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 )

Grace's grandmother Naree has died, and her mother Chandra decides that they must hold a Cambodian funeral, despite having cut all ties to the community Chandra grew up with in St. Petersburg, Florida. When they return to Florida, Grace seizes on the chance to find out more about her family history—why her grandmother's face was scarred, why her grandmother and mother moved away before she was born, and most importantly, who her father is.

This has almost all the elements of an Asian YA book: multi-generational conflict, trying to reconnect to your culture and history, and negotiating the differences between the United States and Asia. But what it lacks is the central narrative of a girl trying to find her place between two cultures. Instead, Grace has too much on her hands simply trying to untangle the story of her own family to begin with the issue of cultural identity, and I liked that.

Also, although Grace and her mother clash, her mother, like Grace, is Cambodian-American; her mother is the one with the experiences of feeling ashamed of her own mother's English, of having to grow up forever translating for her mother, of having to be the adult and pay the bills and talk to schools because of the many barriers to immigrants doing so, particularly immigrants escaping war and political turmoil. Grace has grown up connecting more with her grandmother than with her ultra-competent mother, and she most desires to earn her mother's emotional confidence even as her mother tries to keep the details of the past from her so Grace can have a normal childhood.

The book has flashbacks to Grace's memories of growing up with her mother and grandmother, and they're interspersed with the present-day narrative of returning to St. Pete, reconnecting with the Cambodian community there, and trying to lay Naree to rest.

The prose isn't flashy, but it's quietly graceful, and I was particularly impressed by the many layers in the story: the buried histories, the memories too painful to be retold, the spiraling cycle of cause and effect going back generations.

And as a bonus, it is very good seeing a Cambodian voice in YA; this is Ly's second book, and I hunted down her first on its strength. I wish I could say how accurate it was, but I don't know enough to. For what it's worth, I very much liked how Cambodian culture was ever-present, from Naree's history with the Khmer Rouge to Cambodian weddings and funerals and community, but I also liked how the main conflict in the book was not centrally about Cambodian culture as a whole.

I'd recommend this to people who like Sarah Dessen and some of Maureen Johnson's earlier books. It has the same delicate treatment of grief and loss and healing, and it's full of unspoken matters and weighted silences and the eventual unburdening of secrets.