Some Books to Read for Black History Month

[bibliogramma]

The Carl Brandon Society has released a short list of recommended science fiction and fantasy books for Black History month.

The announcement of the list and some further details about The Carl Brandon Society can be found here.

The list itself:

So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction & Fantasy edited by Nalo Hopkinson and Uppinder Mehan
Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany
My Soul to Keep by Tananarive Due
The Coyote Kings of the Space Age Bachelor Pad by Minister Faust
Mindscape by Andrea Hairston
Wind Follower by Carole McDonnell
Futureland by Walter Mosley
47 by Walter Mosley
The Shadow Speaker by Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu
Zahrah the Windseeker by Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu
Stormwitch by Susan Vaught


47 by Walter Mosley is the winner of the 2006 Parallax Award, given to works of speculative fiction created by a person of colour.

Stormwitch by Susan Vaught is the winner of the 2006 Kindred Award, given to any work of speculative fiction dealing with issues of race and ethnicity regardless of the race or ethnicity of the author.

While visiting the Society's website, I also collected a list of novels and short story collections that were considered for the 2006 Parallax Awards.

Prince of Ayodhya, by Ashok Banker
Fledgling, Octavia E. Butler
Mella and the N'anga: An African Tale, by Gail Nyoka
Phoenix Tales: Stories of Death and Life, by Gregory Bernard Banks
Atomik Aztek by Sesshu Foster
Kynship: The Way of Thorn and Thunder by Daniel Heath Justice
Zephyr Unfolding by Nicole Givens Kurtz
The Crown: Ascension by Hannibal Tabu

Also listed on the website are a number of short stories and other works considered for the 2006 Parallax Award, plus all the works considered for the 2006 Kindred Award.

I've read a handful of these books myself, and can certainly recommend all of them:

So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction & Fantasy edited by Nalo Hopkinson and Uppinder Mehan
Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
Mindscape by Andrea Hairston
Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany
Fledgling, Octavia E. Butler

And several others recommended by the Society have been on my "want to read" list, and this seems like a perfect excuse to order them. There's always time to explore a new author, and to look for a different perspective.

Comments

[idella]

Mella and the N'anga was good.

I haven't read anything else here, though I keep meaning to try Delany again, and read more Butler (I've only read "Bloodchild"), and I keep hearing good things about Nalo Hopkinson.

[morgan-dhu.livejournal.com]

All three are wonderful writers. Some of Delany's later work is somewhat difficult - he gets very post-modern - but the earlier works are fun and the later works are well worth it.

Butler's work is very accessible, but also very powerful and thought-provoking. If you like dytopias, The Parable of the Sower and its sequel, The Parable of the Talents, are good books to begin with.

Some of Nalo Hopkinson's work can be difficult for readers accustomed to mainstream novels because often she has her characters speaking (and narrative, where she's writing frst person) in Caribbean dialects. But if you commit to the reading, the story takes over very quickly. I think The Salt Roads is the best of her novels that I've read so far, although I haven't read her new novel, The New Moon's Arms.

[idella]

Thanks for the titles! I'll keep them in mind. I'm particularly interested in the The Salt Roads; it may make my list of books to buy.

I tried Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand when I was in high school and found it pretty inaccessible, but I'm definitely willing to give Delany another try. I don't know that it'll be anytime soon, though, because I'm still a bit intimidated, and the TBR list is awfully long as it is. When I'm feeling ambitious, it'll be Dhalgren I try, mostly because it's the only book of his the library has (the only book by any of these authors, sadly - my local library is not well funded and does not support its science fiction or fantasy collections).

[morgan-dhu.livejournal.com]

You might want to start with one of Delany's early novels - my personal favourite is Babel-17 - or one of the collections of his short stories.

Can you do interlibrary loans?

[idella]

Can you do interlibrary loans?

Nope. The local library (the only public library on the island) says they won't do them, and I bet they're not in place in this country - the Bahamas - at all. But I knew what I was getting into when I moved (I visited and scoped out the library), and when I weeded my book collection, I made sure to keep most of my SF and F. So it's not like I don't have lots to read.

I miss being able to read anything I want to, anytime I want to, though. I moved from an area in Ontario that has a great library system, and even so I used to request one or two ILLs every month. Part of the fun was seeing where the books were coming from - usually from Ontario, but once from the Yukon, and once from Nfld.

This should be get me to actually read the books I own, too. I used to buy books and never get around to reading them, because library books were always a priority, and I wasn't very well going to stop using the library.

Thanks for the Delany tip. :)

[bibliogramma.livejournal.com]

What part of Ontario are you from originally?

I rather wish I was in the Bahamas this winter - we've been having a very cold winter all just about everywhere, major storms all over the place, and yesterday in Toronto, where I live, the low hit -18C. It just doesn't get that cold in Toronto. Brrr.

Not freezing would almost make up for the limitations of the library system. ;-)

[idella]

I grew up in Kitchener. They have a really good library system, with good funding. Even when I lived in Waterloo and New Hamburg, I just paid the thirty-two dollars a year to be a full member of the Kitchener library, because it was so much better.

We get the CBC here (for part of the day) and sometimes I watch their evening news. It looks really bad up there lately!