I heard almost immediately from friends and friends of friends that this was really sad, so I waited months to read it, when normally I’m all over new Saga like cat hair on black pants. It’s like, I get there are going to be sad installments of this series. I do. This is the story of Hazel’s life from beginning, to, well, I don’t know if they’ll end with her being old, but certainly with her as an adult. And there is no way that […]
There’s more than one way to be human
A year ago at this time, in the wake of our devastating presidential election, I reviewed Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me and James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time, two treatises on racism and oppression in America. As I read N.K. Jemisin’s The Broken Earth Trilogy, it occurred to me that her novels present a perfect fictional account of the same topic. These Hugo-Award-winning stories take place in a world where racial difference leads to oppression, exploitation, and genocide. As a result of this […]
A great Afro-futuristic novel, still good on the re-read
The first time I read Who Fears Death, I was grabbed by it. I was so compelled by Onyesonwu, our protagonist, that I didn’t have a critical eye for anything else. And that’s the beauty and frustration of a re-read. You see good things you didn’t see before, but your blinders also come off and you see other things that you missed on the first go. Sometimes, that means a formerly five-star book comes down a bit, and that’s the case with this one. I […]
An okay prequel.
I’m embarking on a new research project, and I’ve followed several ideas up by reading books that I think will fit this budding thesis. I had read Nnedi Okorafor’s Who Fears Death two years ago for CBR7, and I didn’t know until recent that she had published a prequel of sorts. I wasn’t sure if either of these books would fit my project so a read/reread was in order. I do very much like Okorafor’s concentration on Afrofuturism, about which I know relatively little. I’ll […]