Tag: #ownvoices

Girl in Translation

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Girl in TranslationGirl in Translation by Jean Kwok (Website, Insta)

Genre: Contemporary / YA

Setting: Brooklyn, NY

I read it as a(n): audiobook

Narrator: Grayce Wey

Source: my own collection 

Length: 9:05:00

Published by: Books On Tape (4 May 2010)

Her Grace’s rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Girl in Translation is the debut novel from bestselling author Jean Kwok. It tells the story of young Kimberly Chang, who immigrates with her mother to Brooklyn from Hong Kong just before its return to Chinese rule. Kimberly’s aunt, Paula, had married a Chinese-American years before and was the one who got them their passports, visas, and immigration assistance. To pay off the monetary debt this created, Kimberly and her mother both have to work in Paula’s sweatshop making skirts and shirts. They are impoverished and live in a condemned apartment building that is full of roaches, mice, and has no heat. At school, Kim is a star and does her best to assimilate into teenage American culture. She dreams of performing well enough in school to earn a full ride scholarship to college, thus getting herself and her mother out of poverty.

Spoilers below the cut!!Read More »

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Homes: A Refugee Story

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Homes A Refugee StoryHomes: A Refugee Story by Abu Bakr al Rebeeah and Winnie Yeung

Genre: memoir

Setting: mostly Homs, Syria

I read it as a(n): paperback

Source: my own collection

Length: 217 pp

Published by: Freehand Books (1 May 2018)

Her Grace’s rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

Abu Bakr al Rabeeah was born in Iraq. His family moved to Syria when he was nine in the hopes of escaping the escalating violence in Iraq. Of course, that was right around the time the Syrian civil war was getting started, so Bakr and his family essentially leapt from the frying pan into the fire. 

As he grew up in a country sundered by war, Bakr and his friends found small joys and ways to be happy. Playing soccer or video games were evergreen favorite pastimes, and he loved learning more about his faith and attending services in his nearby mosque. As the violence in their city of Homs grew worse, Bakr learned, along with everyone else, to avoid the soldiers who would randomly stop citizens, never to go anywhere without his documentation proving who he was, and what to do if there was gunfire or a bomb explosion. Eventually, Bakr and his family gain a highly coveted spot in the UNHCR refugee program and were relocated to Canada, where they all had to learn an entirely new way of life.

My summary probably makes this book sound boring AF, but it was definitely not. It was beautifully written, almost poetic in parts, and packed in a ton of detail and information is such a slim book. It also really highlighted a lot of things I think more people, Americans in particular, need to learn about. 

For one thing, it is absolutely horrifying what humans can become accustomed to. When Bakr first arrived in Canada, one of the things he had the hardest time adjusting to was how quiet it was. He said there wasn’t a constant background noise of gunfire, explosions, screaming. When a bomb had gone off near his home, the community ran towards it to try to help because they knew the ambulances would be a long time coming, if they came at all. A couple days afterward, Bakr and his friends came home from playing soccer and saw that the site of the explosion still had a lot of blood and body parts. They sighed and went and got buckets and things to clean it up with, and other neighbors came out to help. I cannot imagine a child (he was only about 10 at the time) seeing something that awful in the first place, let alone having to help clean it up, gather body parts to take to the authorities, or be in any way involved. It is heartbreaking to know that this is the reality for so many people.

Another thing that is important was Bakr’s relationship with Islam. I think there are still far too many people who assume Muslims are terrorists. That is ridiculous; it would be like assuming all Christians are members of the KKK. It was really nice to read how Bakr’s parents raised and taught their children always to love people, even if they were not kind, because that is what they believed Islam is. Bakr loved the peace his faith brought to him. His father taught him that extremists and the soldiers who were fighting and hurting innocent people were not Muslim because they were acting in ways contrary to the teachings of the Quran. I’m atheist so religious devotion of any kind is utterly baffling to me. However, I have tried to educate myself about a variety of religions and it seems that there are crazies on all sides but the vast majority of people are just normal, peaceful folk who wouldn’t hurt anyone and who just want a safe world for their children. I really don’t know what’s so hard to figure out about that. I think everyone who has children must want a safe world for them. 

I definitely recommend this as a fast, easy read dealing with difficult topics.

Jonny Appleseed

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Jonny AppleseedJonny Appleseed by Joshua Whitehead (Twitter, Insta)

Genre: contemporary/literary fiction

Setting: Manitoba/Peguis First Nation

I read it as a: paperback

Source: my own collection

Length: 224 pp

Published by: Arsenal Press (15 May 2018)

Her Grace’s rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Jonny Appleseed is about a First Nations boy who is gay and trying to figure out how to be his best self. His mother wants him to come back to the Reservation for his stepfather’s funeral. Getting there requires more cash than he has on hand and so he works extra at his job, which is as an online sex worker. During the few days it takes him to save enough cash to get home, Jonny reflects on the experiences from his past that have helped to make him who he is right now, with a fever-dream kind of feel to the memories.

I am honestly not sure how to write a review of this book that really encompasses my thoughts without making me sound like either an idiot or an asshole. I loved this book, though, and loved learning more about the Cree Nation, where Jonny as well as author Joshua Whitehead are from. Truly, it isn’t possible for me to have known less about the Cree before beginning this book, so it was an interesting reading and learning experience. 

I enjoyed learning some Cree words, though I absolutely have no idea how to say them. At first, I wanted a glossary because not all of the words used in the book were explained by context (or maybe I just didn’t get it), but then I decided that I liked that there was no glossary. It felt more real for the words just to be there, slipped into the narrative as they probably would be in normal conversation, and it is my job as a reader to figure them out. I always like learning about a culture that isn’t familiar to me and I appreciated the richness that was imparted through this story.

Many parts of this were heartbreaking. Not just because of how people treated Jonny as a Two-Spirit indigiqueer person, as he calls himself. But also because of how poor he and most of his acquaintances are, how hard they have to work to scrape together enough to buy something like a six-pack, or that they work hard just SO they can buy a six-pack or spirits. 

I think this is a book everyone should read. It will make you laugh, cry, and most importantly, think and empathise. 

Favorite part/ lines (potential spoilers!):

  • Home isn’t a space, it’s a feeling. … And it isn’t always comfortable – at least, not an NDN home. In fact, quite often, it’s uncomfortable. But it’s home because the bannock is still browning in the oven and your kokum is still making tea and eating Arrowroot biscuits. … And, given time, it becomes mobile – you can take those rituals with you, uproot your home as if it were a flower.
  • But I just laughed and I think he got mad – I wish he knew that when an NDN laughs, it’s because they’re applying a fresh layer of medicine on an open wound.
  • Don’t be thinking I don’t know who this is for – you like that Walker boy. I’m fine with that, son, Creator, he made you for a reason – you girl and you boy and that’s fine with me, but what’s not fine is you selling yourself short. You gotta leave if you wanna survive, and when you do you’re gonna need the steadiness of those hands, m’boy. You’re gonna need a rock and a whole lotta medicine. 
  • I am my own best medicine.
  • But the way he told stories was so sincere that I couldn’t help but become enamoured. That was when I learned just how much power there is in stories …
  • “Howa, he’s just snapped,” someone said, which made Jordan laugh. “Oh heck, that guy’s feeling no pain,” she said. That saying is weird, “feeling no pain.” I used to laugh at it too, but nowadays I think that they’re drunk because they’re feeling all kinds of pain.
  • My kokum had always told me that sleep was not a waste of time, that it was a time for healing, so I slept long and hard, waiting for my blood to leech out its memories and for my body to rejuvenate.
  • “But you – you my everything, m’boy, all this time you been my rock.”  “No, Momma,” I replied, “you’re my rock. I’m just the one who broke you.”  “Maybe,” she said, biting her lip. “But then you also the one who ground me. Ground me up into a medicine.”
  • …a good story is always a healing ceremony, we recuperate, re-member, and rejuvenate those we storytell into the world…

 

Fruit of the Drunken Tree

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36636727Fruit of the Drunken Tree by Ingrid Rojas Contreras        (website, Twitter, IG)

Her Grace’s rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

Genre: literary fiction

I read it as a: hardback

Source: my own collection/BOTM

Length: 304 pp

Published by: Doubleday (31 July 2018)

In 1990s, Escobar-controlled Bogota, two girls become unlikely friends. Chula Santiago, the seven year old daughter of relatively wealthy parents, is sheltered and spoiled. Petrona is the 13 year old maid Chula’s mother hires, a girl from the guerilla-occupied slums. At first, Chula and her older sister, Cassandra, think Petrona is very shy since she hardly speaks. Chula makes it a game to count how many syllables Petrona says in a day. However, as the girls grow closer and become friends, it is clear that there is much more to Petrona than Chula first thought. She has traumas in her past which inform her present and future actions. Chula herself becomes traumatized by her surroundings, particularly after seeing a bombing on the news and then surviving a guerilla attack when her family visits her grandmother. When Petrona becomes entangled with people and events that are more than she bargained for, it leads her to take drastic actions which could completely unravel her life as well as Chula’s.

I honestly didn’t love this book. I had wanted to, but it just never really clicked with me. I enjoyed the bits that felt like magical realism, but in general I felt the narration and changing between Chula’s and Petrona’s points of view was disjointed. I also thought Chula had a vocabulary and manner of speaking which is much older than what a seven year old would use. Yes, I know she is an observant child and intelligent. My daughter is highly intelligent, and she still doesn’t speak like an adult does. I found that hard to buy and it drew me out of the story because it was jarring. 

The settings were all vividly described, which I liked. I can’t imagine living in a slum, or being considered rich because I have running water and electricity. That really makes me think about how spoiled we are in this country. I mean, I knew that we’re basically a bunch of spoiled assholes here anyway, but this was one of those books that helped drive that point home. Colombia sounds like a gorgeous country, and the episode of Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown show it as such as well. With good food! But whether I will ever make it there for a visit is pretty unlikely. 

I found it interesting that this was also an autofiction book, based in part on the author’s real life experiences growing up as a child in Escobar’s Colombia. 

None of the things I liked about the book were enough to make me genuinely like the whole thing, though, unfortunately. I’d recommend it to people who really want to know about near-kidnappings or are really keen to read up on Colombian society, but for me, I think there are better books out there that would give me the same things. 

Openly Straight

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16100972Openly Straight by Bill Konigsburg

I read it as an: audiobook

Narrator: Pete Cross

Source: my own collection

Length: 09:01:00

Publisher: Dreamscape Media

Year: 2017

Rafe is openly gay and lives with the full support of his parents and community in Boulder, CO. The problem, as he sees it, is that everyone sees his label first. He’s always the gay boy, the gay soccer player, the gay writer, never just Rafe. He finally decides he is tired of it and wants a fresh start, which he will get by moving across the country to an all-boys boarding school near Boston. Where he tells no one he is gay. He doesn’t go back in the closet, he argues, he just doesn’t advertise that he’s gay. Naturally, things get out of hand. One little white lie about not being gay snowballs into Rafe actively asking his family and friends in CO to pretend he’s straight. And then there’s Ben, the quiet, kind soccer teammate who Rafe can’t help but fall in love with, and who may or may not be discovering things about his own sexuality that he doesn’t want to confront.

This was a very interesting and quick read. Well, I listened to it on Audible, but still. I am straight and have never had to deal with coming out, so I can only imagine what it’s like for people always to be labeled as “the gay ____” of the group. I would hate that, and I really hope I have never done that to anyone. If I have, I apologize. It was inadvertent. Which is the point. Labels suck, and they are often placed unconsciously. This realization leads to the two best parts of the book. The first was the discussion in Rafe’s literature class when everyone was talking about tolerance. It really isn’t a very positive word, which is something I have said forever. To tolerate something – she is tolerable, I suppose – implies that it is just on this side of not making you vomit. You don’t actively hate it. You allow its presence but don’t welcome it. I tolerate the cat but I can’t fucking wait not to have a cat. So why do we say that tolerance is good in society? Wouldn’t something like acceptance or inclusion be infinitely better? I wouldn’t want someone just to “tolerate” me. Rather than being tolerant, let’s work on being accepting. Even better, let’s be inclusive. Accepting is better than tolerant, but it is still not perfect, since to accept something has an implication of resignation or surrender about it, that you may not like something but you know you can’t change it so you’re going to just let it go. It is better than tolerating something, but I think embracing or including a person or an idea or whatever is perhaps the best way to go about it.

The second part that I really liked, which may be a spoiler, I don’t know, so consider yourselves warned, is when Rafe realized that the “cameras” he was always so worried about were rarely actually focused on him. He realized that he had been staring at a guy in his group but he was thinking about himself and how concerns and realized what people think didn’t have anything to do with his own sense of worth or his own masculinity or identity. And then he had that lightbulb moment and realized that when others stare at him, it isn’t necessarily that they are judging him, but that they are thinking about themselves and reflecting on something utterly unrelated to him. I think a lot of people need to figure this out, that they aren’t the center of everything and that people aren’t always concerned with them. I know teens tend to have those imaginary audiences a lot, but I think many people never outgrow that. As my grandmother says, “you don’t worry so much about what people think about you if you knew how seldom they do.” It’s true – I think people think about themselves far more than anyone else and, for the most part, don’t care what other people do so long as it doesn’t affect them too much.

I’m a bit off YA at the moment, but this was still a very good book even though it wasn’t one of my favorites. The whole thing was just an interesting discussion and I am glad I read it. The writing style was easy and enjoyable, and apparently the author is local for me. Maybe one of these days I’ll see him at a book thing or something, which would be cool.