Persona by Genevieve Valentine
Showing posts with label PoC. Show all posts
Showing posts with label PoC. Show all posts
Saturday, October 29, 2016
Saturday, July 16, 2016
Book Review: The Game of Love and Death
Well, I'm honestly not sure why this book was on my to-read list. Clearly I put it on since I heard good recommendations about it but honestly Helen, this is obviously going be a romance and those aren't your thing! I tried to trust my past self and hope that whatever they had read about the book was amazing but, there were a few problems here.
The Game of Love and Death by Martha Brockenbrough
Sunday, March 27, 2016
Book Review: Sorcerer to the Crown
It seems that right now I only want to write reviews for things that are set to be posted in a few weeks, ho-hum. I mean, it's not that I didn't like this book, on the contrary I enjoyed it from the very first snippets I tried on Tor, although I had to be careful that I didn't read this book and A Darker Shade of Magic back to back since I wasn't sure how similar their settings would be. They are quite different it turns out, DSoM feels like a more generic fantasy even though it revolves specifically around the city of London. However, SttC revolves around England itself, a real England where you can't describe it with just one color.
Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Chou
Saturday, December 5, 2015
Book Review: Shadowshaper
I grabbed this book from a display at my library and it was only later that I discovered that it was actually on my to-read list anyway. I like coincidences like that, especially now that it's close to the end of the year so I'm trying to get through as many 2015 books as I can. Although, I must confess that I'm not quite sure why this book made it onto my list in the first place.
Shadowshaper by Daniel José Older
Friday, June 5, 2015
Book Review: The Agency Book One: A Spy in the House
I might have messed up that title slightly since it's written a little oddly wherever I've seen it but oh well, at least this way it's easy enough to understand what book I'm referring to. I had seen a post on the The Book Smugglers blog recommending the latest volumes a few months ago and decided to go ahead and check out the first book so I could see if I wanted to catch up to this later volume.
The Agency 1: A Spy In The House by Y.S. Lee
Thursday, May 14, 2015
Comic Review: Ms Marvel Volume 1: No Normal
I've been hearing great things about this comic for a while but it didn't occur to me to look for the collected issues at my library until I stumbled across one. I also didn't realize that the second collected set is also out now so be assured, as soon as I find that I'm reading that one too and bemoaning how short these volumes are compared to the manga volumes I'm used to.
Ms Marvel Volume 1: No Normal written by G. Willow Wilson, art by Adrian Alphona
Wednesday, March 18, 2015
Webcomic Review: Girls With Slingshots
Well this wasn't the original plan but since the comic did end just last week it's perfect timing for me! If you follow the RSS feed the comic is now repeating with it's very earliest strips (but now in color) and holy cow I didn't even remember that the art was so different at first, so if anyone else is looking at the front page for the first time in a while and is confused that would be why, it's not your memory it's actually the comic!
Girls with Slingshots by Danielle Corsetto
Wednesday, March 11, 2015
Webcomic Review: As the Crow Flies
I had completely forgotten until I started writing this review but Gillman was another artist I met briefly at Small Press Expo last year (seriously, if you are in the District/Maryland/Northern Virginia area you need to go to this con) and they laughed a little bit when I said that I thought the story was wrapping up soon. To me it seemed as if the major reveals had been made and we were being set up for a climax with a quick downturn but Gillman said that there's a lot left to this story, I'm hoping now that I haven't jumped the gun and reviewed it too early.
As the Crow Flies by Melanie Gillman
Friday, March 6, 2015
Book Review: Nightingale'sNest
As I've said before, I've been waffling over whether or not to continue putting up reviews of middle grade (and adult) books here or if I should try and keep my book reviews more consistent and only talk about YA. That is the majority of what I read but over the past month I requested a number of books which turned out to be MG and they were all rather good too! So I still want to talk about them but these will be shorter reviews, that just tends to happen when it's a shorter work and that's part of the reason why I don't read MG as much, I feel like their shorter length doesn't always develop the story as fully as it could but I thought that the next few books were the perfect lengths.
Nightingale's Nest by Nikki Loftin
Thursday, December 4, 2014
Comic Review: The Shadow Hero
I heard Gene Luen Yang talk about this book at Small Press Expo 2013 and it sounded like a pretty cool idea, take an older comic which had never gotten off the ground and indulge in some fan theories by redoing it as a Chinese-American superhero for sure and just making a good story out of it. I didn't expect my library to get it but over the past few months I've started seeing more newer manga titles out there and my theory that my branch suddenly has a very savvy librarian was confirmed when I saw a "Sad that Naruto is over? Try these!" display in the window. I was walking out and glanced back over only to see this book there, doubled back, checked that these books were actually available to check out, and then headed home with one more book in an already too-full book bag, hope some other people got something good out of that display as well!
The Shadow Hero written by Gene Luen Yang and illustrated by Sonny Liew
Monday, March 10, 2014
Webcomic Review Month: As the Crow Flies
Charlie was looking forward to her hiking/camping trip but upon arriving realizes that she's the only non-white girl in this Christian group. She's already queer and a teenager, can she end up enjoying her week in this white centric world after all?
The first thing that stood out to me about this story was the art, while I follow a number of comics that are partially or wholly traditionally created (I feel like I've seen a shift back to traditional inking with some of the newer pens out there actually) Gillman's colored pencil art still stands out and as someone who dabbled in colored pencils for years I'm amazed at how even she's able to keep her tones and gradients. She also has a really good grasp on drawing a variety of body types and faces which is great since this is a story that lives and dies by how well the reader can connect with the characters (Charlie is our only point of view character and certainly the main one but if you have a really well-fleshed out main character and paper-thin side characters then the entire story will collapse). I felt that she really captured the feeling of a lot of summer camps too, you're there, a bit excited and a bit worried about what the heck is going to happen to you over the next week, and the adults are telling you some of the things and intentionally keeping a few secrets. You're not so sure how well you're going to like all of this, especially when Charlie notes that the hiking expedition her group is going on is following the footsteps of a bunch of white settler women who were seeking to "washing away the dirt and whitening our souls", but there's not much help for that now.
I truly am looking forward to whatever the resolution of this comic ends up being since I have no clue at all what it'll be. Many times stories fall into patterns, tropes, so I can tell whose going to fall in love with who and who will die but this isn't that kind of story (well, I believe that Charlie has a crush on one of her leaders but since I could have sworn I read elsewhere she's asexual and the about page calls her queer I'm understandably confused). Perhaps Charlie will be able to discover a truth for herself that gives her life more meaning, perhaps the other people in the group will expand their world views a bit, heck I expect some kind of disaster but I don't know if it'll be emotional or a physical, real-world one! It's not a suspenseful story but it is a gripping one, Gillman has created a very nuanced character with Charlie and I hope she's able to have a good time on this trip after all.
Saturday, January 14, 2012
Book Review: Flygirl
Well I feel rather silly, in my rush to get out reviews of books from 2011 out before the New Year I completely neglected this slightly older book I read around the same time and I feel really dumb because I liked this book, it wasn't even a mediocre one you could be forgiven for forgetting! Thankfully the picture of the female firefighters from Pearl Harbor is still circulating around the web that that jotted my memory that hey, I read a (fictional) book that also involved women, women of color, and world war II recently, I need to talk about it!
Flygirl by Sherri L Smith
Summary: Ida Mae has loved to fly after her daddy first took her up in his crop duster years and years ago but there are two big problems in the way. First, she is a woman in the early years of World War II and secondly, an even bigger problem, she's African-American. She is however light enough (in skin tone) to "pass" as a white lady and makes the bold and potentially very very dangerous decision to apply and then train as a Women Airforce Service Pilot since it's the only way to get back into the sky she loves.
The Good: The book is a work of fiction, inspired by real WASPs but they were all white, but the entire book feels so believable that it's hard to remember that sometimes. The problems that Ida Mae and her friends (both her African-American friends and the other WASPs) face felt realistic and the book struck a nice balance showing the privileges Ida had when she was passing as white and yet how even they have so many restrictions on what they can and can't do (which can be hard to remember at times). The progression of the story also felt very natural, there were both hardships and successes and you need both of those to make a story feel real and on that level Smith has really succeeded.
The Bad: The historical setting almost worked against itself at times, if you know any US history involving women, people of color especially, and world war II it's just so hard to believe that the story will end well that it makes the book a little depressing at times (I was just waiting until someone caught her passing so the book got extra tense at times). Not much the author can do about that however and really that was my only major complaint about the book. There was a mention or two that Lily was Jewish and I would have liked that explored a little more but the book doesn't feel like it's lacking anything.
Excellent book, really need to read more historical books, and I could easily recommend this to quite a few people out there.
Also, new schedule starts tomorrow, not that anything is going to be any different tomorrow, just as a final reminder about that!
Flygirl by Sherri L Smith
Summary: Ida Mae has loved to fly after her daddy first took her up in his crop duster years and years ago but there are two big problems in the way. First, she is a woman in the early years of World War II and secondly, an even bigger problem, she's African-American. She is however light enough (in skin tone) to "pass" as a white lady and makes the bold and potentially very very dangerous decision to apply and then train as a Women Airforce Service Pilot since it's the only way to get back into the sky she loves.
The Good: The book is a work of fiction, inspired by real WASPs but they were all white, but the entire book feels so believable that it's hard to remember that sometimes. The problems that Ida Mae and her friends (both her African-American friends and the other WASPs) face felt realistic and the book struck a nice balance showing the privileges Ida had when she was passing as white and yet how even they have so many restrictions on what they can and can't do (which can be hard to remember at times). The progression of the story also felt very natural, there were both hardships and successes and you need both of those to make a story feel real and on that level Smith has really succeeded.
The Bad: The historical setting almost worked against itself at times, if you know any US history involving women, people of color especially, and world war II it's just so hard to believe that the story will end well that it makes the book a little depressing at times (I was just waiting until someone caught her passing so the book got extra tense at times). Not much the author can do about that however and really that was my only major complaint about the book. There was a mention or two that Lily was Jewish and I would have liked that explored a little more but the book doesn't feel like it's lacking anything.
Excellent book, really need to read more historical books, and I could easily recommend this to quite a few people out there.
Also, new schedule starts tomorrow, not that anything is going to be any different tomorrow, just as a final reminder about that!
Saturday, October 1, 2011
And now for something different, Diversity in everything else under the sun
As I said in the first post, books are hardly the only kind of fiction I consume. I read somewhere between 30 and 50 webcomics a week, I've spent this past summer watching waaaaay too much anime and rounded that out with a few movies and tv shows and I've noticed some interesting and different trends in each medium concerning LGTB and PoC characters. So I'll cover all of that in this post starting with anime and working my way through each medium (warning, I watch/read some really weird stuff, it's just that most of it is good weird stuff). As a refresher, the point of the original challenge by the Diversity in YA people was:
By diverse we mean: (1) main characters or major secondary characters (e.g., a love interest or best friend kind of character) who are of color or are LGBT; or (2) written by a person of color or LGBT author.
LGTB=Lesbian, Gay, Transsexual or Bisexual
PoC=Person of Color, anyone who isn't of white European ancestory
Despite the fact that I watch a lot of anime I'm actually even less of the target audience for it than I am for western YA novels but since that didn't stop me from talking about books I don't see why that should stop me from talking about anime. Also, in the context of this challenge, anime is a bit odd since all of these titles are produced by Japanese staff (original creators, voice actors, directors, producers and animators in most cases) and nearly every show is set in Japan so, hair colors notwithstanding, most of these shows feature entirely Japanese casts as well. However, most of these anime are really lacking in the LGTB character department and sadly in the strong female character department as well (and almost every foreigner that appears in any anime ever will be heavily stereotyped, Japan has some issues there). However, when I was making up this list I noticed something funny, the shows that aren't explicitly set in Japan (in most cases I can tell just by looking at the architecture or other little things) actually do much better in in LGTB/PoC departments so I'm going to highlight those shows instead.
An odd first example is Tiger and Bunny which was actually designed with marketing to an American audience in mind, abet probably not myself in mind (a male 14-22 year old audience although, thanks to a huge female following in Japan, never underestimate the fujoshi, it's become a hit over there as well). The basic concept is that it's an alternate New York City where people with superpowers (NEXT) exist and some of them work as superheroes that are sponsored by big companies in the city. Despite the weird set-up for the show (it's basically a buddy-cop movie with superheroes instead of cops who are corporate mascots with real world companies helping sponsor the show) it's a really good reconstruction of the American superhero genre and I would whole-heartedly recommend it to people who aren't bit fans of the superhero genre such as myself and it has a surprisingly diverse cast. However, at first glance it's a bit cringe worthy, one of the heros (Nathan/Fire Emblem) is a twofer character, black and gay, and he's flamboyently gay with fire superpowers, he's a flaming gay! Honestly, from seeing an interview or two about how the show was designed and it appears the staff had (and possibly still don't) have any idea about that stereotype, and generally today we would say "camp" instead of "flaming" but it's still a pretty cringe-worthy moment (apparently one of the real-world sponsors decided not to sponsor him after finding out he was gay which is really unfortunate). Later episodes show that he's a very capable character and he gets fleshed out (he's actually the CEO of the biggest energy company in the city) but it takes a few episodes to get to that point. And, while he is the only LGTB character he is far from being the only PoC character, a good portion of the cast is. One of the leads (Kotetsu/Wild Tiger) is Japanese (he's a native to the city though, his hometown is just outside and has the unfortunate name of "Oriental Town" the general fan theory is that his mother is from Japan) and one of the side characters appears to be Japanese based on his name, Doc Saito. Pao Lin (/Dragon Kid) is shown to be from either China or Hong Kong, Antonio (/Rock Bison) is Hispanic and I've seen people suspect that one of the major villains, Jake Martinez, was also Hispanic based on his name (I can't tell from looking at him since frankly I'm more interested in his multi-colored hair and tattoos). Yet another character (Ivan/Origami Cyclon) is also explicitly stated to be from Russia (although that would make him just white, the entire fandom questions his sexuality however and there are some canon hints that could be taken either way) and Kotetsu's former manager (who appears a lot in the second half of the show) is black, all in all making for an incredibly diverse show with the main cast alone. I actually have a theory about this, since it was a more diverse show than normal that was being produced for a more American audience, so remember that, I'm coming back to it later on.
Next up is an example which I kinda think fits and kinda think it doesn't, No. 6. The two main characters in this show are male and while some people didn't think any of it at first (I didn't) there were some shippers who were hoping that it would become a boy's love series (although it seems like most of them already knew the story before the anime started or waited a few episodes before really starting to hope) and then there were tons and tons of people who whined about the characters being "teh gay" after just one episode, because the two characters (both 12) fell asleep holding hands. That's pretty disturbing that people are put off of a show for something not even specifically romantic like that which does bring me to the problem with listing this show here, it's never made explicitly clear if our two leads (Sion and Nezumi) are in a romantic relationship or have romantic feelings for each other. If there was a word for the kind of relationship that is between platonic and romantic then that's what I would label them as but the author of the original novels intentionally wrote a very ambiguous relationship between them (I think she said in one interview she was tired of seeing how the main boy and girl of a story would be paired up, something I found interesting especially after a friend said that people wouldn't be freaking out if one of the characters was a girl instead, or possibly if they were both girls) so it's hard to tell. And having said that, there are two, on the lip kisses between the two boys (and clearly shown on screen, no cuts to black or to an alternate view to make it hard to tell) which is still considered a bit unusual and, as one poster I saw pointed out, you have to be in a certain kind of relationship for that to be considered normal.
Finally, the third show I've seen this past summer which I thought best fit this challenge (again, by the challenge's definition practically any anime would have actually qualified) was Croiseé in a Foreign Labyrinth, a rather sweet show about a young Japanese girl (Yune) who comes to 1880s Paris to help manage a shop as an apprenticeship of sorts and the culture clash between her and the rest of the cast comes up quite often. Sometimes it's played for laughs and other times it's more serious (with one character, usually Claude but this happens to Yune as well quite often, misunderstanding the other because they are still adjusting to how people of the other culture feel/act and then apologizing to make things right). It's a character driven series so those bits make up a good deal of the series and, since I remember calling out Clockwork Angel on it earlier, no Yune does not experience any kind of racism which would be expected towards an Asian person in 1880s France. However, unlike Clockwork Angel, it would have been completely against the mood of the series so I'm glad the author chose to focus on how the difference in race effects Yune's relationships with other characters rather than how the world as a whole perceives her.
Related to anime, I also read a far bit of manga when I have time and sadly there are very few PoC or LGBT characters in any of the series I read. I will say however that I prefer to read stories without any romance in them so a good half of the series I follow don't have any romance in them at all (either the characters are too young or just too busy with the plot to have a relationship, straight or otherwise). I will admit that I do read a lot of shojo (which, if the story isn't primarily a romance to start with usually has it as a strong secondary genre) but even the stuff I'm reading is generally a decade or two old, American YA wasn't that diverse back in the '80s or '90s either. I would really like to see more stories with diversity in mainstream titles, not relgating PoC characters to side positions or LGBT characters just to BL and GL stories. Finally, this applies to the anime as well, in most series I'm not looking for PoC or LGTB characters, I'm looking for a capable female lead, if a medium is having a hard time representing half of a population I'm not expecting them to be any better at representing minorities.
Some summers I watch a lot of movies and some summers I don't, this was one of the summers where I didn't see a lot of movies (although I am starting to catch up with what my school is showing). The only two recently made movies I've seen recently that come to mind are Thor and X-Men: First Class which aren't really great in this department either. Thor actually did alright with having some likable and capable female and PoC side characters, many of whom I thought were even cooler than the main characters, but they were only side characters and the story probably could have existed without them. X-Men was a bit strange because by the very end of the story every character who wasn't white and male (and presumably straight, none of the characters had any indications that they weren't straight) was evil. Since the story already had to contradict some of X-Men continuity couldn't they have worked around this? Heck, that's the first time in a while I've seen the "black man dies first" trope played straight and didn't even make any sense in this context, it just felt like they weren't even trying here.
When I was first coming up with the categories for this post I thought "oh crap, but I don't watch any tv!" and then I remembered that Doctor Who was airing this summer and breathed a sigh of relief. Back when I started watching DW two years ago (starting with the 2005 series and working my way up to the currently airing episodes) I was surprised at how many PoC or LGTB background characters there were in the episodes set in contemporary Britain. The UK has an even higher population of Caucasian people than the US does (90% vs 72%, source Wikipedia) so the show could have been technically accurate if it had had all white background characters, by not doing so it highlighted to me just how strange US television is for doing just that. When the first episode of the current season premiered this year there was some discussion on the internet on the fact that there was a black secret service man who was personally assigned to President Nixon, set in 1969, something that many people, including several who self-identified as PoC, found strange. Apparently there were black secret service men at this time but some people still debated whether someone like Nixon would have had one on their personal staff and someone made a comment that really struck me, there was a black man there because the British audience expected to see one there. Going back to Tiger and Bunny, who also had a much more diverse cast set in a US setting than a US show in a US setting would have, the world seems to view the US as a diverse country (which it is) and therefore makes an extra effort to show them that way in their stories, something we don't seem to do, wohoops. And beyond that one scene character, there are two couples (one lesbian and one gay) in the mid-season finale, two characters who fit the challenge's definition but would be spoilers to mention, and a Muslim girl who was an important character in one episode and who I really really liked. Also, before people point out that these characters normally end up dead by the end of the episode, most side characters in DW who are kinda important to the story but not especially end up dead, gender/sexuality/skin tone play no part in it. Thankfully the series doesn't kill off as many characters as it used to (one reason I like the switch in showrunners) but it does tend to kill off a lot of great characters that way. And, since I've rambled too long on just one property now, check out this great post for a breakdown on all PoC/LGTB characters in NuWho and other details.
By diverse we mean: (1) main characters or major secondary characters (e.g., a love interest or best friend kind of character) who are of color or are LGBT; or (2) written by a person of color or LGBT author.
LGTB=Lesbian, Gay, Transsexual or Bisexual
PoC=Person of Color, anyone who isn't of white European ancestory
Despite the fact that I watch a lot of anime I'm actually even less of the target audience for it than I am for western YA novels but since that didn't stop me from talking about books I don't see why that should stop me from talking about anime. Also, in the context of this challenge, anime is a bit odd since all of these titles are produced by Japanese staff (original creators, voice actors, directors, producers and animators in most cases) and nearly every show is set in Japan so, hair colors notwithstanding, most of these shows feature entirely Japanese casts as well. However, most of these anime are really lacking in the LGTB character department and sadly in the strong female character department as well (and almost every foreigner that appears in any anime ever will be heavily stereotyped, Japan has some issues there). However, when I was making up this list I noticed something funny, the shows that aren't explicitly set in Japan (in most cases I can tell just by looking at the architecture or other little things) actually do much better in in LGTB/PoC departments so I'm going to highlight those shows instead.
An odd first example is Tiger and Bunny which was actually designed with marketing to an American audience in mind, abet probably not myself in mind (a male 14-22 year old audience although, thanks to a huge female following in Japan, never underestimate the fujoshi, it's become a hit over there as well). The basic concept is that it's an alternate New York City where people with superpowers (NEXT) exist and some of them work as superheroes that are sponsored by big companies in the city. Despite the weird set-up for the show (it's basically a buddy-cop movie with superheroes instead of cops who are corporate mascots with real world companies helping sponsor the show) it's a really good reconstruction of the American superhero genre and I would whole-heartedly recommend it to people who aren't bit fans of the superhero genre such as myself and it has a surprisingly diverse cast. However, at first glance it's a bit cringe worthy, one of the heros (Nathan/Fire Emblem) is a twofer character, black and gay, and he's flamboyently gay with fire superpowers, he's a flaming gay! Honestly, from seeing an interview or two about how the show was designed and it appears the staff had (and possibly still don't) have any idea about that stereotype, and generally today we would say "camp" instead of "flaming" but it's still a pretty cringe-worthy moment (apparently one of the real-world sponsors decided not to sponsor him after finding out he was gay which is really unfortunate). Later episodes show that he's a very capable character and he gets fleshed out (he's actually the CEO of the biggest energy company in the city) but it takes a few episodes to get to that point. And, while he is the only LGTB character he is far from being the only PoC character, a good portion of the cast is. One of the leads (Kotetsu/Wild Tiger) is Japanese (he's a native to the city though, his hometown is just outside and has the unfortunate name of "Oriental Town" the general fan theory is that his mother is from Japan) and one of the side characters appears to be Japanese based on his name, Doc Saito. Pao Lin (/Dragon Kid) is shown to be from either China or Hong Kong, Antonio (/Rock Bison) is Hispanic and I've seen people suspect that one of the major villains, Jake Martinez, was also Hispanic based on his name (I can't tell from looking at him since frankly I'm more interested in his multi-colored hair and tattoos). Yet another character (Ivan/Origami Cyclon) is also explicitly stated to be from Russia (although that would make him just white, the entire fandom questions his sexuality however and there are some canon hints that could be taken either way) and Kotetsu's former manager (who appears a lot in the second half of the show) is black, all in all making for an incredibly diverse show with the main cast alone. I actually have a theory about this, since it was a more diverse show than normal that was being produced for a more American audience, so remember that, I'm coming back to it later on.
Next up is an example which I kinda think fits and kinda think it doesn't, No. 6. The two main characters in this show are male and while some people didn't think any of it at first (I didn't) there were some shippers who were hoping that it would become a boy's love series (although it seems like most of them already knew the story before the anime started or waited a few episodes before really starting to hope) and then there were tons and tons of people who whined about the characters being "teh gay" after just one episode, because the two characters (both 12) fell asleep holding hands. That's pretty disturbing that people are put off of a show for something not even specifically romantic like that which does bring me to the problem with listing this show here, it's never made explicitly clear if our two leads (Sion and Nezumi) are in a romantic relationship or have romantic feelings for each other. If there was a word for the kind of relationship that is between platonic and romantic then that's what I would label them as but the author of the original novels intentionally wrote a very ambiguous relationship between them (I think she said in one interview she was tired of seeing how the main boy and girl of a story would be paired up, something I found interesting especially after a friend said that people wouldn't be freaking out if one of the characters was a girl instead, or possibly if they were both girls) so it's hard to tell. And having said that, there are two, on the lip kisses between the two boys (and clearly shown on screen, no cuts to black or to an alternate view to make it hard to tell) which is still considered a bit unusual and, as one poster I saw pointed out, you have to be in a certain kind of relationship for that to be considered normal.
Finally, the third show I've seen this past summer which I thought best fit this challenge (again, by the challenge's definition practically any anime would have actually qualified) was Croiseé in a Foreign Labyrinth, a rather sweet show about a young Japanese girl (Yune) who comes to 1880s Paris to help manage a shop as an apprenticeship of sorts and the culture clash between her and the rest of the cast comes up quite often. Sometimes it's played for laughs and other times it's more serious (with one character, usually Claude but this happens to Yune as well quite often, misunderstanding the other because they are still adjusting to how people of the other culture feel/act and then apologizing to make things right). It's a character driven series so those bits make up a good deal of the series and, since I remember calling out Clockwork Angel on it earlier, no Yune does not experience any kind of racism which would be expected towards an Asian person in 1880s France. However, unlike Clockwork Angel, it would have been completely against the mood of the series so I'm glad the author chose to focus on how the difference in race effects Yune's relationships with other characters rather than how the world as a whole perceives her.
Related to anime, I also read a far bit of manga when I have time and sadly there are very few PoC or LGBT characters in any of the series I read. I will say however that I prefer to read stories without any romance in them so a good half of the series I follow don't have any romance in them at all (either the characters are too young or just too busy with the plot to have a relationship, straight or otherwise). I will admit that I do read a lot of shojo (which, if the story isn't primarily a romance to start with usually has it as a strong secondary genre) but even the stuff I'm reading is generally a decade or two old, American YA wasn't that diverse back in the '80s or '90s either. I would really like to see more stories with diversity in mainstream titles, not relgating PoC characters to side positions or LGBT characters just to BL and GL stories. Finally, this applies to the anime as well, in most series I'm not looking for PoC or LGTB characters, I'm looking for a capable female lead, if a medium is having a hard time representing half of a population I'm not expecting them to be any better at representing minorities.
Some summers I watch a lot of movies and some summers I don't, this was one of the summers where I didn't see a lot of movies (although I am starting to catch up with what my school is showing). The only two recently made movies I've seen recently that come to mind are Thor and X-Men: First Class which aren't really great in this department either. Thor actually did alright with having some likable and capable female and PoC side characters, many of whom I thought were even cooler than the main characters, but they were only side characters and the story probably could have existed without them. X-Men was a bit strange because by the very end of the story every character who wasn't white and male (and presumably straight, none of the characters had any indications that they weren't straight) was evil. Since the story already had to contradict some of X-Men continuity couldn't they have worked around this? Heck, that's the first time in a while I've seen the "black man dies first" trope played straight and didn't even make any sense in this context, it just felt like they weren't even trying here.
When I was first coming up with the categories for this post I thought "oh crap, but I don't watch any tv!" and then I remembered that Doctor Who was airing this summer and breathed a sigh of relief. Back when I started watching DW two years ago (starting with the 2005 series and working my way up to the currently airing episodes) I was surprised at how many PoC or LGTB background characters there were in the episodes set in contemporary Britain. The UK has an even higher population of Caucasian people than the US does (90% vs 72%, source Wikipedia) so the show could have been technically accurate if it had had all white background characters, by not doing so it highlighted to me just how strange US television is for doing just that. When the first episode of the current season premiered this year there was some discussion on the internet on the fact that there was a black secret service man who was personally assigned to President Nixon, set in 1969, something that many people, including several who self-identified as PoC, found strange. Apparently there were black secret service men at this time but some people still debated whether someone like Nixon would have had one on their personal staff and someone made a comment that really struck me, there was a black man there because the British audience expected to see one there. Going back to Tiger and Bunny, who also had a much more diverse cast set in a US setting than a US show in a US setting would have, the world seems to view the US as a diverse country (which it is) and therefore makes an extra effort to show them that way in their stories, something we don't seem to do, wohoops. And beyond that one scene character, there are two couples (one lesbian and one gay) in the mid-season finale, two characters who fit the challenge's definition but would be spoilers to mention, and a Muslim girl who was an important character in one episode and who I really really liked. Also, before people point out that these characters normally end up dead by the end of the episode, most side characters in DW who are kinda important to the story but not especially end up dead, gender/sexuality/skin tone play no part in it. Thankfully the series doesn't kill off as many characters as it used to (one reason I like the switch in showrunners) but it does tend to kill off a lot of great characters that way. And, since I've rambled too long on just one property now, check out this great post for a breakdown on all PoC/LGTB characters in NuWho and other details.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
And now for something different, Diversity in YA literature
Hopefully one or two people here remember that when I reviewed Huntress (YA novel by Malinda Lo) that I linked to a contest of sorts that some YA authors had set up for the summer. The goal was to get more people reading books with more diversity in them (which I'll define in a second) and then to do a short write-up on what they read in a public place for a chance to win quite a few books. I like contests and I like books, plus I was going to spend my entire summer reading anyway, so I decided why not try this out and just be more aware of what I was reading. For the contest they defined the word "diversity" as meaning:
(1) main characters or major secondary characters (e.g., a love interest or best friend kind of character) who are of color or are LGBT; or (2) written by a person of color or LGBT author.
LGTB stands for a character who is lesbian, gay, transsexual or bisexual (and even within that group of characters you're far more likely to find a character who is a gay or lesbian versues one who is trannsexual, between everything I've ever read or seen I can't think of more than ten trans characters) and I'll also be using the short hand "PoC" which stands for Person of Color (basically anyone who isn't of predominately white European ancestry, I counted biracial or Hispanic characters as PoC).
So, to start, I'll admit that I didn't go out and look specifically for authors with names that made me think that might fit in one of those above categories since, well, the only time I ever look up an author's name is to write a review here actually (that or if the writing is bad I check to see if it's their first book). That and the fact that when this contest was announced in late June I already had a super tall stack of books to read, some of which I've finished but haven't gotten around to reviewing yet. I will link to the reviews I've already written and I'll add in more links as I finish them up although that probably won't be for another three weeks at this rate.
To start with, the book that best fit the contest's description was Malinda Lo's Huntress which not only centers around two lesbians (without gay angst! they have real reasons that being in love is a problem!) in an Asian-inspired setting (as reflected by the book's cover, this also applies to her earlier book Ash) but the Ms. Lo is from China originally and is also a lesbian. This book was also one of the strongest books I read this summer which is a great, slightly darker take on the quest story archetype with (literal) young adult characters, both of which are things that I don't find in YA literature that much and would love to see more of. I think I still prefer her earlier book Ash just a little more (re-telling of Cinderella except the protagonist is also a lesbian, it's set in the same world as Huntress but a few centuries later) but that's just personal preference, both of the books are great and I'm really happy that I found these in libraries (ie, more people have a chance to read them as well) and plan on getting my own copy as soon as I can.
Next up is two different works by Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel and The City of Fallen Angels, two different series about a hundred years apart but with some overlapping cast members and similar villains. One thing that bugged me about Clockwork Angel is that it seemed like how everyone was talking about how Magnus Bane (a bi warlock, who is I believe part Asian) was coming back to this prequel series so I was expecting him to have a good sized role but he appears in very few scenes and didn't really seem to be needed in them. This being the first book in a new trilogy it's highly likely that he will play a larger role later on (his role in the first series certainly got bigger as the story went on) but I'm still miffed that one of only two diverse characters in the series is being billed as an important character when they only have a bit role. As for the other diverse character, well, there's a problem or two there as well. This character is Jem (a shadowhunter, think magical police made up of only the beautiful people) who is half Chinese half British and an interesting character but he comes off feeling a bit, flat. First off, it's strange that he identifies as half Chinese half British (shadowhunters hate anyone who isn't a shadowhunter, including "mundanes" so why they would choose to identify themselves with mundane words is strange), plus, for plot reasons, it sounds like Jem doesn't look Chinese at all, which also bugs me, and finally, Jem is living in a time period where British people didn't like Chinese people yet he experiences no discrimination at any point in the book. I'm not saying that someone who is LGBT/PoC has to be discriminated against in a book for it to feel realistic but here it seems to go against the setting since it didn't happen, it really makes it feel like Jem is a token minority who is needed for the "exotic" angle of the love-triangle being set up in the book.
Thankfully I had fewer issues with City of Fallen Angels, perhaps because all the characters were ones from the earlier books in the series. Magnus is back, with a slightly larger role, as is Alec (a shadowhunter who is now in a relationship with Magnus) and Maria, a biracial werewolf (who's also a gamer girl) whom I adore, probably since she comes off to me as one of the more rounded characters in the series. So I think that City of Fallen Angels does a little better in the diversity aspect than Clockwork Angel but neither are series that I would recommend based on the diversity alone.
A bit after these two books I read A Love Story Starring My Dead Best Friend by Emily Horner (the review for that should be up Saturday) which I initially picked up because of the title, read the inside flap and then did a double take when I realized that the main character was a lesbian, being a bit cynical I hadn't expected to find two books this summer with lesbian protagonists and, while I probably would have read this book on my own anyway, the diversity challenge made me hesitate less about reading it and it ended up being my favorite book this whole summer. This story focuses so much on the relationships between the characters (platonic and romantic alike) and they were all done in such a down to earth and realistic way that I couldn't help but love this book. I'll write more about all of this in my full review but there was just something about the way the characters were written that made them feel like late high school kids who are starting to become adults that really made me love this book, it's another that's on my to-buy list for sure.
Another book that I haven't had a chance to review yet is Rosebush by Michele Jaffe which I had some, issues with, but one of the important supporting characters is a lesbian so the book gets a mention on the list. In fact, there was one section in the book about that I really liked, the main character (Jane) did some experimenting with her friend the summer before the book starts and later on in the book she regrets it since she knows that their relationship meant so much more to her friend than it did to her and that she was just using her friend. I didn't like most of the characters in this book but I did like this moment (probably because it was one of Jane's most self-aware moments) quite a bit.
And the last YA book I got to this summer that fit the challenge's requirements (I think) was Revolution (review) by Jennifer Donnelly. Like A Love Story, the story opens with a protagonist who is deep in grief over a dead loved one (in this case, a younger brother) but Andi and her mother are not dealing with this grief nearly as well so Andi ends up in Paris over her winter break where her father can keep an eye on her as she writes her senior thesis. Intially when I was putting together this list in my head I was wondering whether or not Andi's brother had been gay (there's a little line about him having a crush on Magneto but he's only ten at the time so it could easily have been non-romantic). And then I remembered Virgil, one of the people whom she meets in France whose parents are both from Tunisia. Not long after she meets him Andi asks if his whole family is-French he interrupts (she was going to say musicians) which sets an interesting tone. It doesn't feel like he resents his heritage but it does cause problems in his life (it sounds like he lives in a poor neighborhood, he mentions hate crimes at least once) and he's terrified that because of this he'll be stuck working as a cab driver forever. Basically his problems were the kind I expected to see with Jem in Clockwork Angel but never came up, his setting really had an effect on his life yet it didn't dominate who he was, a tricky juxtoposition but I thought Ms. Donnelly pulled it off well.
Finally, I was reading Anything But Typical by Nora Raliegh Baskin when the challenge was announced and I asked if disabled characters would also count. The answer was yes, although don't let that be all you read, and I honestly think they should count since I can think of about as many disabled characters in fiction (who are more than just a few cliches thrown together) as I can think of transsexual characters. Back to the story, Jason has a variant of autism and this is possibly the most sympathetic book about someone with that disorder that you will find in MG or YA literature. Jason is also the narrator and this let's the audience understand exactly what he's thinking and going through yet it's still easy to see how his actions seem strange and weird to the people around him. It's an amazing feat and incredibly well-written, thank goodness since I would hate to have a book about an autistic character and then not have the book be good enough to be worth recommending, that would be worse than not having any books to recommend at all.
Before I finish up this entry, comics! I know that the challenge didn't say anything about any other kind of media but this was some of the other stuff I read this summer. Plus, there has been a huge kerfuffle recently concerning women in comics (both as creators and characters) and, if comics are having trouble representing 50+% of the population then you can guess that things look hardly any better for minorities.
So I'm going to start off with a bit of an odd one, Fagin the Jew by Will Eisner which may have raised a few eyebrows. A couple of months back I saw a short article somewhere on the internet that called Jews "the invisible minority" which I thought was an apt description and I was thinking of that when I read the introduction to this book. Eisner says that he wrote this book because when he was a kid, all the Jews in the stories were bad (heck, I remember stories one of my religion teacher's told me about how Anti-Semitic Catholics, and I will assume some other Christian groups as well, were even a couple of decades ago) and he mentions in the afterword that Charles Dicken's even revised Oliver Twist later on to be less anti-Semitic (which is the story this one is a retelling of) but most copies today are based on the first edition. Because of that I think that yes, this is a story about someone who is a minority and written because the creator felt like this minority is being under-represented and discriminated against in all the stories they appear in, this counts in my book!
Continuing with Jewish characters I also read both volumes of The Rabbi's Cat by Joaan Sfar. Nearly every character in these books are Jewish (I do recall one or two Christian characters and a few more Muslim characters but it's a predominately Jewish cast) and many of the characters are Algerian as well (since the story is set in Algeria, some characters aren't given a nationality but it's clear that they are also African or Middle Eastern). Surprisingly enough there isn't tons of discrimination in this book (which surprised me since it's also set in the 1930s) but a lot of the story takes place in a predominately-Jewish community so it makes sense. I don't have much else to say since my favorite character was the titular cat but it was certainly an interesting read, everything willing a complete review should be up in the next couple of days.
Finally, I finished up an anthology of Native American tales (Trickster: Native American Tales) in the last few days of summer which I think also merits a mention. Given the nature of the book (and from an afterword that says how the book came about), I suspect that most, if not all, of the storytellers who worked on this anthology are Native American (I'll be looking up more about them once I get to writing a review) so that would fulfill the second requirement of the challenge. Some of the stories feature people but many more feature animals as their main characters so I'm not sure if it fulfills the character requirement but since it fulfills the other one it doesn't matter. Honestly I didn't enjoy this anthology as much as I had hoped but it's another title I'm glad that I found at a library since that means other people have a chance to read it and get exposed to different cultures (perhaps it might be better suited for the children's comic section instead of the teen section though).
Finally, a few shout-outs to some books I didn't get to this summer but plan on as soon as I have the time. Continuing with the comics, the manga Wandering Son by Shimura Takako just got it's first volume released in English this summer (I've seen the anime but held off from reading the manga since I knew this was coming) which I'm saving up to get. The story revolves around two transsexual kids growing up and trying to find their place in the world with some other LGTB side characters involved as well. I still prefer her other work better (Aoi Hana or Sweet Blue Flowers) but I can't wait to see the beginning of this story, especially since the anime started at a later point. Also on the list is Luna by Julie Anne Peters which I read years ago (early high school I believe, I didn't even know what a transexual person was so I knew I was missing something in the story but couldn't figure out what) which I recently discovered under my roommate's bed. I've been meaning to re-read it for a while (ever since Tamora Pierce's book Bloodhound came out which featured the only other trans character I had seen at that point) so I will certainly be borrowing that once they're done with it. Finally, if Hispanic characters count then Kit and Carmela from Wizards at War/A Wizard of Mars count for sure (one being a co-protagonist, the other being one of the best badass normal characters ever) which I've just gotten around to re-reading/on my to-read list, both of which are several years over due for it. Carmela is one of my favorite characters ever for the same reason I like Maria in City of Fallen Angels, they're closer to normal than most of the cast yet still manage to simply be very human and realistic characters which makes them interesting and incredibly likable.
Whew, if you can believe it, this is only part one of my Diversity in YA post. I'm sure that some people, upon glancing at my "most popular posts" list on the sidebar wondered if I reviewed books at all (answer: yes, they're just my least popular reviews by far, happens when you hang out on anime forums mostly) and the fact is that books are only one kind of fiction I consume on a regular basis. So, to cover everything else (anime/manga/movies/tv shows/webcomics) I plan on posting a second post either later tonight or tomorrow. I know that if it goes up tomorrow it probably won't be eligible for the challenge (which is fine) and if it goes up tomorrow I am going to have to push my review schedule back by a day but I can make that work. The fact is that we don't just need diversity in literature, we need diversity in EV-REY-THING since this is a diverse planet, it's stupid not to reflect that. Once I get the second post up I'll link here, just check back in the evening tomorrow (EST) and it should be up by then for sure.
EDIT 9/28: Howdy folks, time for an update! Since the deadline for the contest got pushed back a month I've taken advantage of that to read some more and let a few anime/movies play out that I hadn't had a chance to see/finish and that's why the second part of the review isn't up yet (it will be up in a day or two however). And I have a few things to add on here since I've done a good bit of reading in a month so here's a quick add on:
I did get a chance to reread Wizards at War and, as mentioned above, co-protagonist Kit is Hispanic and his sister Mela is a supporting character and a nice example of a supporting character that has become a little more important with each book they're in. Darryl, a young African-American kid who was at the center of the sixth book, returns for a quick cameo as well as two kids who I hope become more important in a later book, wizarding twins, whose names I can't seem to find at this moment, whose names suggest that they're from South-East Asia. I know this isn't a lot of characters and it might seem strange to even include the book but honestly it's hard to complain when half the cast are non-humanoid animals/aliens, makes it just a little trickier to have (Earth) diversity in there.
Also read What I Saw And How I Lied which features a few Jewish characters in supporting roles and, since the book is set in 1947, that ends up being an important part in how the world perceives them. I won't name the characters, since it is a surprise, but I thought that since being Jewish wasn't something that was causally mentioned but something that colored all the other characters perceptions of them that they were worth mentioning here. Also, since the story is set right after WWII there are a few veterans and there was a line from one of them that I really liked. He says that he thought things would be different after the war, after all the Jews and others were horribly persecuted and their deaths had shocked the world, but yet nothing seems to be and that really reminded me of how I felt back in middle school at times. You go through world history, learn about all these terrible things and you (or at least I did) think to yourself "well clearly this all was wrong and we're not doing it now so everything is better" and it's so painful to learn that no, many things haven't been fixed even if people have known they were wrong for years and so I just really liked that line, it made the character human to me.
Had a chance to read some more manga as well and found another Jewish character (I am slightly spooked by just how often they are showing up on this list) in Adolf by Osamu Tezuka. I've only had the chance to read the first volume but the story starts off by saying it's the story of three Adolfs, clearly the first is the dictator of Germany but the other two are two boys living in Japan, one who is half Japanese half German (whose German father is a member of the Nazi party and forbids him from playing it), the other is a Jewish boy who is all German and resents his classmates for treating him differently even though he is born and raised in Japan. Since the half German Adolf is about to be sent off to Germany to join Hitler's Youth I wonder if his biracial nature is going to come into play later on, I expect it to and I'm curious about how some other Japanese characters will continue to be important once the story changes locations again.
Finally, I've also had a chance to read Journey Into Mohawk Country which is a comic book which takes all it's text from the journals of Van den Bogaert, a Dutchman in New York in the 1600 or 1700s who is exploring the countryside and attempting to create new trade agreements with the local Native Americans. I was rather glad for my fifth grade history class so I recognized the names of the various tribes (abet I had to pronounce all of them to figure out what they were, the spelling is quite different from the way they are today, he deals with members from some of the Iroquois League) and honestly I think it would be a book that fifth graders would be interested to read after their history class. While all the main cast are Dutch (Bogaert and his two companions, they were traveling through so many territories none of the Native Americans were with them the whole time) all of the supporting characters were Native American and Bogaert portrays them in a very honest manner, he seemed to be very interested in the way they lived their everyday lives.
THAT should cover all the books and comic books then, here's what I have written so far for part two (only had enough time to cover the anime section since I wrote a lot about each title) but I hope to finish the rest, erm, soon, think I need to deal with homework first.
(1) main characters or major secondary characters (e.g., a love interest or best friend kind of character) who are of color or are LGBT; or (2) written by a person of color or LGBT author.
LGTB stands for a character who is lesbian, gay, transsexual or bisexual (and even within that group of characters you're far more likely to find a character who is a gay or lesbian versues one who is trannsexual, between everything I've ever read or seen I can't think of more than ten trans characters) and I'll also be using the short hand "PoC" which stands for Person of Color (basically anyone who isn't of predominately white European ancestry, I counted biracial or Hispanic characters as PoC).
So, to start, I'll admit that I didn't go out and look specifically for authors with names that made me think that might fit in one of those above categories since, well, the only time I ever look up an author's name is to write a review here actually (that or if the writing is bad I check to see if it's their first book). That and the fact that when this contest was announced in late June I already had a super tall stack of books to read, some of which I've finished but haven't gotten around to reviewing yet. I will link to the reviews I've already written and I'll add in more links as I finish them up although that probably won't be for another three weeks at this rate.
To start with, the book that best fit the contest's description was Malinda Lo's Huntress which not only centers around two lesbians (without gay angst! they have real reasons that being in love is a problem!) in an Asian-inspired setting (as reflected by the book's cover, this also applies to her earlier book Ash) but the Ms. Lo is from China originally and is also a lesbian. This book was also one of the strongest books I read this summer which is a great, slightly darker take on the quest story archetype with (literal) young adult characters, both of which are things that I don't find in YA literature that much and would love to see more of. I think I still prefer her earlier book Ash just a little more (re-telling of Cinderella except the protagonist is also a lesbian, it's set in the same world as Huntress but a few centuries later) but that's just personal preference, both of the books are great and I'm really happy that I found these in libraries (ie, more people have a chance to read them as well) and plan on getting my own copy as soon as I can.
Next up is two different works by Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel and The City of Fallen Angels, two different series about a hundred years apart but with some overlapping cast members and similar villains. One thing that bugged me about Clockwork Angel is that it seemed like how everyone was talking about how Magnus Bane (a bi warlock, who is I believe part Asian) was coming back to this prequel series so I was expecting him to have a good sized role but he appears in very few scenes and didn't really seem to be needed in them. This being the first book in a new trilogy it's highly likely that he will play a larger role later on (his role in the first series certainly got bigger as the story went on) but I'm still miffed that one of only two diverse characters in the series is being billed as an important character when they only have a bit role. As for the other diverse character, well, there's a problem or two there as well. This character is Jem (a shadowhunter, think magical police made up of only the beautiful people) who is half Chinese half British and an interesting character but he comes off feeling a bit, flat. First off, it's strange that he identifies as half Chinese half British (shadowhunters hate anyone who isn't a shadowhunter, including "mundanes" so why they would choose to identify themselves with mundane words is strange), plus, for plot reasons, it sounds like Jem doesn't look Chinese at all, which also bugs me, and finally, Jem is living in a time period where British people didn't like Chinese people yet he experiences no discrimination at any point in the book. I'm not saying that someone who is LGBT/PoC has to be discriminated against in a book for it to feel realistic but here it seems to go against the setting since it didn't happen, it really makes it feel like Jem is a token minority who is needed for the "exotic" angle of the love-triangle being set up in the book.
Thankfully I had fewer issues with City of Fallen Angels, perhaps because all the characters were ones from the earlier books in the series. Magnus is back, with a slightly larger role, as is Alec (a shadowhunter who is now in a relationship with Magnus) and Maria, a biracial werewolf (who's also a gamer girl) whom I adore, probably since she comes off to me as one of the more rounded characters in the series. So I think that City of Fallen Angels does a little better in the diversity aspect than Clockwork Angel but neither are series that I would recommend based on the diversity alone.
A bit after these two books I read A Love Story Starring My Dead Best Friend by Emily Horner (the review for that should be up Saturday) which I initially picked up because of the title, read the inside flap and then did a double take when I realized that the main character was a lesbian, being a bit cynical I hadn't expected to find two books this summer with lesbian protagonists and, while I probably would have read this book on my own anyway, the diversity challenge made me hesitate less about reading it and it ended up being my favorite book this whole summer. This story focuses so much on the relationships between the characters (platonic and romantic alike) and they were all done in such a down to earth and realistic way that I couldn't help but love this book. I'll write more about all of this in my full review but there was just something about the way the characters were written that made them feel like late high school kids who are starting to become adults that really made me love this book, it's another that's on my to-buy list for sure.
Another book that I haven't had a chance to review yet is Rosebush by Michele Jaffe which I had some, issues with, but one of the important supporting characters is a lesbian so the book gets a mention on the list. In fact, there was one section in the book about that I really liked, the main character (Jane) did some experimenting with her friend the summer before the book starts and later on in the book she regrets it since she knows that their relationship meant so much more to her friend than it did to her and that she was just using her friend. I didn't like most of the characters in this book but I did like this moment (probably because it was one of Jane's most self-aware moments) quite a bit.
And the last YA book I got to this summer that fit the challenge's requirements (I think) was Revolution (review) by Jennifer Donnelly. Like A Love Story, the story opens with a protagonist who is deep in grief over a dead loved one (in this case, a younger brother) but Andi and her mother are not dealing with this grief nearly as well so Andi ends up in Paris over her winter break where her father can keep an eye on her as she writes her senior thesis. Intially when I was putting together this list in my head I was wondering whether or not Andi's brother had been gay (there's a little line about him having a crush on Magneto but he's only ten at the time so it could easily have been non-romantic). And then I remembered Virgil, one of the people whom she meets in France whose parents are both from Tunisia. Not long after she meets him Andi asks if his whole family is-French he interrupts (she was going to say musicians) which sets an interesting tone. It doesn't feel like he resents his heritage but it does cause problems in his life (it sounds like he lives in a poor neighborhood, he mentions hate crimes at least once) and he's terrified that because of this he'll be stuck working as a cab driver forever. Basically his problems were the kind I expected to see with Jem in Clockwork Angel but never came up, his setting really had an effect on his life yet it didn't dominate who he was, a tricky juxtoposition but I thought Ms. Donnelly pulled it off well.
Finally, I was reading Anything But Typical by Nora Raliegh Baskin when the challenge was announced and I asked if disabled characters would also count. The answer was yes, although don't let that be all you read, and I honestly think they should count since I can think of about as many disabled characters in fiction (who are more than just a few cliches thrown together) as I can think of transsexual characters. Back to the story, Jason has a variant of autism and this is possibly the most sympathetic book about someone with that disorder that you will find in MG or YA literature. Jason is also the narrator and this let's the audience understand exactly what he's thinking and going through yet it's still easy to see how his actions seem strange and weird to the people around him. It's an amazing feat and incredibly well-written, thank goodness since I would hate to have a book about an autistic character and then not have the book be good enough to be worth recommending, that would be worse than not having any books to recommend at all.
Before I finish up this entry, comics! I know that the challenge didn't say anything about any other kind of media but this was some of the other stuff I read this summer. Plus, there has been a huge kerfuffle recently concerning women in comics (both as creators and characters) and, if comics are having trouble representing 50+% of the population then you can guess that things look hardly any better for minorities.
So I'm going to start off with a bit of an odd one, Fagin the Jew by Will Eisner which may have raised a few eyebrows. A couple of months back I saw a short article somewhere on the internet that called Jews "the invisible minority" which I thought was an apt description and I was thinking of that when I read the introduction to this book. Eisner says that he wrote this book because when he was a kid, all the Jews in the stories were bad (heck, I remember stories one of my religion teacher's told me about how Anti-Semitic Catholics, and I will assume some other Christian groups as well, were even a couple of decades ago) and he mentions in the afterword that Charles Dicken's even revised Oliver Twist later on to be less anti-Semitic (which is the story this one is a retelling of) but most copies today are based on the first edition. Because of that I think that yes, this is a story about someone who is a minority and written because the creator felt like this minority is being under-represented and discriminated against in all the stories they appear in, this counts in my book!
Continuing with Jewish characters I also read both volumes of The Rabbi's Cat by Joaan Sfar. Nearly every character in these books are Jewish (I do recall one or two Christian characters and a few more Muslim characters but it's a predominately Jewish cast) and many of the characters are Algerian as well (since the story is set in Algeria, some characters aren't given a nationality but it's clear that they are also African or Middle Eastern). Surprisingly enough there isn't tons of discrimination in this book (which surprised me since it's also set in the 1930s) but a lot of the story takes place in a predominately-Jewish community so it makes sense. I don't have much else to say since my favorite character was the titular cat but it was certainly an interesting read, everything willing a complete review should be up in the next couple of days.
Finally, I finished up an anthology of Native American tales (Trickster: Native American Tales) in the last few days of summer which I think also merits a mention. Given the nature of the book (and from an afterword that says how the book came about), I suspect that most, if not all, of the storytellers who worked on this anthology are Native American (I'll be looking up more about them once I get to writing a review) so that would fulfill the second requirement of the challenge. Some of the stories feature people but many more feature animals as their main characters so I'm not sure if it fulfills the character requirement but since it fulfills the other one it doesn't matter. Honestly I didn't enjoy this anthology as much as I had hoped but it's another title I'm glad that I found at a library since that means other people have a chance to read it and get exposed to different cultures (perhaps it might be better suited for the children's comic section instead of the teen section though).
Finally, a few shout-outs to some books I didn't get to this summer but plan on as soon as I have the time. Continuing with the comics, the manga Wandering Son by Shimura Takako just got it's first volume released in English this summer (I've seen the anime but held off from reading the manga since I knew this was coming) which I'm saving up to get. The story revolves around two transsexual kids growing up and trying to find their place in the world with some other LGTB side characters involved as well. I still prefer her other work better (Aoi Hana or Sweet Blue Flowers) but I can't wait to see the beginning of this story, especially since the anime started at a later point. Also on the list is Luna by Julie Anne Peters which I read years ago (early high school I believe, I didn't even know what a transexual person was so I knew I was missing something in the story but couldn't figure out what) which I recently discovered under my roommate's bed. I've been meaning to re-read it for a while (ever since Tamora Pierce's book Bloodhound came out which featured the only other trans character I had seen at that point) so I will certainly be borrowing that once they're done with it. Finally, if Hispanic characters count then Kit and Carmela from Wizards at War/A Wizard of Mars count for sure (one being a co-protagonist, the other being one of the best badass normal characters ever) which I've just gotten around to re-reading/on my to-read list, both of which are several years over due for it. Carmela is one of my favorite characters ever for the same reason I like Maria in City of Fallen Angels, they're closer to normal than most of the cast yet still manage to simply be very human and realistic characters which makes them interesting and incredibly likable.
Whew, if you can believe it, this is only part one of my Diversity in YA post. I'm sure that some people, upon glancing at my "most popular posts" list on the sidebar wondered if I reviewed books at all (answer: yes, they're just my least popular reviews by far, happens when you hang out on anime forums mostly) and the fact is that books are only one kind of fiction I consume on a regular basis. So, to cover everything else (anime/manga/movies/tv shows/webcomics) I plan on posting a second post either later tonight or tomorrow. I know that if it goes up tomorrow it probably won't be eligible for the challenge (which is fine) and if it goes up tomorrow I am going to have to push my review schedule back by a day but I can make that work. The fact is that we don't just need diversity in literature, we need diversity in EV-REY-THING since this is a diverse planet, it's stupid not to reflect that. Once I get the second post up I'll link here, just check back in the evening tomorrow (EST) and it should be up by then for sure.
EDIT 9/28: Howdy folks, time for an update! Since the deadline for the contest got pushed back a month I've taken advantage of that to read some more and let a few anime/movies play out that I hadn't had a chance to see/finish and that's why the second part of the review isn't up yet (it will be up in a day or two however). And I have a few things to add on here since I've done a good bit of reading in a month so here's a quick add on:
I did get a chance to reread Wizards at War and, as mentioned above, co-protagonist Kit is Hispanic and his sister Mela is a supporting character and a nice example of a supporting character that has become a little more important with each book they're in. Darryl, a young African-American kid who was at the center of the sixth book, returns for a quick cameo as well as two kids who I hope become more important in a later book, wizarding twins, whose names I can't seem to find at this moment, whose names suggest that they're from South-East Asia. I know this isn't a lot of characters and it might seem strange to even include the book but honestly it's hard to complain when half the cast are non-humanoid animals/aliens, makes it just a little trickier to have (Earth) diversity in there.
Also read What I Saw And How I Lied which features a few Jewish characters in supporting roles and, since the book is set in 1947, that ends up being an important part in how the world perceives them. I won't name the characters, since it is a surprise, but I thought that since being Jewish wasn't something that was causally mentioned but something that colored all the other characters perceptions of them that they were worth mentioning here. Also, since the story is set right after WWII there are a few veterans and there was a line from one of them that I really liked. He says that he thought things would be different after the war, after all the Jews and others were horribly persecuted and their deaths had shocked the world, but yet nothing seems to be and that really reminded me of how I felt back in middle school at times. You go through world history, learn about all these terrible things and you (or at least I did) think to yourself "well clearly this all was wrong and we're not doing it now so everything is better" and it's so painful to learn that no, many things haven't been fixed even if people have known they were wrong for years and so I just really liked that line, it made the character human to me.
Had a chance to read some more manga as well and found another Jewish character (I am slightly spooked by just how often they are showing up on this list) in Adolf by Osamu Tezuka. I've only had the chance to read the first volume but the story starts off by saying it's the story of three Adolfs, clearly the first is the dictator of Germany but the other two are two boys living in Japan, one who is half Japanese half German (whose German father is a member of the Nazi party and forbids him from playing it), the other is a Jewish boy who is all German and resents his classmates for treating him differently even though he is born and raised in Japan. Since the half German Adolf is about to be sent off to Germany to join Hitler's Youth I wonder if his biracial nature is going to come into play later on, I expect it to and I'm curious about how some other Japanese characters will continue to be important once the story changes locations again.
Finally, I've also had a chance to read Journey Into Mohawk Country which is a comic book which takes all it's text from the journals of Van den Bogaert, a Dutchman in New York in the 1600 or 1700s who is exploring the countryside and attempting to create new trade agreements with the local Native Americans. I was rather glad for my fifth grade history class so I recognized the names of the various tribes (abet I had to pronounce all of them to figure out what they were, the spelling is quite different from the way they are today, he deals with members from some of the Iroquois League) and honestly I think it would be a book that fifth graders would be interested to read after their history class. While all the main cast are Dutch (Bogaert and his two companions, they were traveling through so many territories none of the Native Americans were with them the whole time) all of the supporting characters were Native American and Bogaert portrays them in a very honest manner, he seemed to be very interested in the way they lived their everyday lives.
THAT should cover all the books and comic books then, here's what I have written so far for part two (only had enough time to cover the anime section since I wrote a lot about each title) but I hope to finish the rest, erm, soon, think I need to deal with homework first.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Book Review: Huntress
Originally I was going to put up this review next week but I found a really good reason for moving it up. Malinda Lo, the author, is part of a group called Diversity in YA which is, exactly as the name suggests, a group of writers who want more diversity in young adult fiction (such as more books written by/main or secondary characters who are LGTBQ or PoC) and they're holding a couple of contests over the summer related to this. So scoot on over here and get reading!
As for the book itself, last year during the spring I was browsing at my local libraries and getting frustrated at how I just wasn't connecting with the characters in YA literature as much as I used to and that maybe I should start reading more adult fiction to fix this problem. Then I came across Ash (set in the same world as this book, it's a lovely retelling of Cinderella that I really need to go out and buy) which I had heard of and, after reading it, I thought that no, I hadn't outgrown YA fiction yet, clearly I just hadn't been reading the awesome books. So I was really happy when I finally got this book from my local library and, even though it's not a direct prequel to Ash (like I originally thought, one of the main characters in Ash holds the position of the King's Huntress which is where my confusion came from), I was very satisfied with this read as well.
Huntress by Malinda Lo
As for the book itself, last year during the spring I was browsing at my local libraries and getting frustrated at how I just wasn't connecting with the characters in YA literature as much as I used to and that maybe I should start reading more adult fiction to fix this problem. Then I came across Ash (set in the same world as this book, it's a lovely retelling of Cinderella that I really need to go out and buy) which I had heard of and, after reading it, I thought that no, I hadn't outgrown YA fiction yet, clearly I just hadn't been reading the awesome books. So I was really happy when I finally got this book from my local library and, even though it's not a direct prequel to Ash (like I originally thought, one of the main characters in Ash holds the position of the King's Huntress which is where my confusion came from), I was very satisfied with this read as well.
Huntress by Malinda Lo
Malinda Lo has said that, since she is an Asian immigrant herself she always imagined her characters to have Asian appearances as well and was happy that she was able to have this cover reflect that. I hadn't realized that when I first read Ash (the setting, from the location to the food to the clothing, just sounded so European that I simply thought the characters must be European-esque as well) so I'm also glad that this cover does reflect what one of the characters really looks like.
Summary: All is not right in the human world, for the past two years the weather has been strange, all the crops have failed and this year summer has refused to come. The whole kingdom is worried and when an invitation from the fairy queen comes for the king his advisers tell him to go to her, hoping that she has an answer to their disaster. On the advice of his sages, the king sends his son Con, the sage in training Taisan and Kaeda, whom Taisan has seen in her dreams about this journey. It won't be a fast or easy journey to the fairy lands but it's the only thing they can do.
The Good: Huntress is a quest book and most books about a quest are rather lighthearted and fun, up until the characters get to their destination that is. Not here, in Huntress the tone of the book is subdued from the start and makes the problems seem even darker than they already are which is a refreshing change. Like Ash before it, the relationship between the two girls is at the heart of the story and, not only is it nice to see a pair of lesbians (especially since this is a world where LGB characters are easily accepted and any angst the two girls have is for different reasons than over the fact that they love each other) but mature characters in relationships as well. I can't say much about the ending since that would involve spoilers but I was really happy with how the book ended, it helped make the book feel like a very realistic fantasy enough though it was set in a very fantastical world.
The Bad: Like many other quest books, the pacing in Huntress isn't always even or smooth and it gets less even as the story goes on. When the story starts it devotes a lot of time to every leg of their journey and gives a realistic sense of distance between all the locations. As the story goes on however, less and less time is spent talking about their travels and the characters seem to be traveling even faster over distances that are just as great or greater as the ones earlier in the book (using the map included in the book for reference here). And then, like every quest book, once the task is completed the journey back seems to take no time at all and that really bothered me. The book is so well-written in every other area but that one detail really nagged and bothered me when it was all done.
So, the characters are mature (forgot to mention earlier but they're all around 18 so they're a bit older than your average YA hero/heroine, the average age seems to be 16) and it's the only book I think of that follows the quest arc-type yet isn't a cheerful, let's-go-adventure! kind of story and I love books that defy tropes. I still prefer Ash a little more, not sure why (guess I need to go reread it then) but this was a great book that I'll be sure to buy in the future. And finally, here is a short story set after Huntress for those who want a bit more to read.
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