"Why should I? You're crazy as a loon!"
Luciente beamed, capturing her hand in his dry, warm grip. "Ever see a loon, Connie? It's the sound they make that's crazy. They're plain but graceful birds that glide with only the head full out of the water. Like turtles, they swim low.
Maybe I can show you loons when they migrate through....Don't fear me.

Roxane Gay takes a deep dive into what it feels like to be a very large Black woman who “built her body into a fortress” after a preteen gang rape. Lots of powerful insights here into all the ways fatphobia and racism manifest themselves, and her story of working toward claiming the space, physical and social, that she is entitled to.
#Nonfiction2024 #Blubber

What a fabulous list from @Chelsea.Poole ! I‘ve never read any of them, and 14 are available as audiobooks in my library. What great matching, @monalyisha ! I think I‘m going to start with Crossings.

In 2012 I sat among the Mam Indigenous people in Guatemala impacted by mining. We were gathered in the basement of a church for ceremony and I noticed that the colours in the four directions were the same I knew: white for North, red for East, yellow for South, black for West. I smiled at the sight of shared knowledge that made me feel closer to home. They were in a state of active recovery of traditional practices—again, same deal as us.

I turned toward the big scary things looming in the distance and let myself feel them, and to let myself fall apart, trusting that Creator would put me back together again after it had passed. Mama rarely cried or showed fear, and I knew a part of this had to do with her desire to protect us. I couldn‘t follow her down this path. I made a mark in my map, broke the endless loop, and created a new way. #SheSaid

I was intrigued by this from the #Nonfiction2024 list, and hope to read the first volume when available. This sequel centres on the author‘s challenging interviews with his father and their complex relationship, intertwined with his father‘s grim narrative of survival and liberation from a series of Nazi death camps. I consider it non-fiction although it‘s often labelled as a graphic novel: creatively portraying people as various animals. #Maus

#Bookspin December:

1. Hunger
2. The Future Is Disabled
3. All Boys Aren‘t Blue
4. Woman on the Edge
5. The Reason
6. Swimming in the Dark
7. Crip up the Kitchen
8. It‘s not about the Burqa
9. The Argonauts
10. Dutch Girl
11. Greenwood
12. Swimming in the Dark
13. It Could Happen Here
14. You or Someone You Love
15. All Boys Aren‘t Blue
16. Freedom
17. Ordinary Notes
18. Coming Out
19. His Name Is George Floyd
20. Ordinary Girls

Deeply moving account of three orphaned sisters who are brought by their uncle from Pakistan to America and kept in a separate house, sometimes with randomly selected tenants, so that he can obtain childcare benefits and otherwise neglect them. They struggle to survive together, with differing feelings about their cultural and religious identities, but life takes them in different directions as they grow older.

An eye-opening and vulnerable sharing of the author‘s coming-out story as non-binary, in a culture that still is largely fixated on people identifying as one gender or the other, even if they are LGBT. I particularly appreciated the author‘s emergence reflected in varying responses of friends and family and ongoing fear of coming out and how to articulate it. I could also appreciate the extreme pain of a Pap test! #Nonfiction2024 #Genderqueer

McGhee takes the concept of a “zero-sum game“--someone always *has* to lose, --and skillfully uses it to analyze a form of white racism that manifests as resistance toward racialized people benefiting, even when white people are also set back: racism has a cost for all of us. Examples include barring access to public pools, union repression, lack of equal access to education and home ownership, and more.
#Nonfiction2024 #ToKillAMockingbird

To stand apart means giving yourself the critical break that media cycles and narratives will not, allowing yourself to believe in another world while living in this one. It is a perfect image of this world when justice has been realized with and for everyone and everything that is here. To stand apart is to look at the world (now) as it could be (the future), with all of the hope and contemplation that this entails. #SundayFunday #BookmarkTavern

This is a bail for me, simply because of her voice; I pretty much only do audiobooks, and O'Connor's reading voice is just too much of a grating drone. I'm disappointed, because she's someone I've admired for a long time, and the book deals with key issues re Christianity (I was in university when she tore up the Pope's picture on SNL) and family abuse, mental health/trauma, abuse, and religious conversion.
#Nonfiction2024 #MexicanDaughter

Before I go to a restaurant I obsessively check the restaurant‘s website, Google Images, and Yelp to see what kind of seating it has. Are the seats ultra modern and flimsy? Do they have arms and if so, what kind? Are there booths and if so does the table move or is it one of those tables welded between two benches? How long do I think I can sit in those chairs without screaming?
#Nonfiction2024 #Blubber

November #Bookspin
1. Saving Time
2. Cerulean Sea
3. The covenant of water
4. The Bandit Queens
5. An Immense World
6. Saving Time
7. Swimming in the Dark
8. The Prophets
9. It‘s not about the Burqa
10. The Argonauts
11. How Much of These Hills
12. Matriarch
13. Greenwood
14. Swimming in the Dark
15. It Could Happen Here
16. You or Someone You Love
17. All Boys Aren‘t Blue
18. Freedom Is a Constant Struggle
19. Ordinary Notes
20. Big Men Fear Me

An excellent exploration by political analyst Naomi Klein into how being mistaken for Naomi Wolf, a writer who's moved to the political right, has prompted an analysis of how the left/right binary isn't as simple as it was. She looks at a “mirror world“ where the axis can sometimes be a diagonal one, revolving around issues like Covid and anti-vaxxing, big pharma, conspiracy theory, global and online media, and wellness.
#Nonfiction2024 #1984

Such a powerful collection of 13 short stories: almost all with South Asian/Canadian characters reflecting complex issues related to queerness, family and relationships, racism, transformation out of oppressive identities and expectations (hence “Chrysalis”), abuse, and paranormal/Magical realism/spiritual elements. Each one is very different, and a few fall flat for me, but the lyricism and deep explorations of complex issues are captivating.

Somewhere in the city, the family into whose hands I was born mourns the boy I never was, fails to see who I am, who I've always been. The failure is theirs, not mine, and I am strong enough to let them go, to speak of my body with gentle words, to make of myself a woman who is sparkling and strange and whole. There is space for all these things. This too, after all, is love.

Today, I am a fat woman. I don‘t think I‘m ugly, I don‘t hate myself in the way society would have me hate myself, but I do live in the world. I live in this body, in this world, and I hate the way the world all too often responds to this body. Intellectually, I recognize that I am not the problem: this world and its unwillingness to accept and accommodate me are the problem. But, I expect it‘s more likely that I can change before this culture.

#Bookspin October
1. Saving Time
2. Cerulean Sea
3. The covenant of water
4. The Bandit Queens
5. An Immense World
6. Woman on the Edge
7. H is for Hawk
8. Saving Time
9. H is for Hawk
10. Swimming in the Dark
11. Afraid of the Sky
12. The Prophets
13. The Bandit Queens
14. Big Men Fear Me
15. How Much of These Hills
16. Some People Need Killing
17. Greenwood
18. Swimming in the Dark
19 The Covenant of Water
20. It‘s OK that you‘re not OK

#FirstLineFridays @ShyBookOwl
“The first time lightning struck Bhupati's shrine to Goddess Lakshmi, it set her face on fire.”

Loved this last year so chose it for my book group pick this year: our discussion tonight was interesting and fruitful, although not everybody loved it. It was good to have an artist in the group. Good insights about how dedication to community is part of resisting the attention economy, the value and challenge of attentiveness, and our own relationships with social media, and how they vary with younger age groups.

#Bookspin September
1. Saving Time
2. Cerulean Sea
3. The covenant of water
4. In My Own Moccasins
5. An Immense World
6. Fresh water for flowers
7. H is for Hawk
8. Saving Time
9. H is for Hawk
10. Swimming in the Dark
11. Afraid of the Sky
12. The Prophets
13. The Bandit Queens
14. Big Men Fear Me
15. How Much of These Hills
16. Some People Need Killing
17. Greenwood
18. Swimming in the Dark
19. When We Cease
20. It‘s OK that you‘re not OK

To stand apart means giving yourself the critical break that media cycles and narratives will not, allowing yourself to believe in another world while living in this one. It is a perfect image of this world when justice has been realized with and for everyone and everything that is already here. To stand apart is to look at the world (now) as it could be (the future), with all of the hope and sorrowful contemplation that this entails.

What we need are systems that light up our better selves, the parts of ourselves that want to look out at a world in crisis and join in the work of repair. Where do we find the models for that? Perhaps we should look to the roads not taken.
#SheSaid

#Bookspin for August:
1. Saving Time
2. Cerulean Sea
3. The covenant of water
4. In My Own Moccasins Al
5. An Immense World
6. Fresh water for flowers
7. H is for Hawk
8. Saving Time
9. H is for Hawk
10. Swimming in the Dark
11. Afraid of the Sky
12. Trespasses
13. The Bandit Queens
14. Big Men Fear Me
15. How Much of These Hills
16. Some People Need Killing
17. Greenwood
18. Swimming in the Dark
19. Trespasses
20. It‘s OK that you‘re not OK

Here‘s my list of books I‘ve read, although I included a few bailed on. Thanks to @Bookwomble for making this accessible! Like others, I was not into number one at all and didn‘t even finish it.

My TBR from #NYTBest100: about 12 are available in audio in my library and weren‘t already on my list.

I‘ve been looking forward this and wasn‘t disappointed: six excellent essays by Canadian actor and director Sarah Polley that eloquently address really complex themes. She looks at what it‘s like to be a disempowered young actor, navigating whether to speak or be silent as an assault survivor, dealing with chronic illness and injury, childbirth and parenting, balancing childhood fame with an adult career, and more.
#SheSaid
#Nonfiction2024 #Speak

What no one will ever understand is that the world belongs to orphans. Everything becomes our mother. We are mothered by everything because we know how to look for the mothering. Because we know a mother might leave us, and we‘ll need another mother to step in and take its place. The tree mothering its shade. The restaurant door, slightly open, mothering its smell of cookies to us. A blinking walk sign, holding on to mother us across the street.

#Bookspin
1. Saving Time
2. The covenant of water
3. The covenant of water
4. Thank You Mr Nixon
5. Thank You Mr Nixon
6. In My Own Moccasins
7. An Immense World
8. Fresh water for flowers
9. H is for Hawk
10. Saving Time
11. H is for Hawk
12. Swimming in the Dark
13. Afraid of the Sky
14. Afraid of the Sky
15. The Bandit Queens
16. Big Men Fear Me
17. How Much of These Hills
18. Some People Need Killing
19. Greenwood
20. Swimming in the Dark

I start looking for alternatives. I‘m not the type who‘s generally prone to buying snake oil, and I have a strong suspicion of anything that isn‘t backed up by random sampling trials or credible studies and isn‘t prescribed by a doctor. But my life is gone from me now. Doctors are offering me conflicting advice or not at all. And if someone is selling bottles of snake oil with the words “concussion cure” on them, I will buy in bulk. #SheSaid

#Bookspin Yikes, the same list as last month! May was busy!
1. Trespasses
2. The covenant
3. The covenant
4. Thank You Mr Nixon
5. Thank You Mr Nixon
6. When We Were Sisters
7. An Immense World
8. Fresh water
9. H is for Hawk
10. Saving Time
11. H is for Hawk
12. Swimming
13. Afraid of the Sky
14. Afraid of the Sky
15. The Bandit Queens
16. Big Men Fear Me
17. Don‘t Bite the Hook
18. Some People
19. Greenwood
20. Swimming

Another bail…I really liked Serpell‘s The Old Drift, but this one was just too vague for me. I connected with the narrator initially, and different versions of her painful experience, but not how she continued to process it later.

Intense, lyrical, pithy poetry and prose, illuminating the collective impact of white supremacy on the Black experience: micro aggressions, discrimination against the pride of Serena Williams, stop and frisk police brutality, and more that leads to collective and individual trauma. Worthy of the national poetry award.
#Nonfiction2024 #RollofThunder

“Get on the ground! Get on the ground now!” And you are not the guy, and still you fit the description, because there‘s only one guy who is always the guy fitting the description. I left my client‘s house knowing I‘d be pulled over. “I must‘ve been speeding.” “You didn‘t do anything wrong. Get on the ground now!”
And you are not the guy, and still you fit the description, because there‘s only one guy who is always the guy fitting the description.

Repeats to use up library holds! #Bookspin
1. Trespasses
2. The covenant of water
3. “”
4. Mr Nixon
5. Thank You Mr Nixon
6. When We Were Sisters
7. An Immense World
8. Fresh water for flowers
9. H is for Hawk
10. Saving Time
11. H is for Hawk
12. Swimming in the Dark
13. Afraid of the Sky
14. Afraid of the Sky
15. The Bandit Queens
16. Big Men Fear Me
17. Don‘t Bite the Hook
18. Some People Need Killing
19. Greenwood
20. Swimming in the Dark

#TLT
#ThreeListThursday @dabbe

“Rise Up”by Parachute Club
“99 Red Balloons” by Nena
“Subdivisions” by Rush

Now Manitoba Premier, Kinew shares a rich story of his journey, as well as that of his father who survived residential school, through pain, racism, and substance abuse to healing and leadership. He honestly covers key elements in Canada‘s Indigenous history, insights into spiritual and cultural practices, and his own path towards being a writer and commentator with his father becoming a key national leader.
#Nonfiction2024 AbsolutelyTrue

I could not get into this at all: while the subject matter of the lives of Palestinian women is relevant and meaningful, I found the writing style, as well as the audio narration, felt much more like it was intended for a young adult audience. I drifted away pretty quickly.
#Bookspin

Fascinating insights into the lives of six defector North Koreans (100 were interviewed) with context re the politics, structures, and culture since WW2, with absolute government dominance as the constant theme. A dedicated Communist, street kids, a South Korean POW, a doctor with no resources, and many more watching their loved ones starve and die. Also good insights into the Koreas/Russia/China/US tensions.
#Nonfiction2024 #HandmaidsTale

Congratulations on reaching 500K Litfluence points and thank you for your giveaway generosity, @DebinHawaii!

Five things that bring me joy:
1. Working with others to make the world a better place.
2. Skyping with my adorable niece and nephew
3. Seeing new shoots come up in my baby tomato tray and pollinator garden.
4. Camping and wilderness time
5. Wonderful books that expand my view of the world!

A brilliant Australian novel about Vietnam-born Ky, the bridge between her parents and their new country, who when she is a young adult learns that her gifted brother has been brutally murdered. There is a thread of murder mystery here, with flashbacks to Ky‘s adolescence, but far more about immigration and mistrust of police, culture and race, teen friendships across class borders, and family struggles.
#ReadingOceania2024 #Australia

To anyone else, Eddie‘s reason would‘ve been baffling. But Ky understood. She hated how well she now understood. After all, hadn‘t she kept every hurt she‘d experienced from her own parents? Hadn‘t she hidden the bullying, the name-calling, the times she‘d been told to go back where she came from, the “ching—chongs,” the pulled-back eyelids, the blondies with their Cabbage Patch kids, the way she was asked why she couldn‘t just take a joke? /1

Moving, engaging, informative: two teen girls, best friends in post WWII France, create a scheme where the more gifted one channels literature through the more middle-class one, whose work is more likely to be accepted. They unexpectedly become separated when the “prodigy”writer is sent to England and the rest of the book explores their friendship, with its strong lesbian subtext, issues of culture and class, and youth power and choices. #Bookspin

April ##Booksping
1. Doppelgänger
2. A Woman Is no Man
3. Run Towards the Danger
4. Thank You Mr Nixon
5. When We Were Sisters
6. An Immense World
7. Ghosts of the Tsunami
8. Hunger
9. Fresh Water for Flowers
10. Saving Time
11. Citizen
12. H is for Hawk
13. The Covenant of Water
14. Fruit of the Drunken Tree
15. We Should Not Be Afraid of the Sky
16. The Bandit Queens
17. Big Men Fear Me
18. Don‘t Bite the Hook
19. Some People Need
20. Greenwood

Good collection of essays with different takes on how the Black experience of racism intersects with shame, trauma, and vulnerability. I had varying responses to the essays, but found most of them moving and informational, with a wide range of themes. I particularly appreciated Burke and Brown's dialogue at the beginning about why they wanted to work together.

#SheSaid

#Nonfiction2024 #IKnowWhytheCagedBirdSings

“I‘m going to decorate my house in a Western style,” Denny said, during one of their last phone calls. “Do you mean, like, Wild West?””No, like white people.” “Have you ever been in a white person‘s house?”Ky asked, genuinely curious. “I watch Better Homes & Gardens,” Denny said. “Mom watches it too, but I think she does it to feel superior to white people. She reckons they‘re super impractical and waste money on decorative junk they don‘t need.”

For my IRL book club: canceled by a snowstorm! I expected fluffy: it actually tackles serious issues about gender and trans identity, mutually supportive women‘s communities outside mainstream culture, aging, and, of course, magic. Resilient women brought together in childhood have all developed their own specific powers, internal tensions, and affiliations, to find that their property is threatened with destruction and they need to fight back.

“There are things that my body doesn‘t allow me to do, like walking long distances. This means I can‘t really attend physical protests. So, I protest for change by the written word and across my platforms. I also fight by being all that I am without asking for permission.”

Yep. This is me. #SheSaid