Short BIPOC Books To Round Out Your Summer Reading
While recording the latest full-length Hey YA episode with my co-host Kelly Jensen, there was a moment where we—fully in our geriatric status as millennials—lamented about how books were too long. (Movies and shows are also too dark, and our backs hurt, but I’ll keep it cute and bookish for now.)
Now, I like myself a tome here and there, but the way my attention span is set up these days, it’s the shorties that have been enticing me most. If you’re also trying to keep your reading short and sweet, below are books to pick up while the days are still longer.
There’s a modern Japanese classic about a woman who has never quite fit in, pining future lesbians, a missing sister who turns up on a reality show, and more.
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Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata, trans. by Ginny Tapley Takemori
Keiko Furukura has never quite fit in, but since she was 18 and applied to a convenience store job in Tokyo on a whim, she feels like she at least has some things figured out. Like, she knows how to dress and act when she’s at work in order to look like she belongs, even if there is a “real” her that exists outside this persona. But now, at 36, the normalcy she thought she’d maintained since her teenage years starts to crumble once her younger sister gives birth, and those close to Keiko start pressuring her to achieve society-set milestones. Giving in, she attempts a deal of sorts with a questionable co-worker, and though her life now appears to be “normal,” to her, it feels like anything but.
This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
Last year, Bigolas Dickolas had Book Twitter in a tizzy over this book. It’s a beautifully written epistolary romance blended with truly creative speculative worlds. Red and Blue are two agents fighting on opposite sides of a time war. Blue’s side is a sort of organic hive mind, while Red’s is peak technology. Throughout the book, the two women travel through time on missions to change the outcome of the war and eventually notice the other’s handiwork. This leads to what is, at first, an exchange of taunting letters but turns into admiration and love. Technically, they aren’t really traveling to parallel universes, but the times they travel to are so different that they feel like different worlds.
Corregidora by Gayl Jones
This classic work by Jones was edited by Toni Morrison while she was still at Random House. In it, a tragedy sends Kentucky blues singer Ursa into the muck of her maternal history—both her mother and grandmother were fathered by the same Brazilian slave master, Corregidora. And let’s just say that if Corregidora has no haters left, it means Ursa has left this earthly plane. Her hatred of the man roils around in her as she contends with all his abuse has meant for generations of her family.
And What Can We Offer You Tonight by Premee Mohamed
This Nebula Award-winning novella is lyrical and centered on revenge. In this dystopian world, Jewel is working as a courtesan in an upscale House, or elite brothel, when one of her fellow courtesans is killed. During a secret ceremony to honor their fallen sister, she comes back to life. Not only that, but the undead courtesan remembers being murdered and wants revenge — for her death and all the other abuses suffered by her and other courtesans at the hands of the House’s wealthy clientele.
Beyond the Door of No Return by David Diop, trans. by Sam Taylor
From International Booker Prize winner Diop comes this 1806 Paris-set novel. As the renowned botanist Michel Adanson breathes his last breaths, he speaks a woman’s name. Turns out he wrote about the woman on his mind, Maram, in his as yet unpublished memoir that documents his time in Senegal—when he found out about a young noblewoman who was sold into slavery, escaped, and was rumored to be the fabled revenant.
What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez by Claire Jiménez
One day, 13-year-old Ruthy Ramirez disappears after track practice on Staten Island, and her Puerto Rican family is left forever changed. Then, 12 years later, something odd happens. The oldest sister of the Ramirez children, Jessica, notices a woman on one of those raggedy reality TV shows called Catfight. She has dyed red hair, but the under-eye beauty mark is unmistakable: it’s Ruthy.
Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark
The Birth of a Nation is a hateful spell released upon the world by the sorcerer D.W. Griffith. To fight the Klan’s hellish plan for earth, Maryse Boudreaux and her magic sword join forces with two other Black women—a sharpshooter and a Harlem Hellfighter—to fight the demons the Klan conjures. This novella mixes African folklore with American history and, naturally, commentary on racial animus. This is definitely for fans of the show Lovecraft Country.
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