Sakura of DOOM

This is embarrassingly late even for Lunar New Year. I'm hoping "better late than never" still applies.

As with sequential art, I totally sucked at writing things up this year. Grad school: worst time suck ever! Sadly, this means I haven't reviewed almost half of the books on my best-of list. As usual, the list of books here are my favorites read in 2009, not published 2009. And in fact, I have some books on the list that are being published this year, thanks to the wonder of ARCs.

This year, I continued to do , despite completely failing to post at the comm. I think I was doing better in terms of percentages than I was last year, and then I hit November, school started really sucking, and all I could read were historical romances, which are super White. As such, I have roughly the same percentages of women and POC read this year as I did last year. At least there was no backsliding?

I feel like I should say something more intelligent about what I was reading, except I don't think I was a particularly intelligent reader this year.

Anything not linked in the giant list has not been written up; feel free to ask me about anything in the comments.

• ( Kim Anderson, A Recognition of Being: Reconstructing Native Womanhood )



• ( M.T. Anderson, Octavian Nothing: The Kingdom on the Waves )



• ( Minister Faust, From the Notebooks of Doctor Brain )



• ( Nalo Hopkinson, The New Moon's Arms )



• ( N.K. Jemisin, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms )



• ( Many Ly, Roots and Wings )



• ( Ramesh Menon, The Mahabharata: A Modern Rendering )



• ( Raj Patel, Stuffed and Starved )



• ( Dorothy Roberts, Killing the Black Body )



• ( Sonia Shah, ed., Dragon Ladies )

Also recommended: Swati Avasthi, Split; Mary Balogh, A Summer to Remember; Jacqueline Carey, Naamah's Kiss and Santa Olivia; Kristin Cashore, Fire; Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean, The Graveyard Book; Joey W. Hill, A Witch's Beauty; Nisi Shawl, Filter House; Sherri L. Smith, Flygirl; and Drew Hayden Taylor, The Night Wanderer.

Total read: 122 (8 rereads)
45 by women of color, 60 by POC, 101 by women

( All books read in 2009 )

I admired this book, but I didn't connect with it emotionally, and I'm still trying to figure out why.

In the future, Toronto is mostly populated by the poor, as businesses and eventually even the government have fled to the suburbs. Ti-Jeanne is discovering some unwelcome powers of her own and reluctantly returns to her grandmother, who has taught her before about herb lore.

Meanwhile, a politician is looking for a heart transplant and gets Rudy, the one in charge of the inner-Toronto posse, to find one for her. Rudy, of course, has rather unscrupulous methods to do so.

I enjoyed the Afro-Caribbean-influenced magic in the work, and while the Creole dialogue of the characters took some time to get used to, it wasn't difficult to read by the end.

I also really liked how the world was set up and how Hopkinson let her characters make mistakes and still be likeable. All the main characters are POC (I think all black), including the villain, but Hopkinson frames this by showing the larger circumstances that reduced inner Toronto to what it is -- i.e. white flight and the refusal of politicians and businesses and other institions to do anything about it. And there is a great bit at the end with the politician who is looking to just use a POC's heart for her own end.

Naamen commented at Wiscon that the book has the very literal colonization of POC, who are being killed for their hearts, which I really liked.

I also liked that Hopkinson writes from a literary tradition that I am completely unfamiliar with; it was cool trying to figure out what a duppy was, what an Eshu was, and etc. And man, such a nice break from the usual Eurofantasy.

But I still didn't quite connect emotionally with the book. I'm really not sure why. Part of me thinks it may be because Ti-Jeanne keeps trying to help Tony in the first half; I dislike dysfunctional relationships. But the relationship is clearly not portrayed as dysfunctional: Ti-Jeanne makes some bad choices, but she took the action to leave Tony when it was clear he was still with Rudy's posse and on drugs.

I suspect my reaction's a mixture of unfamiliarity with the cultural references, some aversive racism, some difficulty with the style, and who knows what else. Because intellectually, I like the book.

It'll be interesting to revisit this after reading more about Caribbean and African mythology and folktales and culture and seeing how my reaction may or may not change.