiction week

[medievalpoc]

THREAD by N. K. Jemisin on Twitter

Fiction Week on MPoC

Reclaim the narrative. Submit your favorites. Find inspiration from the past, imagine the future, and then make it happen.

[medievalpoc]

But this award from you, who take your craft seriously, and earnestly believe, like me, that great acting can change the world, is a call to arms from our fellow craftsmen and women to go deeper- and through our art to battle against fear, self-centeredness, and exclusivity of our predominantly narcissistic culture. And through our craft to cultivate a more empathetic and understanding society by revealing infinite truths that serve as a forceful reminder to folks that when they feel broken, and afraid, and tired, they are not alone.  Now, as we act in the continuing narrative of Stranger Things, we 1983 midwesterners will repel bullies, we will shelter freaks and outcasts, those who have no home. We will get past the lies. We will hunt monsters. And when we are at a loss amidst the hypocrisy and the casual violence of certain individuals and institutions, we will, as per Chief Jim Hopper, punch some people in the face when they seek to destroy the meek and the disenfranchised. And we will do it all with soul, with heat, and with joy.

David Harbour's Speech At The SAG Awards, Jan 29, 2017

[medievalpoc]

Fiction Week!

Binti: Home by Nnedi Okorafor

It’s been a year since Binti and Okwu enrolled at Oomza University. A year since Binti was declared a hero for uniting two warring planets. A year since she found friendship in the unlikeliest of places.

And now she must return home to her people, with her friend Okwu by her side, to face her family and face her elders.

But Okwu will be the first of his race to set foot on Earth in over a hundred years, and the first ever to come in peace.

After generations of conflict can human and Meduse ever learn to truly live in harmony?

Amazon | GoodReads | Barnes and Noble

[medievalpoc]

This Monday (Jan. 30, 2017), I’m bringing back Fiction Week!

I think we could all use it. <3

[medievalpoc]

Fiction Week!

Sorcerer to the Crown

by Zen Cho

If you like MPoC, you’re probably going to like this novel. I consider it to be the second-best book of 2015.

Why is that? Well, this is what happens when you take characters who are relentlessly marginalized in Alternate History genre novels and make them the center of the story, the Hinges of History, the Fate of the Universe resting in their hands, and a partridge in a pear tree. It’s  A M A Z I N G.

This book could have gone off the rails very easily at a few important plot points. Instead, it steers itself back to where it needs to be by introducing several painfully uncomfortable emotional questions and faces necessary moral quandaries, as well as showing how there really isn’t a difference to speak of between the two.

Zacharias Wythe is the titular Sorcerer Royal, new-minted head of the Royal Society of Unnatural Philosophers, and inheritor of a very confounding problem. You see, there just isn’t as much magic around as there used to be, and it’s in the Society’s best interests if this problem is somehow fixed without anyone else ever finding out about it. Everyone around him is waiting for him to fail because he is Black and they are old, white racists with too much power. If he doesn’t ruin everything on his own, well, they’re ready, able and willing to ensure his failure by any means at their disposal. Zacharias is also in the very unfortunate position of having been named successor immediately after his benefactor/adopted “father”‘s death....death being not quite as final as most of us have been led to believe.

Prunella Gentleman, meanwhile, is the mixed race and illegitimate daughter of a... well, a gentleman, and has grown up in a school of sorcery for women-in which the main objective is to make absolutely sure that none of the young ladies who graduate ever show the slightest hint of magical ability. Chafing under the restrictions she’s been living under and facing the reality of her own unprecedented magical abilities, she must uncover the secrets of her parentage and her inheritance before she can move forward to save her country, the world, and also fix racism and sexism while she’s at it.

I’ve seen a lot of people comparing this book to Austen, Fforde, and Heyer because they’re fans of that type of work. I personally am not a fan of that type of work; I’m much more into Epic or Medieval Fantasy but let me tell you, I Loved. This. Story. If the whole Regency England Hoity Toity Drama of Manners thing puts you off, trust me, you still are going to want to read this. I don’t think it really comes off as that type of work at all, but I can still see how fans of that genre would find it very appealing.

If you want that book that’s not too long or too short, not too wordy or too shallow, not overly ‘delightful’ and not too much of a downer; in short, if you want that novel that will be 100% just right, this is The One.

Amazon | Goodreads | Barnes and Noble

If you want to get into the content a little more, here are some other reviews:

Magic, Murder, and Microaggressions in Zen Cho’s Sorcerer to the Crown by Alex Brown

Sorcerer to the Crown Review at The Book Smugglers: http://thebooksmugglers.com/2015/09/book-review-sorcerer-to-the-crown-by-zen-cho.html

[medievalpoc]

Hello! Do you (or your followers) have any suggestions for great kids' fiction with POC main characters or written by POC authors? My 9 & 11 year old sons love fantasy and historical fiction (Tolkien, Lewis, Rowling, Riordan; Ranger's Apprentice, Sisters Grimm, Merlin series, etc). I want to make sure they're reading a good balance of male/female as well as POC authors and characters. Thanks for any suggestions! I love your work!

 Thanks! Well, here are a few ideas off the top of my head (at various reading levels, I’m sure you can make good choices on that count), and some more resources at the end!

Zahrah the Windseeker by Nnedi Okorafor

Un Lun Dun by China Miéville

The Dragon King Chronicles by Ellen Oh

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin

Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters by John Steptoe

Annals of the Western Shore by Ursula K. LeGuin

Before There Was Mozart: The Story of JosephBoulogne, Chevalier de Saint-George by Lesa-Cline Ransome

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation by M. T. Anderson

Baba Ali and the Clockwork Djinn: A Steampunk Faerie Taleby Danielle Ackley-McPhail and Day Al-Mohamed

Thorn by Intisar Khanani

Refilwe by Zukiswa Wanner

For more, check out:

We Need Diverse Books

Diversity in YA

Black Children’s Books and Authors

Disability in KidLit

A Diversity Reading List by Ellen Oh

Tu Books

[medievalpoc]

Fiction Week

I decided to go for a more visual approach this Fiction Week. Not everyone has the time, inclination, or ability to read books and novels. I think that showing how fiction can make an immediate impact through images is an important part of making changes in our worldview.

Whether in the form of a historically accurate period drama or an anachronistic time-or-space-traveling adventure, fiction is where we show who we are by creating scenes and worlds, as well as people to populate them. Anytime we recreate a time or invent a place, our identities help shape that. When we create a universe from whole cloth, it is spun from the fabrics of our own perspectives and experiences. Whether we travel through time or space, we always take one thing with us-ourselves.

[medievalpoc]

There is a common attack on art that thinks it is a defense. It is the argument that art has no impact on our lives, that art is not dangerous, and therefore all art is beyond reproach, and we have no grounds to object to any of it, and any objection is censorship. [...] Photographs and essays and novels and the rest can change your life; they are dangerous. Art shapes the world. I know many people who found a book that determined what they would do with their life or saved their life. Books aren’t life preservers; there are more complex, less urgent reasons to read them, including pleasure, and pleasure matters. Danto describes the worldview of those who assert there is an apartheid system between art and life: “But the concept of art interposes between life and literature a very tough membrane, which insures the incapacity of the artist to inflict moral harm so long as it is recognized that what he is doing is art.” His point is that art can inflict moral harm and often does, just as other books do good. Danto references the totalitarian regimes whose officials recognized very clearly that art can change the world and repressed the stuff that might.

“Men Explain Lolita to Me: Art Makes the World, and It Can Break Us” by Rebecca Solnit