This month’s Reading Round Up offers a collection of some of the best articles I read, covering topics including the first Black trans model, American Dirt, and white feminism. Plus a list of my own written work. Get those tabs ready!
My Writing
Spotlight: New Young Adult Speculative Fiction January 2020
Spotlight: Must-Read Speculative Short Fiction: December 2019
End of Year Wrap-up: 2019 Totals: Books
End of Year Wrap-up: 2019 Totals: Short Stories
End of Year Wrap-up: 2019 Totals: Comics & Graphic Novels
End of Year Wrap-up: 2019 Totals: Television & Miniseries
End of Year Wrap-up: 2019 Totals: Movies
Review: The Monster at the End of This Book: Seanan McGuire’s Come Tumbling Down
Review: The End Is Only the Beginning: Shadowshaper Legacy by Daniel José Older
Spotlight: Mechanical Dragons, Heavenly Quests, and Graffiti Magic in This Season’s Young Adult SFF
Review: In Anna-Marie McLemore’s Dark and Deepest Red, Identity Is Dangerous and Magical
Review: The Iron Will of Genie Lo by F.C. Yee Hits Hard and Fast
Review: Comin’ Straight From the Underground: Riot Baby by Tochi Onyebuchi
Review: When the Moon Was Ours by Anna-Marie McLemore
Other Works
“The First Black Trans Model Had Her Face on a Box of Clairol” by Jada Yuan and Aaron Wong for The Cut: “Tracey “Africa” Norman always knew that the question wasn’t if she’d be found out, but how long she could go undetected.”
“Pendeja, You Ain’t Steinbeck: My Bronca with Fake-Ass Social Justice Literature” by Myriam Chingona Gurba de Serrano for Tropics of Meta: “When I tell gringos that my Mexican grandfather worked as a publicist, the news silences them.
Shocked facial expressions follow suit.
Their heads look ready to explode and I can tell they’re thinking, “In Mexico, there are PUBLICISTS?!””
“Cummins’ Non-Mexican Crap” by David Bowles: “If you haven’t already, you’re going to be hearing a lot of praise for Jeanine Cummins’ American Dirt, a novel about a Mexican bookseller who has to escape cartel-related violence with her son, fleeing to the US. Cummins received a seven-figure advance for this book.
And it’s harmful, appropriating, inaccurate, trauma-porn melodrama.”
“Black Women Writers Reclaim Their Past” by Thulani Davis for The Village Voice: “Unfortunately, in the years since then, books like Marshall’s still come as a surprise. Like a number of other black women writers, I have made it a point to speak of our “tradition,” yet I know that no such tradition is assumed by the rest of the world, primarily because our books have not been read or taught.”
“Whatever Happened to _______?” for Longreads: “We were wrapped in a velvet night, under a star-filled sky, headlights cutting through the dark. We were writers, carpooling back from a rare weekend retreat. A cool wind found its way in through a narrow slice of open window and whipped the driver’s shaggy hair into a minor frenzy. Over the sound of Rod Stewart’s mandolin, this driver scratched mosquito bites and told me about a woman writer he’d once known. “She was so talented,” he said, in admiration.”
“When Feminism Is White Supremacy in Heels” by Rachel Elizabeth Cargle for Harper’s Bazaar: “The fragility of these women was not a surprise to me. In a crucial moment of showing up for our marginalized community, there was more concern about their feelings and ego as opposed to the fight forward for women as a whole. What could have been a much-needed and integral display of solidarity and true intersectionality quickly became a live play-by-play of the toxicity that white-centered feminism can bring to the table of activism.”
Punk-Ass Book Jockey 