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By Dilinna Ugochukwu With eye-catching color contrasts and intricate detailing, Patteera Sudsok’s work is beautiful, brilliant, and focused on character design. They first started posting their art online in 2016 when they were in middle school, and have since grown a following on social media. When Sudsok first started posting, they were inspired by their love of cartoons. They like to draw fanart inspired by some of their favorite animated shows like “Adventure Time,” “Steven Universe,” “Attack on Titan,” and “Jujutsu Kaisen”; as well as the work of other online artists—with similarly cartoon-esque styles—like Gunzbie and CutiiCosmo. Sudsok’s work employs saturated colors, and can accurately be described as bright and eye-catching. Additionally, perhaps because of their love of animated shows, Sudsok is drawn towards creating character art over environments or backgrounds.
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 As a significant part of "America Is Not the Heart" takes place in a Filipino restaurant, food plays a large role in the book. Photo credit: Amanda Lim on Unsplash. By Anya Shukla I’m too lazy to make a full “BIPOC Book Connections” section in this review, but I did see a lot of similarities between “Behold the Dreamers” and “America Is Not the Heart.” Gender expectations, who has “ownership” over the family and its decisions, hard work to support your relatives… these topics come into play in both novels. Even though the books explore such different cultures within the American immigrant experience, they have very similar themes. Review: Elaine Castillo’s “America Is Not the Heart” centers on Hero, a 34-year-old Filipino* woman. Hero’s family has strong ties to Ferdinand Marcos, former kleptocratic president of the Philippines, but Hero chooses to support the New People’s Army, a communist rebel group fighting against his regime. After ten years in the New People’s Army and two years in a Filipino prison camp, Hero comes to stay in California with her uncle Pol; his wife, Paz; and six-year-old cousin, Roni. When she does, she ends up growing closer to Rosalyn, a Filipino makeup artist who introduces Hero and Roni to her friends and community.
Over the past year, our Washington chapter has been collaborating with South End Stories to produce a zine featuring the work of teen artists of color. The project is finally complete, and we are very excited to share the final product with all of you!
Because we wanted to recognize that teens of color are more than their racial identity, this zine is centered around the theme of "you." We hoped this open-ended word would allow youth to showcase their full identity, regardless of whether their artwork relates directly to the color of their skin. We also asked participating artists to provide artist statements or short bios, and we encourage you to take the time to learn more about these teens and the influences behind their artwork.
If you would like to purchase physical copies of the zine, you can do so here. (All artists who participated in the zine will receive one free physical copy.) All proceeds will help keep our programs 100% free for participants. You can also view a digital version of the zine below.
 Set during the 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers, "Behold the Dreamers" shows that money isn't everything. Photo credit: lo lo on Unsplash. By Anya Shukla I loved this book so much I read the nearly 800-page (according to my e-reader) novel in one sitting. (And my optometrist wonders why my prescription is increasing…) Mbue sure knows how to turn a trope on its head. Scratch that. Mbue sure knows how to write. Not much I can say in this intro other than READ THIS BOOK READ IT RIGHT NOW. And then email me so we can have a discussion about America. Please and thank you :)
 Who would suspect that behind this smiling face lies the mind of a horror writer? (Photo credit: Mariama Diallo.) By Anya Shukla “When I woke up, the first thing I noticed was that I wasn’t in my house. I was in a cold and dark forest. I did not know how or when I got here.” With this eerie first paragraph, Mariama Diallo begins a short piece for class. Her descriptions of her character’s surroundings—old trees, with wood colored “dark, almost like black”; “leaves that crunched with every movement I made”—draw me into the story. Although only 13 (on the younger side of our teen features), she has a talent for the craft.
 According to "Cyclopedia Exotica," cyclopes were originally pastoral herders from Greece. Photo credit: Tanner Yould on Unsplash. By Anya Shukla I’ve realized that I have been frontloading these reviews with books I want to read—fiction, romance, comic books—and saving the denser, 800-page behemoths on my list for the end. What can I say, I have no willpower. Guess that will be a problem for Future Anya, though, because right now, it’s “Cyclopedia Exotica” time! Yippee!! I have wanted to read this book for just under a year, so I am very excited. Mostly because I have never stopped loving comics, and never will stop loving comics.
 Because bullets were too expensive, the Khmer Rouge used commonplace weapons, like hammers, for their mass executions. Photo credit: iMattSmart on Unsplash. By Anya Shukla I knew of the Cambodian genocide before I began reading “First They Killed My Father,” but this book gave me a new, devastating lens through which to see the war. Even four days after its ending, I can still feel this book in my body. I didn’t expect the memoir to have such an impact. It’s especially interesting to note how America and China contributed to this war. America’s bombings of the Cambodian countryside during the Vietnam war helped grow Khmer Rouge ranks, while Chinese policies and advice influenced Pol Pot (the Khmer Rouge leader) and his dreams of a self-sustaining, agrarian Cambodian society.
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