6/6 Fuzzies. Dictee is an introspective look at womanhood, Korean womanhood, and everything in between.
We absolutely loved the world of Daughters of Nri right up until the anti-climatic end, and believe us, it was anti-climatic. Although we love a feel good book just as much as the next person, um…what was that? Still, you may want to pick this up, as it was still a very good read.
We loved, absolutely loved A Song of Wraiths and Ruin. Even though Fuzzy is moving away from long reviews, we had to say some words about the beauty and majesty of Roseanne A. Brown’s masterpiece. This book is both magical and familial, beautiful and terrible, and seriously, imperatively a MUST READ.
Click on the above image to grab the first installment of this amazing series.
5/6 Fuzzies! The Known World is a must read, but definitely an uncomfortable one.
A Blade So Black by L.L. McKinney was painfully slow with some obvious gaps in the beginning. The length of time it takes to find out how the main character’s father died was tedium, alone. However, the novel picks up pace and was a wonderful ride with an amazing take on Alice in Wonderland.
Click on the image above to pick up from Amazon.
5/6. One Amazing Thing is a brilliantly written novel. The Black American experience written by someone who is not Black American never fails to come across as slightly or blatantly unauthentic, so we couldn’t give One Amazing Thing 6 Fuzzies, but it came close.
An amazing set of nine, interlinked short stories, This is How You Lose Her is Junot Diaz’s second short story collection. Once again, readers are enthralled with the chaotic but riveting adventures into the life of Yunior, Diaz’s reoccurring Dominican protagonist. This is How You Lose Her follows Yunior’s love life, flashing through teenage romances, cheating, falling in and out of love, and more. Full of Spanish lingo and slang, analytical introspection and Diaz’s usual riveting prose, This is How You Lose Her is Diaz’s third book and his best yet.
We found the most inexpensive copy on Thriftbooks, but Amazon had way more copies. Pick one up by selecting the image above.
Octavia Butler’s tenth novel has been labelled as prescient, as foretelling, as brilliant, as sacrilegious, as a picture of the future and many other things, but for many of us Parable of the Sower is just black girl magic.
This novel introduces us to Lauren Oya Olamina, a fifteen-year-old hyper-empath who lives in a post-apocalyptic Los Angeles. The story follows Lauren as she sets off on a journey that changes her life, develops a belief system in Earthseed, the concept of change as an actual force, and becomes the leader of a community. Parable of the Sower is simultaneously many things; it is a coming-of-age story and a bracing critique on what it is to be black in America; it is an investigation into class and social structures and a prophetic view of what society is headed to; it looks askance at theology, dives into feminism, and also pushes us to question what we want out of life. Some say this story is dystopian (it is). Others label it as the start of a utopia. The brilliant part about this novel, is that it is for everyone and no one at the same time. It just is.
Fuzzy Afro Logic felt like Parable of the Sower should be our first adult book to recommend because it is one of the few African American science fiction novels written by an African American woman about an African American woman. We also wanted to recommend it because, as many of us say about things we love, “it is everything,” and it “gives us life.”
While this book could be read by some young adults, because of some of the themes and level of maturity needed to read this text, we do not recommend it as a young adult book per se. Instead, we feel that adults would be more capable of handling how wonderfully deep this text is.
Pick up a copy by selecting the link in the main picture!
Lakota Woman is an older book, but it never fails in its raw honesty. Serving as a written memoir from Mary Brave Bird, a Sicangu Lakota, who was formerly known as Mary Crow Dog, Lakota Woman covers Mary’s upbringing on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Mary’s recounting of her one room shack, her fatherless experience, not having running water or electricity, and more is a unique and unparalleled look at a part of U.S. culture that we often romanticize but do not dive into learning about. Definitely book to get. You can pick a copy up from Amazon by selecting the link above.
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