By Anya Shukla Loyal readers may know that one of my pet peeves is when a YA book attempts to cross over to the adult section (and vice versa). Today, I discovered a very relevant article in The New York Times—coincidentally featuring a BIPOC author, Jason Reynolds. If you want to know what YA literature should look like, I’d recommend checking it out. Not really related to “Flame in the Mist,” but just something interesting. Anyways…
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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.
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 :)
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.
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.
By Anya Shukla So here’s the thing. I know that “Algorithms of Oppression” was a New York Times best-seller and the book was selected as NYU Press’ Book of the Decade and its author is a 2021 MacArthur Fellow. But I did not like it. (I’M SO SORRY.) I did not have a fun time reading it. I did not enjoy girding my mental loins and plodding into this oh-so academic text. I really hate going against popular opinion but here goes…
By Anya Shukla Numerical ratings are back by popular demand! And by “popular,” I mean that my mom nagged me until I put my ratings back in; apparently, they help her determine whether she should read my articles or not. Such is life. I mean, it’s not like I have hordes of readers panting to determine a book’s worth based on my reviews… so I guess it’s fine to rate them. As a compromise, I’ll add a “my” before the “rating” header to emphasize that these ratings stem from my personal opinion.
By Anya Shukla Full disclosure… I understand maybe 50% of what happened in “House Made of Dawn.” Actually, more like 40%. The book consists of so many layers. It’s one of those novels with in-depth metaphors that can only be unraveled when you read two sentences in just the right way. A brain-teaser of a book that—although small—could kill someone with its sheer intellectual power. The novel is confusing, but in the way that good literature is confusing: you have a certainty that everything will figure itself out, that there will be no loose ends, that you can unlock all the similes and allegories after days of close reading. Did I desperately want to SparkNotes everything? Yes. Did I? Well…
By Anya Shukla One of the cutest scenes in "Take A Hint, Dani Brown" comes when the two main characters do a press event at a radio station. No spoilers, but… they just know each other so well, and it is adorable. Review: At the beginning of Talia Hibbert’s “Take A Hint, Dani Brown,” the romantic leads’ friendly relationship is fueled by five-minute conversations. Zafir, a security guard, monitors the building that Dani teaches in, and the two see each other as (for the most part) platonic acquaintances. But after a photo of Zaf firefighter-carrying Dani out of an elevator post-safety drill goes viral, and Zaf’s mental health organization starts receiving media attention, the two decide to fake-date to keep the publicity going. Naturally, their relationship begins to heat up.
By Anya Shukla Going forward, I’ve decided to stop rating the books I review. This is not a ploy to get out of doing more work, dear reader; I’ve put some thought into this decision. 1. My ratings are super subjective. I have no set rubric, meaning that I maintain no consistency between ratings: one book may get 1 point taken off for poor character development, while another may only lose .5 points. Plus, my idea of a “good book” has changed over the course of this challenge, meaning that my earlier ratings may not be accurately scaled.
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