Category: Race

The Destroyer of Worlds by Matt Ruff

The Destroyer of Worlds by Matt Ruff

Reader, I was invested. Possibly even enthralled. At one point, I thought “Matt Ruff, if you XXXXX, I am throwing this book right out of the train window, and possibly Lovecraft Country too as soon as I get home and put my hands on my copy.” Not because the event would have been cheap or …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/10/28/the-destroyer-of-worlds-by-matt-ruff/

The Tryout: A Graphic Novel by Christina Soontornvat & Joanna Cacao

Author Christina Soontornvat wasn’t sure whether anyone would care about her experiences with middle school, but was eventually persuaded to write about one of the most cringe episodes of her own pre-teen career in this wryly moving graphic novel. I’m so glad she did. It’s not easy being one of the few Thai people in …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/09/09/the-tryout-a-graphic-novel-by-christina-soontornvat-joanna-cacao/

How the Word is Passed by Clint Smith

How the Word is Passed by Clint Smith

In How the Word is Passed, Clint Smith recounts his visits to seven locations as part of what he calls in the book’s subtitle “A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America.” Monticello Plantation. The Whitney Plantation. Angola Prison. Blandford Cemetery. Galveston Island. New York City. Goréee Island (Ghana). Along with a prologue in …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/03/19/how-the-word-is-passed-by-clint-smith/

Sweet Tea by Piper Huguley

This is a sheer delight of a clean romance novel, one that touches on getting comfortable with your roots but still being open to love when it shows up to surprise you. Althea Dailey has finally made partner at her intellectual property law firm in New York City but, now that she’s achieved her life …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/07/13/sweet-tea-by-piper-huguley/

Deathless Divide (Dread Nation #2) by Justina Ireland

Thank God for Katherine! I was pretty fond of her in the first novel of the series too, and am so, so glad she gets entire viewpoint chapters in this novel, alternating with Jane’s. Deathless Divide begins with the girls fleeing Summerland and trying to figure out, with their small band of survivors, where to …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/03/25/deathless-divide-dread-nation-2-by-justina-ireland/

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/

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/

More Becoming by Michelle Obama

“Becoming Us,” the second part of Michelle Obama’s memoir tells how two very different people, two nearly polar opposite people in fact, came not only to love and cherish one another but to build a life and a partnership that would work from Chicago to the whole world. One of their first social functions together, …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/11/26/more-becoming-by-michelle-obama/

The Record Keeper by Agnes Gomillion

Hi, Frumious Readers! I feel like I’ve been away foreeeever, but it’s been crunch time over at my other reading job with CriminalElement.com so my apologies for being infrequent over here. Anyway, with Doug away for a bit, I’m glad to be back with this really great new novel sent to me by our friends …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/06/26/the-record-keeper-by-agnes-gomillion-2/

Becoming by Michelle Obama

Becoming by Michelle Obama

Becoming really is that good. Here’s a lengthy excerpt from the beginning. There’s a lot I still don’t know about America, about life, about what the future might bring. But I do know myself. My father, Fraser, taught me to work hard, laugh often, and keep my word. My mother, Marian, showed me how to …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/06/19/becoming-by-michelle-obama/