Category: Racism

The Conductors (Murder and Magic #1) by Nicole Glover

Such an excellent premise, such an underwhelming execution! Hetty Rhodes was a conductor on the Underground Railroad, helping other enslaved people escape slavery as she once had, using the magical abilities she was gifted with. Once the Civil War ended, she settled in Philadelphia with her husband and co-conductor Benjy Rhodes, but never gave up …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/03/02/the-conductors-murder-and-magic-1-by-nicole-glover/

A Longer Fall (Gunnie Rose #2) by Charlaine Harris

The hallmark of a successful second novel in a series, I feel, is that you turn the pages even faster than you did the first one. While I very much enjoyed An Easy Death, the series debut, it did feel like a lot of time was spent introducing the alternate history 1930s milieu. With the …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/02/18/a-longer-fall-gunnie-rose-2-by-charlaine-harris/

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

I read Between the World and Me a lifetime ago, in early summer when it was strange to leave the neighborhood again after so many weeks of stillness. It is a hard book, not because of the difficulty of language or of its concepts, but because of the hardness of its subject: how to live …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/11/15/between-the-world-and-me-by-ta-nehisi-coates/

Parachutes by Kelly Yang

I am absolutely wrung out after reading Parachutes by Kelly Yang. I cried — which is a given considering the subject matter — a lot — which is not. Ms Yang crams into one book so many of the traumas that I’ve either endured or been adjacent to by virtue of being or having been …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/09/03/parachutes-by-kelly-yang/

LaGuardia by Nnedi Okorafor & Tana Ford

Yes, I am totally here for open border advocacy allegories, sci-fi tales that center non-white perspectives and experiences, and sly critiques of racism, overt or otherwise! Dr Freedom Chukwuebuka is five months pregnant when she abruptly leaves Lagos to return to New York City. She leaves behind a clinic where she treated both humans and …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/06/10/laguardia-by-nnedi-okorafor-tana-ford/

A Place for Us by Fatima Farheen Mirza

What a lot of fatuous nonsense. First of all, let’s talk about the marketing for this novel. It’s being touted as the story of a Muslim Indian-American family and sure yes, but also it’s a very specific brand of Muslim, a conservative Shi’ah that’s as bizarre to me, raised a mainstream Sunni Muslim, as the …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/03/19/a-place-for-us-by-fatima-farheen-mirza/

Front Desk (Front Desk #1) by Kelly Yang

Welp, that’s two five-star amazing children’s books in a row for me, I honestly feel blessed. My 8 year-old borrowed this from his teacher, so it’s been sitting, with that compelling cover, on the dining room table where we eat and study and play for a few weeks now. Jms has already finished reading it, …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/02/27/front-desk-front-desk-1-by-kelly-yang/

The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson

The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson

Isabel Wilkerson has all of the receipts. Setting out to understand the Great Migration of African-Americans out of the South and into other regions of the country, she drew on scholarship, she drew on hundreds of interview, she drew on the archives of dozens of organizations, and she arrived with a great work of synthesis, …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/01/26/the-warmth-of-other-suns-by-isabel-wilkerson/

Slay by Brittney Morris

Before this devolves into a rant on stupid Adobe products, let me first admit that I couldn’t read the entire book, as the first page of each chapter was entirely invisible to me. That said, I did very much enjoy what I did read, and Slay was exactly as good as expected where expected. Very …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/09/27/slay-by-brittney-morris/

The Weight of Our Sky by Hanna Alkaf

I finished this book in two compulsive sittings, and if I’m being perfectly honest, I think I would have liked it better if I hadn’t had to break concentration a little past the halfway mark to go do life stuff. Because The Weight Of Our Sky is the kind of book that grabs you by …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/04/17/the-weight-of-our-sky-by-hanna-alkaf/