Yellow
No more novels about writers writing books, I swore. And then I read Yellowface by R.F. Kuang. Yellowface is the story of two authors. Athena is Asian and hugely successful. (I kept thinking of Zadie Smith, getting that mega publishing deal while she was still at OxBridge. ) June is white and midling. When Athena dies, June takes her unpublished manuscript - about the Chinese Labour Corps in WW I - and passes it off as her own. Spoilers ahead.
Cozy murder mystery
Shehan Karunatilaka’s 2022 Booker winning novel The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida is an absurd life-after-death romp about a young man who, against the better judgement of wiser ghosts, goes in search of his killers. It’s a whodunit set in Sri Lanka in 1990, smack in the middle of the civil war. It’s irreverent, unsentimental, and uproarious.
This ain’t National Geographic
There is a moment in V.V. Ganeshananthan’s Brotherless Night when the first person protagonist declares: “Even now I do not wish to translate that word, kottiya. Must we explain each humiliation to be believed?” (pg. 113)
It’s a powerful moment in a powerful scene, but even out of context, the line is important for what it can teach us.
Diversity road to no where
Last week #publishingpaidme blew up on Twitter, highlighting the ugly truth Black authors have long known, that they are offered a fraction of the advances white authors get, even when the Black authors in question are well established award-winners with an international fan base and a history of successful books, and the white authors in question have untested debut manuscripts or less, perhaps just a single essay that went viral. How can this be, this appalling and unfair disparity? IT’S WHITE SUPREMACY. WAKE THE FUCK UP.
Poetry police
During the Inauguration, National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman stole the show with her poem “The Hill We Climb”. I watched the ceremony the same way I read my reviews - breath held, jaw clenched, and squinting - because remember the confetti canon and the armed terrorists who stormed the capitol? Luckily, it was fine. No one got assassinated and I had the privilege of witnessing Gorman’s performance in real time. It was a tour de force and 99% of the millions who saw her agreed. But you know…there’s always the one per cent.