I Want to Be a Vase by Julio Torres
I Want to Be a Vase has some great points. As the publisher description says: “An ambitious toilet plunger expresses his desire to be a vase.” This theme allows for a two-part story. The first part of Julio Torres’ story is that if you put your mind to it, you can be whatever you want to be. The second part is a story of you do not have to be what you were born as. Therefore, allowing a transgender story to take shape. And […]
Dawn by Octavia Butler
Adulthood Rites by Octavia Butler
Imago by Octavia Butler
Dawn I hope no one ever comes for Octavia Butler. She’s so good at exploring issues related to gender, our bodies, consent, sexuality, and our brains and demonstrating horror and disgust without getting didactic about it. A novel about significant and existentially nightmarish changes to our genes, coupled with a total helplessness to do anything about it except acquiesce is something else. In this novel, Lilith awakes in some kind of captivity. A frustrating wait as she gets used to her new situation reveals that […]
Ho’onani: Hula Warrior by Heather Gale
Ho’onani: Hula Warrior is and is not hard to talk about. But after you say a young dancer finds her place in her society and the male hula troupe at school by being herself, you have said it all. I mean you can say how her family (but not her sister) supports her choice of being nāhū (not wahine (female) or kane or kāne (I have found both spellings) (male) but in between) and how that came about, but that takes away from the story […]
Olga Dies Dreaming by Xochitl Gonzalez
Olga Acevedo and her brother, Prieto, are sort of minor celebrities in NYC – Prieto is a congressman representing the neighborhood where they grew up in Brooklyn, and Olga is an event planner with many wealthy clients (including Russian mobsters). On the face of it, they are both successful adults in their 40s, but Olga and Prieto have struggled with trauma from their childhood and neither has fully accepted themselves. Their parents felt something more than pride in their Puerto Rican heritage – they were […]
Little Good Wolf by Susan Stevens Crummel
This review has a few spoilers I was really getting into the story of Little Good Wolf. Little Good Wolf plays with the piggies, cleans his room, brushes his teeth, takes baths, and even reads bedtime stories to himself. His parents are truly fed up with his actions, so they know drastic measures need to be taken. They must send him to Bad School. But no matter how hard his teachers try to teach him bad manners, clubbing people with clubs, and […]
Brighton Rock by Graham Greene
I originally bought Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock because I had it confused with The Winslow Boy, which are bizarre novels to mix up, I know. So I went into Brighton Rock with no expectations or knowledge about the plot. The main character—called the Boy or Pinkie—is a teenager defined by his nihilism and sociopathy, and is contrasted by several side characters: Ida who is open-hearted and decadant, and Rose, who falls in love with Pinkie. The Boy is the head of a small, violent gang. […]
