Update on 2015 Diverse Reading Challenge

In December I posted my Cry to the Captain with a challenge to myself to choose and read more specifically targeted diverse books.

I started the year off with some great books by Asian authors about Asian cultures. I read Gail Tsukiyama's Women of the Silk and posted about how much I loved it and how it opened my eyes. I loved her writing and learning about China in that time period so much that I read the sequel, The Language of Threads. It was fabulous. I loved it in that way that you like the second book you read by a previously unread author just a teeny bit less than the first one that blew you away not just because of the writing and character development, but because you had never heard of the events written about.

I also read Lisa See's Shanghai Girls about two sisters in 1930s, 40s China and coming to America. Again, so many culture things I didn't know and was fascinated to read about. Coddled as it sounds, I had never considered or learned about the impact of Japan on China in that time (or the reverse). And the relationship See writes about between the two sisters, sometimes loving, sometimes fraught, but inextricably bound together, is probably true of sisters across time and across the globe.

Gail Tsukiyama's Street of a Thousand Blossoms will finish up my reading (for now) of books about Asian culture and heritage by an author of Asian heritage. I have just barely started it, but am looking forward to reading another of Tsukiyama's fine novels.

Many thanks to my adult reading buddies, Hannah and Carolyn, for their recommendation and book talks to me about these great books and for lending me their copies!  Because of you, I was able to read not just the 2 books by Asian authors I had set out for myself, but 4! And learned a lot along the way.


I'd love suggestions for books that take place in Africa by an African author or books about Mexican culture by a Mexican author. The Street of a Thousand Blossoms is thick, but it won't last forever! What great book that inundates us in African or Mexican culture can I read next?

My Cry to the Captain Begins

In my last post, Cry to the Captain, I spoke about the #WeNeedDiverseBooks campaign and my own personal reading challenge for 2015 to read more diversely.

Because I have awesome reading buddies who lend me awesome books, I have just read Gail Tsukiyama's Women of the Silk. I loved it!

I realize that this book is fiction and if I really wanted to be pristine in learning hard facts about a country, people and their culture, I would read non-fiction (but even then, history is written by the victors, eh?); however, there can be something vastly humanizing about reading and learning about a culture through fiction. In this book in particular, I felt I learned a bit about Chinese culture and the silk industry from about 1919 - 1930s not in addition to, but because of the events that unfolded for the main character, Pei. Tsukiyama wrote rich, complex characters that made me care about them. I wanted to throttle the non-communicative characters at times, I felt Pei's sadness and curiosity, I wondered at Lin's self-control. For me, the history and the facts are lifted from dust to breath by the characters (which is another reason it is so important for authors to research meticulously and be a part of the culture about which they write).

If you haven't read Women of the Silk, I'd recommend it.

The Importance of Adult Reading Buddies

As I'm learning to read more analytically as a writer, I realize that it is also important to me to continue to have adult reading buddies that may or may not focus on analyzing the writing of what we read.

I have a teacher friend who I consider my Book Buddy. While we both love reading, we might like slightly different kinds of books. Hannah opens my eyes to new things through her recommendations - and therefore new thoughts that may become fodder for my future writing. You never know.

Hannah recommended Rin Tin Tin: The Life and Legend by Susan Orlean. Although I am a big time dog person, this wouldn't be the kind of book I'd ordinarily read. However, I learned a lot of (to me) interesting history through this book - the orphan trains in America, the origins of the German Shepherd breed, tidbits about World War I that I never knew, tidbits about Hollywood's early film days. It expanded my horizons, which can only help me as a writer.



Another teacher friend and I gush about all things MG or YA. Jasmine is just as deadly in a book store as I am, and I haven't asked her, but Amazon might thank her personally like they do me. Every time I finish an awesome MG or YA book, I know I can rave to Jasmine and she'll understand and rave even more. She raved about R.J. Palacio's Wonder a while back and I can't believe I still haven't read it! I know I will find not only new thoughts in it, but it will be great to analyze it as a writer.


I'm currently reading The Cobweb Bride by Vera Nazarian, also recommended to me by a friend and fellow book lover/writer (Alison DeLuca). Now this is the kind of book I'd pick up and read in a heartbeat - fantasy, intriguing title and cover. And I did get this on Kindle quite a while back. Just hadn't read it. I was hedging because, honestly, you never know what you're going to get with Kindle books. I have read true drivel, and worse, irritatingly non-edited self-published books. I say that knowing that my own writing will probably be viewed as true drivel and/or irritatingly non-edited at some point. And I say that understanding that as writers, we all have to start somewhere. And I am glad that so many have started their writing adventures - very much so. But it also adds to the titles that you have to wade through that are not quite . . . finished.

The Cobweb Bride is not like that. So far, anyway, and I'm about half way through it. Again, I might have put this book down a little way in to it if not for Alison's recommendation. Why? Because it's a zombie book. No, it's not, really. But it is. I mean, it has people in it who should be dead but aren't. But saying Cobweb Bride is a zombie book is like comparing the Mona Lisa to a paint-by-numbers Mona Lisa. They are both paintings, but the masterpiece has infinitely more detail, delicacy, subtlety, nuance, emotion and intelligence.

I wouldn't have read it if someone had told me it's a zombie book. It's not. Not any more than your Great Aunt Sophie's paint-by-numbers Mona Lisa is the real thing. So read it. The book, not your Great Aunt Sophie's paint-by-numbers.

Point being, Nazarian's concept and implementation of the concept of Death and hence the plot, is phenomenal. Creativity plus skill. It opens my thoughts to how I can think and stretch creatively as a writer to new ideas and concepts. It makes me think about how we can help our students do that. My reading buddy spurred me to all of that.

My next book up is from my Book Buddy, Hannah. She has let me borrow Lisa See's Shanghai Girls and Gail Tsukiyama's Women of the Silk.  Again, neither are the sort of book I would pick up and read on my own. I tend to get stuck in MG/YA and fantasy, as well as Native literature. But I can't wait to find out what new information, world views, perspectives, concepts and tidbits I will discover.

                                             

And after those, Wonder!  Because MG/YA.