So, like many CBR folks, I’m working on my backlog of reviews but I wanted to be sure to get a review in of this debut novel by Erika Sanchez, even though I finished it back in early November. My positive feelings about this novel were influenced by my experience hearing Sanchez talk at the Chicago Humanities festival in October. She’s funny, irreverent, honest, and an encouraging role model to young writers of color. I watched as one young Latina woman after another stood up […]
If You’ve Read One Novel about an Indian Boy Growing Up on a Reservation, You’ve Read One Novel about an Indian Boy Growing Up on a Reservation
Another shout out to Powell’s Daily Dose for alerting me to this YA novel about Lewis Blake, a middle-school boy growing up in the Tuscarora Reservation in upstate New York in the 1970’s. Like Junior in Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Lewis moves between two different worlds—the mostly white world of his junior high, where he gets tracked into the “smart section” but he is the only reservation kid—and his home on the Tuscarora reservation—where he lives with his mom […]
Ready for Jolabokaflod!
Earlier this year, when someone posted an article on Facebook about the Icelandic tradition of Jolabokaflod (Yule book flood), my mom, sister, and I were like, “We’re so doing this.” What’s not to like about hunkering down on Christmas Eve, drinking cocoa, giving each other books, and then spending the evening reading. Thanks to Caitlin, I now have both the books and a mug to start this tradition. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
The Sea, The Sea
As a writing instructor, the problem with starting a book right after Thanksgiving is that there are so many other texts competing for your attention—revised drafts of analytical essays, annotated bibliographies, and thanks to my class for new writing center tutors, lots of wonderful reflections and projects. As a result, though I was sucked into the story of Jennifer Egan’s new novel right from page one, it took me awhile to get through it. I actually used it as motivation—read and respond to five essays […]
Pan-dimensional Pandemonium
Thanks to the newly revived Powell’s Daily Dose, a huge grower of my “to-read” list, this novel came to my attention and I’m glad I took the time to “Interlibrary Loan” it (since I couldn’t find it at either of my local libraries). Don’t let its 662 pages intimidate you. American Elsewhere is a fun combination of noir, horror, and science fiction with a bit of the Truman Show thrown in for good measure (only there are no TV cameras). Robert Jackson Bennett not only […]
When Speculative Fiction Speculates All Too Well
Like many of the books I read, I first heard about Underground Airlines on NPR—in a book review by Maureen Corrigan on Fresh Air. It came out about the same time as Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead. Because I read Whitehead’s novel first, that world was rattling through my head as I entered the alternative history that Ben Winter has created—where the civil war never happened and where slavery still exists in the United States, even if it’s only confined to four southern states. It’s […]
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