When Gloria, a 16-year-old Ghanaian, more or less flunks junior high school a friend of the family arranges for her to become a nanny for a doctor with a two-year-old son. Stuff does happen in this novel--good things and fair amount of bad things, but it mostly feels like a character development story.
My sister Danna recommended this book to my parents, brother and me. If you read her review, you'll see why. The titled "opposite of hallelujah" refers to the protagonist Caro's sister Hannah returning home after spending eight years as a nun in a contemplative order. (Kate, you're going to want to read this one!) The girls' parents are excited to have their dark-secreted daughter back, but 16-year-old Caro...less so.
A middle-class white American who grew up atheist comes out as Muslim. Though she has to convert officially to be square with Egypt, the way Wilson describes her relationship with the religion calls to mind realizing or accepting that you're gay, not becoming so.
Personality, that compromise between one's soul and one's culture.
Sarah had me at the title of her 24-hour zine about her anxieties, and I'm probably going to emulate the concept in my next zine. I feel your pain, girl! Sarah's fears are wide-ranging: from pop culture (Kiefer Sutherland) to practical (data errors) to the sociopolitical (cultural miscommunication). While Kiefer Sutherland doesn't bother me, I do relate to a lot of Sarah's worries, and more essentially, that she has them at all and that they're central enough in her life to make a zine about them.
A.j.'s call for contributions to her Six Categories zine went more or less like this:
In the beginning of the novel Microserfs, Douglas Coupland has each of his characters list their dream Jeopardy! categories, fields of expertise such as "Career anxieties," "Cats," "Psychotic loser friends," and "Macintosh products." I can’t remember much else from this nearly twenty-year old novel, but these character "introductions" remain stuck in a shadowy corner of my memory. I’ve mentally made lists of my ideal Jeopardy! boards, with categories like "The Simpsons, Seasons 1 to 8" and “Postage” and "Job Dissatisfaction."
It's your turn to list your six ideal Jeopardy! categories that showcase your unique knowledge, quirks, neuroses, talents, habits, whatever.
Like, wow. Walker can write her pen off. Come for the story of an eleven-year-old-girl's coming of age in a global catastrophe and stay for writing so good it can make the earth spin a little slower to give you time to enjoy it.
After graduating from college, Camille determined that her history and literature education had been incomplete and set about filling in the gaps by reading books and zines exclusively by women of color.
author photo, from her website
I'm reviewing Bad Mexican because I loved it, but my review might make you sad because the zine is no longer available. It's instant karma, though, because I'm bummed that Daniela's first zine, Soy Secretron is not in my greedy clutches.
It's funny how even though it's only from 2010, the zine feels old and old school. Daniela signs each copy, and mine at least has a little happy face illustration and handwritten annotations. There's a table of contents and a song recommended for each section. Daniela refers to her work as a "mini zine," but clearly it's a lot more substantial than she gives it credit for being. If you know Daniela, who is driven and ridiculously accomplished, it won't surprise you that her standards for her own work are absurdly high.
About that, funny story -- my Native American ancestors were enslaved by the white missionaries there and changed my family's name, so that's why my last name is Capistrano.
I anticipated this final entry to the Newsflesh trilogy with perhaps greater excitement than I did Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and Mockingjay, though that may be that my desire was fanned by NYPL's dragging its ass on getting copies.
After a summer of subsisting on the literary equivalent of carbs (i.e., genre fiction), I started the school year off with Jeanette Wintersen then dipped close to chick flick territory, followed that with an international memoir and then feminist essay collections back-to-back. Not that I don't love my vampires and young adults, but it's satisfying to get back to spending some time in the minds of smart grown-up humans for a change. It helps that Jennifer Baumgardner is so damned likable in F'em.
From an interview with Ani DiFranco
Also from Ani (everyone calls her Ani, right?)
