Tagged with fiction

Finally, I'm back to some literary fiction by a woman of color. I apologize if that sounds fetishistic, but seriously, other than vampire books, that's what I like to read best! This coming of age novel takes place in Shanghai during the good old days of the Cultural Revolution and is told by Maple, a poor girl from a suspect family. (Her schoolteacher father made some unfortunate comments about Mao that landed him in jail.) Maple makes friends with Wild Ginger, who is one quarter French and therefore also branded counterrevolutionary. But really, Wild Ginger is a hardcore Maoist whose devotion to the man and the cause first elevate and then destroy her.

Don't tell anyone, but I snatched I Saw You from the NYC Zine Fest fundraiser. Julia deliberately left it behind when she split, and, well, I was grabbing my zines from the merch table, and, uh… I justify my action with the knowledge that I will give the book away, perhaps to someone else who was at the benefit. Julia, claiming she was only a comics drawer and no writer, gave a great performance of two well-written essays at the zine reading, so I was curious what her work was like. She actually only has a couple of comics in this anthology of illustrated newspaper and online missed connections ads, but they're perfectly charming, as is her introduction, and I assume the clever idea to have the (alpha by first name ♥) bios all be personal ad style. For example:

Greg Means
www.tugboatpress.com
You: most beautiful woman in the world
Me: great personality

The Dog Collar Murders is the third in a mystery series with Pam Nilsen, political lesbian, as the unofficial detective. It's really weird for me to start in the middle of a series, so I'm not sure where I heard of this. Perhaps in the "also by Seal Press" section in the back of Skin, or maybe even referenced in an essay in that book about the "Barnard Sex Scandal." Wilson's book is about murders that take place during and after a sexuality conference in Seattle in 1988 or so (six years after the event that rocked Barnard and feminists all over the U.S.). The book, which is kind of niche, was published by Seal Press, which was "founded in 1976 as a small DIY publisher to provide a forum for women writers and feminist issues."

Four books into the Sookie Stackhouse series, I'm finally willing to admit I'm getting hooked. That's not entirely stubbornness or snobbery talking; only with this one and it's predecessor, Club Dead did I read the books in a hurry. Plus, I liked that Harris thanked a librarian, Doris Ann Norris, in her acknowledgments page.