Draper, Sharon M. - The Battle of Jericho

Jericho, his cousin Josh, and his friend Kofi have all been chosen as initiates to the super-secret, super-exclusive, super-cool Warriors of Distinction. But there's a bad taste left in their mouths as tough girl Dana demands to be included in the historically all-male club, and Jericho starts having second thoughts when the initiation week gets tougher and tougher.

This is a short, intense book that covers the month before initiation week and the week itself; I found myself holding my breath because I didn't want anything to happen to Dana. I like how the book addresses Jericho's unconscious sexism and ablism, even though he does try to be fair. I particularly liked his interactions with Eric, the Kid in a Wheelchair, and how it makes Jericho really look at some of his assumptions and the way guilt can be hampering. Also, yay, mostly black characters and it's not a big deal!

While I'm sure the book is a very accurate portrayal of hazing, and it was pretty visceral when I read it, I just never quite identified with the characters enough for anything to stick. Also, I really don't think I am the target audience for books about the dangers of hazing. And... I don't know. It was intense while I was reading, but just a few hours after, I've forgotten a lot of it.

The book also ended too soon -- we do get to see the consequences of hazing, but we only get about a chapter of aftermath, which felt like much too little. I wanted to know what happened to the club and the parents and everyone, not just see their reactions right after the event. I think there's also a very interesting book about the months after the ending in here; maybe that would have felt less didactic and more real somehow for me. (I know, it's totally unfair to judge the book on what it could have been, but... oh well.)

So, I'll be looking for more of Draper's books, particularly her Copper Sun, but I wasn't bowled over by this one.

Kadohata, Cynthia - Weedflower

So I went from a depressing book about hazing to... Japanese internment camps! No wonder I feel down this morning.

Sumiko's aunt and uncle own a flower farm in southern California; Sumiko and her brother Takao have been living with them since their parents died in a car accident. I, um, tend to try and avoid books about the Japanese internment camps largely because they make me want to shoot myself, strangle other people, and disavow my citizenship. I picked this one up because the cover flap said it took place in Poston, and that it had a friendship between Sumiko and an Indian boy living there.

Intra-POC friendship, yay!

Poston was built on the Colorado River Indian Reservation, and the American Indians unsurprisingly are rather hostile toward the Japanese people being moved in there. The Japanese are similarly afraid of Indians, thanks to most impressions taken from popular media at the time.

The book sadly isn't about the culture clash, but I like Sumiko a lot, and I very much like how Kadohata gets into the details of flower farming and the day-to-day life in the camps. It feels so mundane after a while, until you stop and think about how much everyone there lost.

I thought I was mostly prepared to read this, but I found random little things enraging, like all the white people who bought to-be-interned Japanese Americans' furniture and belongings and cars and everything for dirt cheap prices, acting somewhat embarrassed to be doing so, but never enough to not do it or to pay what something was worth. I wanted to strangle the US government when they began to draft the very people they had robbed of land and belongings and freedom, and all that after those people were denied citizenship.

I also really liked the tentative, not-quite friendship between Sumiko and Frank, a Mojave boy. They both distrust each other at first. Frank resents the Japanese because even though they're interned, they still get electricity and running water, much more than the government has given to his tribe, and Sumiko resents Frank for resenting her and her family for something she has no control over.

It makes me want to hit people over the head with a shovel, the way white supremacy works.

The book has a lot of anger behind it; Kadohata's father was an internee at Poston. But she just keeps it there in the background, behind Sumiko's simple, twelve-year-old language. And it's not only anger over the treatment of Japanese Americans, it's also anger over how American Indians were treated. There's a note at the end of the book about the almost-all-Japanese and American-Indian regiments that served in WWII, how high the death rate was and how dedicated the troops were, and it makes me so angry at the government and society.

I did want more Frank and Sumiko, just because I liked watching them interacting, and I like the book in general.

Fantasy Couple, ep. 05-10

Wah! How did this go from slapstick to making me cry?

I am incredibly amused by how Anna's expressions of love and devotion largely come in the form of shoving people off rocks and telling them to go die. Or, in an act of incredible generosity, not eating their share of the jjajangmyeon.

This show keeps making me want jjajangmyeon, and I just had the Chinese version yesterday for dinner and more leftovers today!

( Spoilers )

In other news, I am trying to memorize the hangul alphabet, only I suck at vowels. And I keep pausing to see if I can read people's names in the credits.