In all seriousness, I found the insight this novel provided to be wretched in the extreme. So wretched that I would not group this novel with 2nd take
In all seriousness, I found the insight this novel provided to be wretched in the extreme. So wretched that I would not group this novel with other diaspora works, which are to varying degrees masterful to unfortunate in the normal way of things. Hurricane Summer is more closely aligned with the body of white colonialist writings from the pre-20th century.
If I am to believe that Asha Bromfield spent summers in Jamaica, then I am left to conclude that she deliberately distorted the landscape to present the island as a wild, green hinterland (except for Kingston which she presented as a palm treed suburbia), and distorted 21st century rural Jamaicans to present them as ignorant, poverty stricken yokels, their lives so bereft of any interior complexity that they are compelled to bend all their mental powers into obsession with a basic "foreign gyal" protagonist.
A major theme was colourism yet it rested on the character Andre who Bromfield sculpted into a queer coded racist caricature and then killed off the page. This book was supposed to be about a kind of female empowerment yet every girl and woman character in Jamaica outside of the protagonist and her little sister was either a narrow minded bigot, or jealous, malicious harpies. The self-insert MC only ever formed amiable relationships with boys.
I will leave the rest for an article. It is clear to me that the writer has little to no familiarity with Caribbean literature. (Her credentials cannot rest on Junauda Petrus and Tiffany D. Jackson.) Instead, based on all the dedications and thank yous, she relied on her parents' stories and "the ancestors" to guide her. Next time, just study some fucking Caribbean books by Caribbean authors. Start with Black Skin, White Masks. And Hurricane Summer readers would do well to read Toni Morrison's Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, paying special attention to her analysis of Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn --indeed all of her critiques on how particular writers depicted black characters on the page.
Zetta Elliott has a wonderful talent for crafting young black protagonists that feel so real and tangible you want to reach out to touch them. Dmitri Zetta Elliott has a wonderful talent for crafting young black protagonists that feel so real and tangible you want to reach out to touch them. Dmitri was such an *individual*--by which I guess I mean that he didn't feel pulled from the typical roster of main characters. Black parents who homeschool are figures I rarely come across on the page although I know many in reality. Fear clutched my throat when Dmitri ended up in the foster system but I appreciated Elliott's choice to diverge from the typical presentation of the sprawling Black family in which relatives are always in each other's business. Dmitri's thoughts on how he discerns others may respond to his foster parent challenged my own assumptions. The care with which Elliott wrote his story is, by far, the best thing about this novella. I was happy to know him.
The two teen side characters were fine, even if Nyla sometimes came off as more a part of Dmitri's infatuation than her own person. (Think of how teen girls/young woman are presented in those endless coming-of-age boy films.) I liked Keem and his dad. Again, Elliott very deliberately pokes at the Black jock stereotype and bucks expectations.
The fantasy element was intriguing but I did find it, in some respects, undercooked with what read as a rushed ending. I loved the concept but wish Elliott had more pages to develop it. D's relationship with the mystical bird was its best part because, as lovely as the being could be, I sometimes doubted whether it had D's best interests at heart. It wasn't entirely benign. The tension kept me engaged. Elliott's poetic vision came through for the ending scene as it did for Mother of the Sea.
Finally, Elliott's author note is as fascinating as the story itself. I'd love to see a nonfiction title from her, like an essay anthology. I look forward to reading more from her.
P.S. White readers need to shut up about whether or not they "like" to read racial slurs in a text. You don't matter here.
After some reflection and a viewing of Romy's 5 star review in which the rating did not prevent her from highlighting elements that I saw May 28, 2021
After some reflection and a viewing of Romy's 5 star review in which the rating did not prevent her from highlighting elements that I saw as serious weaknesses, I have a clearer position to articulate.
The Gilded Ones is a fairly generic "girl power" fantasy that follows Deka character journey of insecurity, internalized misogyny to confidence, self-love, sisterhood, and so on. (Put like that it ought to have been thrilling. Well...) I may have erred in assuming from the cover art and the author's own background that it would have a strong "African-inspired" element. Besides some stray mentions of baobab trees, this story could have been set anywhere, complete with vague multicultural peoples from the four compass points and an ill-advised orientalist description of one of the girl army trainers (butterfly simile and all). I plan to watch some author interviews in the hopes I missed a lot.
The novel's one distinctive feature is the very graphic gender based violence. Never did I think I would find myself comparing a book that is centred and invested in the well-being of its girls to Black Leopard, Red Wolf which was not, at all, to paint them with the same brush but here we are. Both books lacked any substantial world building to carry the very, very heavy weight the violence added to their stories. Forna rendered patriarchy in its most easily understood and extremist form. Any opportunity to complicate with other identities or factors touched on at the start diminished into a neat "ooga ooga, girls bad, ooga ooga, unnatural girls worst of all, ooga ooga". The only ambiguity lay in how women with varying authority participate in the system and that's...a problem.
Perhaps, others may argue, that will be developed in later books. My response is, Why wait to make the story excellent? Jade City (despite its glaring indigenous stereotypes) and The Fifth Season manage it. The latter, in particular, presents a brutal world system, therefore Jemisin puts in the work to show the complex reasons it became that way. (I pull on two adult titles for comparison because that's my comfort zone not because I don't think it exists in the YA category.)
I did enjoy all the girls and Deka's pokemon. I hope they all make it to the end okay. A highlight for me was when Belcalis asserted that no amount of good treatment their performance as soldiers earned could erase, compensate, or make up for the horrors done to them.
What happened to you...what happened to me - these things, they alter us...They change us in the most fundamental ways. The emperor and his men, they can use White Hands and the rest of the karmokos to make us into warriors, they can even give us absolution, but they can never change what they did. They can never take back the horrors that have already been inflicted on us.
This was a cute enough story about Andre, a Black, queer, private high school senior given a fresh new lease on life with a liver transplant. His planThis was a cute enough story about Andre, a Black, queer, private high school senior given a fresh new lease on life with a liver transplant. His plan to resettle into life as it was with the goal to pursue medicine at a prestigious university is thrown further off balance when a newly acquired talent for time travel enables contacts with two young men, one in the past and one in the present. These relationships push him to think about what he truly wants out of life for himself and the limits of living for others.
The novel's issues are hard to ignore. Andre's world is very very white: he lives in upper middle-class Boston with parents in solid, specialised careers. Jackson opined in the Teen Virtual interview (on YouTube) how important it was for there to be Black queer narratives beyond tragic stories about trying to get out of the ghetto and/or dying. That's a fair enough take but this world's whiteness seeps into the writing. It's a first person narrative in which I don't recall reading a detailed physical description of Andre at any point. I don't recall any for Isobel, his best friend, either. (I inferred she was a person of colour...maybe Latinx? She was barely in the book.) This vagueness is not there for either of the white love interests nor Blake's family. (They are blonde and gingers, blue and green eyed, with blunt hair cuts, chiselled etc.) This is an unfortunate bias many BIPOC writers have spoken about having to unlearn. I trust Jackson will too.
I also felt...uneasy about the relationship dynamics between Andre and this rich, arrogant, white time travelling family who bypassed his parents to contact and induct him into the time-travelling mysteries. While Jackson did not have to make the book "all about race" I don't know that the solution is to place the elephant in the room then pretend it doesn't exist.
Andre repeatedly thinks of how "rare" he is as an out Black teen whose family and friends love and accept him. Rare...? I was not sure how to view these statements which Jackson did not challenge elsewhere in the text but Black queer readers in the US are better positioned to discuss this point.
Add the fact that I did not feel any particular connection to Andre because he was barely on the page before he was zoopsing back and forth and falling in love, I read the story largely disengaged from its proceedings. It's an unfair comparison because Brandy Colbert is a queen without peer but read Little & Lion for a master class on how to anchor a reader in a protagonist's POV in a few pages from the first line. It's a YA novel that also centres a Black, queer, private high school teen.
I enjoyed this story of 15 year old Danesh living in a coastal town in Guyana who discovered that he could see and breathe as well underwater as aboveI enjoyed this story of 15 year old Danesh living in a coastal town in Guyana who discovered that he could see and breathe as well underwater as above ground when he was a child. This is of little import when the story starts as he and his friend watch the 50th anniversary independence day fireworks in the far, far distance as the corner shop plays song after song about men who don't care about much as long as they can drink. This humorous yet sobering note defines the book as this tale of fairpeople (merpeople of mostly dark blue skin), magic books in secret languages, and giants who are gentle sheep herders is interspersed with colonialism' lasting legacy of patriarchy, colourism, alcoholism, suicide, and a resource starved educational system run with a brand of discipline that recalls the plantation.
I loved Danesh before I started the book, this skinny boy with dyslexia who is good at computers, who kinda brazen when him ready whether it is facing abusive teachers or great turtles more than twice his size. I loved how Baksh was bold enough to suggest alternate paths to education outside of institutions when for a lot of Caribbean cultures that tolls the death knell to prosperity and respectability. I loved how Baksh showed the ambivalent role male parental figures can play in a child's life rather than settling for a one note portrayal of a "positive role model" that others clamour for when it comes to fathers. The one major flaw was the one dimensional, "man hater" writing for Princess Bejara.
Great confluence of Lovecraftian mythology with Greek and Hindu deities and important figures throughout the book with an ending that reminded me a lot of the kaiju fights at the end of a mecha anime or a tokusatsu film (think Godzilla).
I cried with the characters at the end. I love this book so much. Review later when I'm less overwhelmed. 4.5 ⭐I cried with the characters at the end. I love this book so much. Review later when I'm less overwhelmed. 4.5 ⭐...more
What If It's Us made me laugh at times but in its totality was a somewhat cutesy nothingburger: 400+ pages of internet stalOh, forgot I finished this.
What If It's Us made me laugh at times but in its totality was a somewhat cutesy nothingburger: 400+ pages of internet stalking, so-so dates, fake crises, and a predictable Hail Mary attempt at drama in the last 100 pages.
Let me tell you what was not cute.
The romanticization of stalking. It was not cute to pick up someone else's garbage in an attempt to gain access to private personal information they did not consensually share with you. It was not cute to then sleuth your way into finding their Instagram, print their picture so you can cut it out and post it in a business establishment you guessed they frequent. It was 100% invasive and creepy.
What else was not cute? The erasure of POC Latinx people that Ben insisted on throughout the entire book by proclaiming that he was not white but Puerto Rican. Do you know how stupid I would sound if I went around telling people I'm not black I'm Jamaican?
It's stupid.
Silvera includes a token acknowledgment that Afrolatinx maybe have it a bit harder in the character of...Kent? The Yalie. (I threw the book across the room I'm not looking for it. ) But it was a token gesture. Nothing about that encounter had any impact on how Ben processed his completely made up issue. 99% of Latinx media representation in the Americas look like him. It's not a real problem, Adam Silvera 👀.
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