The Reader by Traci Chee :: Book Review

 

The Reader by Traci Chee is a fun fantasy tale set in a time when reading is a long forgotten skill surrounded by magic and mystery.

The plot is rife with the importance of literacy and forces us to look at life without literature and without stories having been accessibly recorded or immortalized.

This book reminds us that there is a magic in stories, the ones we live, the ones we make up, both. The author reminds us that the preservation of these stories has always been important and in a way is its own kind of magic.

The saying ‘Art imitates life’ comes to mind when I think of this story. The main character becomes absolutely smitten with the notion of reading as she learns it. In her absence of the skill as a reader we can also feel her pain and helplessness of living in a world without a tangible sense of direction, the reliability and tested means of understood information books provide us. Something, I think we all take for granted.

Consider it, without books, both fiction and none fiction whose story do you trust?

I did expect it to remind me of the importance, the value and power of words, books, stories and there the author didn’t fail me.

Big Island, Small by Maureen St. Clair :: A Critical Book Review

  

 Big Island, Small by Maureen St.Clair presents a story of two girls, laid bare on paper, as they fight a familiar battle of self-discovery. Set half on a fictional Caribbean small island, half on a large island in North America, the main characters face one of the most daunting battles of life; the battle to be brave enough to discover and be who they are, while they lean hard on the precipice of adulthood.  St. Clair uses imagery, dual perspective, language, flashbacks and severe contrasts to discuss issues of racial conflict, colorism, sexuality and self-discovery in a contemporary climate. 

The plot is largely rooted in the main characters journey towards identity and how their continued interactions with each other, both verbal and non verbal, help them along the way. Through shared socio-cultural background and the challenge to accept each others different reactions to it, both Sola and Judith learn more of what they want from their conflicted lives. 

Sola is a dark skinned girl who has taken proudly to her use of the Standard English language and wears this accomplishment as a badge of honour, while she pursues her studies on Big Island. Her youth, has been riddled with struggles and advantageous experiences that have catapulted her into a figure of strength in her young adult years. It is a strength her character has had to adorn herself with like a suit of armour. It is strength so brazen that anyone who first encounters her seems to glide over the still young girl sternly holding to bravery. Until, she meets Judith.

Contrastingly, Judith who shares similar origins strikes within Sola an irresistible friendship and is everything opposite to Sola. Judith is a mixed race, fair skinned girl who has privilege thrust upon her. This has made her resentful and rebellious in the face of personal choices that she was never allowed to own. Her youth is sprinkled with an excess of freedom that leaves her longing for a sense of belonging to a crowd that always seems to stand apart from her. Judith, uses her Caribbean English variety like a badge, taking Sola’s disuse of it almost as a personal affront.  Judith’s own earlier years are not without struggle but they are the kind of struggles the majority of children her age, that were within her immediate company, could not readily understand. This reality keeps her lonely in a crowded room. Until, she meets Sola.

Judith aches to fit into skin, history and Caribbean culture while Sola is desperate to stand out despite it. Jointly, they find joy in all things that draw them together and set them apart from the masses. However they also find themselves disagreeing, in seismic proportions, on various world views. “We supposed to meet. It’s fate. Maybe we supposed to argue too. Who knows?”  Judith foreshadows very early in the novel.  

St. Clair places colorism up for discussion continuously throughout the novel with Judith asking "You talking like you know me, you know me?" defensively, when the way she speaks is challenged by Sola. When Judith shares "Later Sola tell me lighting a splif in a crowd isn’t a luxury she has. And I tell she, “I not white. I black too even if you can’t see past my skin.” But I know I not the kind of black she means.” We see again a relevant nod to the present day social injustice marked by race and skin colour.

Their relationship is an open challenge to aforementioned themes of the book. Judith’s choice to embrace her ancestral right, as a mixed race girl, to wear her hair in dreadlocks despite her fair completion causes many disdainful and intrusive personal questions.  Sola’s detainment by public forces, which Sola does not question, also draws focus on racial conflict. Yet, these are questions the two main characters dare at each other and by extension; questions that the author dares the reader to contemplate through the vehicle of their edged dialogue. 

For a moment, their differences and the way the world reacts to them seem big enough to divide the characters forever and a lack of being taught how to communicate their feelings openly, thrusts them into many long, dangerous, uncomfortable silences. It is then we see how culture, paired with the unbending desire to love and be loved in return is spotlighted in the plot.

When words fail, they then bond through touch and music, as seen when Sola muses “She gives me a cd called Throw Sown Your Arms by an Irish woman singing old-time reggae. I never heard of a baldheaded white Rasta before. The first time I hear her voice I lay down on my bed, spread my arms and legs like I am balancing on water, like I am floating to the thunder of her tender, angry voice. The power I feel in my bones is a power unfamiliar and yet it spreads through my body like it belongs there, like it was there even before I was born.”  

They reconnect through food, cultural experiences and the comfort of a shared language popular to their past. “He smiling at me while telling me to try some black cake and a glass of sorrel. I inhale the Christmas vibe…” The author uses beautiful imagery to describe cultural treats such as tamarind balls "burnt brown sugar wrapped in sweet sour flesh.”  submerging readers in a deep sensory experience.  These coping mechanisms allow the characters to grow closer to their personal truths, slowly and with a level of gentility.  

 Eventually they find their way back to each other after devastating changes and traumas they were not prepared to deal with alone and also were not sure to whom they could turn for help. Their personal traumas creep with the passage of time, through their journeys of self-discovery, as the characters creep too towards their hand crafted personal identities.

The author’s use of dual perspective aids the story as the reader is taken along each character’s unravelling interpretations and personal perceptions of major conflicts happening throughout the story.   St. Clair’s use of flashbacks allow us to never lose sight of the constricting, beautiful, small island background where "neighbours missing you if only a day past since they see you last’ and ‘Everybody knowing somebody who know someone who know you."  It is a uniquely ‘Small Island’ Caribbean past that is navigating their understanding of a vast, ‘Big Island’ world.

The reader bears witness to young girls facing issues of sexual assault, violence, racial precedence, anxiety, victim blaming and the questions that come with sexuality and sexual discovery in a way that is made all the more compelling by the events of our current world chatter. Big Island, Small by Maureen St. Clair serves as a Caribbean literary reminder that maybe this big world isn’t so big after all, especially through the small, intimate lens of our shared experiences.

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My Personal reaction to Big Island, Small by Maureen St. Clair:

When I first started reading the book I honestly had a hard time. I had a hard time because I thought it was going to be 'just another love story' which it is not. My personal reading tastes don't see me reading many books where the central focus of a plot is a romance, so after a very early plot twist happened in the novel I found myself wondering what I'd gone and got myself into.

As time passed I returned to the pages of the novel because I was still curious. It is very hard for me to DNF a book and fortunately this remained true with this one.

What really caught me is the authors beautiful writing style. I am an absolute sucker for a beautiful, artistic writing style. She wrote vividly about self discovery, identity and Caribbean culture with this book. She spoke of questions that people have been for decades pretending that we do not have and this drew me in. I had to know where that journey of self discovery took those characters. I had to know even more because their setting and origins so readily reflected my own island. Underscoring the importance of representation.

I am not mixed race, for example but I've had mixed race friends and loved ones and I have found myself at the cross hairs of mistaken identity because of colourism myself. So, watching two young girls deal with those issues amongst others, in a setting that is written similarly to my own life setting, loving the food I love at Christmas and treasuring the parts of culture I have treasured for years was great.

This book wont be for everyone, it has some graphic themes, events and language. It is categorised as women's fiction (on goodreads) but really I find it slips easily into the still budding genre of new adult.  I like that the words are sharp around the edges some times as I find that true to life and to find this truth reflected in contemporary literature I think is necessary. I am grateful that this story too found a place in the world.

I'm going to also take this moment to address the elephant in the room: yes, there is a 'controversial kiss' scene and you will notice that I have not said much about it. This is intentional. I leave it up to every reader to have their own reaction to this issue because for me, my reaction was very important as a person. It was only till an informal conversation with the author herself when she said the words 'but....its not about the kiss' that the way i engaged with the text changed swiftly and deeply. I don't believe literature and it's personal meanings and relevance should be forced upon any reader. I believe everyone has a write to have a personal reaction to literature based on their own experiences. It is not something I seek to take away from anyone. 

Thank you to the author for providing an ARC of the book for review. You can purchase Big Island, Small by Maureen St.Clair here.

Book Review :: An Enchantment of Ravens

I gave this book 5 stars. 

I LOVED this book. It is a short, atmospheric and lightly spooky read filled with the best elements of moody folklore and fairytale. The author uses masterful imagery, setting personification and poetic diction to weave a vivid and enthralling tale of adventure, fantasy and romance.

The author personifies the forest heavily; the trees and even the very shadows they create seem to have a will that is human in drive and determination to live and fight back. It is as though the writer has taken the very essence of an Autumn October, turned it to ink and then wrote from that ink every word on the pages of her book. Every chilled wind, stray vibrant leaf and special seasonal treat come together to create the perfect setting for this short tale of ancient prices and shadowy lore. It is one broody but sweet adventure that sets to work all of your senses for a holistic reading experience.

Her diction is poetic, it makes you feel like you've been swept up in a ball room dance that is this story of two lovers, forbidden to love by the laws of nature and creation themselves.

Margaret Rogerson's use of imagery is bold, colourful and sensory in all respects. Her use of folklore is both enchanting and brooding. This novel makes you want to sip it slow and savour its season while being uniquely aware of the beauty of volatility found in the living and in the dying and the changing.

The character of Rook is cocky and princely but naive and proud and the mix somehow results in humerus folly and witty charm. Rooks powers and the waning of them we are privy to as our characters journey continues, also show us the impracticality of a desire for immortality. It becomes a metaphor for how such a desire, if achieved is inherently unnatural, warring with the concept of time, goodness and longevity.

Isobel's distaste for the notion of immortality is made continuously tangible with her approach to food in the fae courts as though to reinforce that it is slotted once unto man to die, everything else seems to result in a lengthy state of rot and the remnants and remembrance of living instead.

Isobel is a driven artist with a vivid view of the world. All the world's pigments come across as tainted in a heavy, weighty saturation she manages to emotionally express on paper, both its beauty and it's horrid gloom. This turns out to be both part of her mastery of skill and the thread of her undoing.

Honesty, adventure and trust are what hasten their romance. While it remains ever easy to go the route of 'fae prince and human girl in need fall in love' the author dares her characters to question timeliness, choice and validity of what they feel, bringing an interesting modern realness to the story.

All in all it is a fantastic, one sitting read with a beautiful cover that gets you swept up in elemental courts both in your imagination and with the accompaniment of all of your senses.  There are themes of savoured seasons, the fantastical elemental, longing, love and more. One of those books that is in and of it self an experience all yours to savour like a hot beverage on a chilled evening, on an empty bench at a park, during the golden hours.

One of the quotes I loved:

"You are like a living rose among wax flowers, we maybe last forever but you bloom brighter and smell sweeter and draw blood with thorns" ~ Margaret Rogerson: An Enchantment of Ravens

And isn't that the beauty of a temporary life itself?

Follow me on goodreads to see what else I'm reading.

Book Review :: My Hair Grows Like A Tree by Tamika Phillip

My hair grows like a tree is a beautiful reading and activity book geared towards young girls between the ages of 7-13.

The author uses visual imagery of all natural shapes and sizes and captures the positive message of growth, individuality and self love. All revolving around the theme of unique hair and nature.

In this book, the reader is encouraged to not just read about hair but to evaluate it in an up close and personal way. The writer does not stop at self evaluation but encourages the reader to notice that of the people around them. They are prompted to research, ask questions and conduct detailed observations through arts and crafts. As a result, the reading experience seeps past the pages and engaging all of the senses, as one is urged to be hands on, to always be listening, seeing and learning.

The book contains numerous hair styles on girls of varying skin tones and every hair type is celebrated from the high hair styles that are said to be tree like in shape to the low hair styles that are likened to lush grass.

The book also includes numerous examples both through pictures and line sketches of rich fruit of different shapes and sizes in an effort to underscore the message of individuality. Also included are original author sketches and encouragement for the reader to make sketches of their very own, based on their own observation, so that the learning process is set to work through action.

It is evident this book urges those reading to explore learning, the world around them and the individuality within them, through this book's pages. Pages that provide themselves, as a vehicle of representation.

At it's end it encourages readers to see meaning behind the way a person's hair is warn even in different cultures and ethnicities and it goes on to share some information on strong female rulers of colour that have reigned through out history.

At it's core this book is a positively worded and proactive approach to body image and cultural representation. It pairs learning with numerous activities that will allow knowledge to stick around past the time spent between the books covers. It encourages exploration of the world around us and the world of ability, wealth and value within us all.

Every young girl of colour should be fortunate enough to get their hands on this book or at the very least one like it that celebrates facets of their life often under negative scrutiny. Then, they can be exposed instead to positive and impacting self examination in a way that encourages collaboration between the old and the young as Tamika Phillip does in her book My Hair Grows Like A Tree.

Thank you so much to the author for this review copy! Be sure to add her book to your to be read list on goodreads or pick up a copy at the House of Chocolate if you so see fit! If you're interested in sending me an ARC of your up coming release for an honest review, feel free to contact me on any of my social media or via email.

If you could liken your hair to anything what would it be? I think I've always likened my hair more to puffer fish, beautiful but a stealthy changer upper on me before I know it haha

Peace. Love. Healthy Hair~
both photos in this post by: Arthur Daniel

Everything Everything :: Book Review

Everything Everything by Nicola Yoon is a 21st century heartbeat wrapped up in the packaging of a charming love story.  In this short and sweet connection between a biracial girl and a child of abuse the reader is a subtle passenger on their journey towards discovering a colossal love.

When we are introduced to our female main character she is obsessed with the notion of living in the world and not just being of it. Our main male character becomes her representation of the outside, of a life lived on purpose, instead of by chance and circumstance and that is with which she  first falls deeply and madly in love.

This is a story that is a nod to a heart that allows you to love not without fear but beyond it. These characters are as the book itself puts it,'Two universes crashing up against each other but never touching', until of course they do. Yes, this is a love story but not just a romantic one. In this novel the main characters don't just meet and falls in love with each other but with a world outside of the boundaries of fear. Their vulnerabilities bring them together and become the catalyst of change that turns the stagnation and insecurity of the unknown to the brilliance and wonder of the possible.

For me that is what makes this book most interesting. This is a story of a girl as she falls in love with the world and with being alive in it. This is a story of a boy who learns to see this privilege by holding her hand.. Together they learn that 'Every thing's a risk, not doing anything is a risk, it's up to you." Together they discover "The difference between dreaming of flying and flight" in a flurry of quickness and colour and chance and change.

Together they discover Everything...just....everything from black and white to colour.

This book now has a film adoption and you may have seen the trailer taking the internet by storm. In the book one of the things I loved is that the plot continued outside of the romance.  Of course at first I was annoyed because I wanted to get back to the meat of things but as time went on, I loved that the author was daring enough to show us this isn't about holding hands, this is about letting go of fear and living anyway, this is about everything else too. Some people fault it for a certain level of predictability coming to the end but I can't because what I love is the character's response to that situation, her boldness in saying with every action that she wants to live fully anyway. In the face of that change old question 'What if I fall oh but what if you fly' or main characters answer let's find out.


I'm so excited for the film and I cant wait to see what they do with it!

 Peace. Love. Jump

Yes Please by Amy Poehler Mini Book Review

Morning lovelies, so I finally read Yes Please and I wanted to write about it some. 

Took me two days, I did it as a bit of stress relief when preparing to tackle my sociolinguistics final. Usually I do literary reviews because, well, I like them. For this one though, I feel like doing a mini review.

Mini Review: When I first started 'Yes Please' I had no idea who Amy was nor have I seen her in anything on tv. I admit her style of comedy isn't really my slice but as the book went on I really got a sense of her. Honestly, I felt like she was trying way too hard to be funny in the earlier chapters but I get why, I mean it is her profession after all. She really turned out to have a lot of wisdom though.

Amy Pauler uses flashbacks and episodic instalments of life experience to shape the purpose of her book. When she first begins we simply get a look at her as a person chasing a big dream but as she go on the audience stops being a listener or audience and for or a partner present in the moments she is sharing about. The author resets each scene fore you so that you almost feel like you were standing next to her in these moments she talks about like looking at the stars or when her doctor dies.

The language of her book changes coming to the second half from introspective to dreamy and then back again. Personally, I really liked the dreamer sections where she is just a person pouring her heart out about how she feels about things and less about how you should feel.

I guess i'm bias, i don't usually like books that suggest i should feel this way or that about a thing, at least not out right, let me decide but this does a lot of that and with what is very much like a moral of adult life coming to the end of each chapter.

It's an interesting perspective on an ordinary life made extraordinary with will, perseverance and a refusal to settle for  a notions of exception due to things that can be changed such as location and occupation.

In this book the author dares to ask boldly and with reckless abandon why not in the face of can not every time. When life presents her with the tiniest possibility of a shimmer of greatness she raises her hand and steadily adheres Yes, please.

It's wonderful to read what happens on her bath as a result of this.

Book Review :: Force Ripe

Cindy McKenzie’s 'Force Ripe' is a charming tale of toiled experiences, faced by an Afro-Indo- Caribbean, under aged, girl in the time of political unrest that was the Grenadian revolutionary era. The author uses stream of consciousness, the Grenadian Creole, sensory imagery and symbolism to successfully convey the fragile and frightened perspective of a young girl in the midst of war time. During these years of boldness and bloodshed, history is in the making and everything is as fresh and new as leaves during a tropical rainy season and as ripe with possibility as a good fruit crop.

The characters palpably display a search for identity faced by many Caribbean people with their engaging sense of reasoning and their motivated moves to action, spurred by a will to survive and a time of enabling disregard for the opinion of the wider world. An opinion, aggressively echoed through decades in chants of ‘Let them come, we will bury them in the sea!’ and ‘It takes a revolution to make a solution!’ Words that are still heavy with longing and regrets for many Grenadians today.

However, this time of search for identity during which the book is set is not without its winding roads. Under the stress of seeking a solution that fits every class, the characters of ‘Force Ripe’ face challenges as varying as mass migration and the ripping apart of families in search of financial stability, to new, radical spiritual commitments in the hunt for acceptance and ownership of self apart from the whole.

The author builds on themes of isolation, emotional turbulence, the extended family structure, abuse and spirituality through the symbolisms of visions, outer body experiences and the use of sensory imagery and local idioms. At one of her darkest hours, covered in shame and desperate for healing the main character describes her situation as ‘…feeling like a titerree in a river full of crayfish.’  (Force Ripe 2015) and the reader cannot help but get a sense of the strain of a child, propelled into a very adult situation, who is ever seeking to heal the sores of her past quietly and without the much needed guidance of a loved one.

When tackling resolution the author approaches it with the same level of insecurity present in the days post revolutionary Grenada. The future is unsure but certain, dauntingly but excitingly unwritten like the blank pages of a child's journal. ‘Force Ripe’ proves itself a brazen tale of strife and survive of both a girl and of a nation.

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All in all it was an interesting book. I admit it was a bit challenging when I first began because it is written in my native Creole and even though it is a language I often speak their is no official written version and my brain is not used to seeing it in print or actively acknowledging it in inner dialogue. 

When I became invested in the characters I warmed up to the tale more quickly. The setting is familiar and in fact much of the story takes place on my side of the islands. Familiar too are many of the scenarios, patois sayings and customs of the children and the adults in their lives..

It is always interesting to me to read alternative perspective on the Grenada revolution and though it was much cameoed in this novel, I was able to see things through the perspective of a young school girl. A point of view I think, is beyond valuable in the face of the fact that much of that time is unwritten or remains hidden even now...

Lee's story reminded me of the resilience of my people even in the face of socio economic danger, coupled with individual instability. It was an engaging and unique experience reading her story.

If I had to rate it I would give it 4 stars. Not because the book is bad but because of personal bias. The literature I most enjoy is brimming with literary flavour ( but I'm sure you know that, Pride and Prejudice, Gone With the Wind and Sense and Sensibility are my guilty pleasures after all) this story's style is much more auto biographical and without comparison I appreciate it for what it is: a life lived bursting with determination for freedom and fruitfulness backdropped by Caribbean landscape. I applaud the author for being brave enough to write this and braking the silence on such a heinous issue.

If you're a non national and think you're up the task of reading a novel in a language much different from your own or a Grenadian by birth or boat and would love to be submersed in the goings on of the Grenadian people, you can check out Force Ripe available for download and purchase via amazon Sunday October 4th 2015!

Book Review :: 31 Prayers for the dreamer + the doer Book Review

This review is a little different. Reading 31 Prayers for the dreamer + the doer was quite the experience. The various authors use imagery, metaphor and personification all in the form of prayer to create a book that oozed with the tone of reference and intimacy.

After getting through the Women In The Word plan from #SheReadsTruth, feeling like I was submerged in the The Word everyday, on a long desert road running into biblical woman after woman who would stop and chat with me as we go over the events of their lives, their personal encounters with Christ and how it changed their life and mine I felt a unique fullness I doubt that I can explain.

This was different.

This was a devotional written in the added form of prayers. My religion warns against repetition of the same prayer over and over so I was a little sceptical but I soon realised that is not what it would be for me anyway and those fears subsided.

This was so much more intense that I anticipated it would be. There I was, reading prayer after prayer from woman after woman, feasting my eyes on their intimate conversation with their creator over the desires and pains of their heart.

Watching, marvelled as they spoke words I have thought in private.  Feeling an extraordinary kinship with these women I will never meet, who are spread far and wide across this earth who have  and are fighting the same if not a very similar fight as I am. Fights with self and with Him.

It was kind of amazing.

I knew that in the preface they said every chapter may not reach you as it did the woman who wrote it, it may not mean as much to you as it did not them and I am so glad they said that and so glad i read the preface cause that's something I usually hate doing haha.

For indeed, every single chapter did not mean as much to me as it seemed to to the woman that wrote it but you know what? I still treasure the experience, their experience that they were brave enough to share with me because I get it.



I get what it's like to be a creative, to think and feel like a creative and I get what it means to share that with someone. I also get that though theirs may be a battle I have already won or a battle I have yet to encounter it is a battle and there is much to be learned from war, like defence.

Some of the chapters that meant a lot to me were: prayer, the word, wellness, authenticity, dreams, comparison and goals just to name a few.

Definitely an regrettable buy and pretty to boot! Are you using any devotionals lately? Tell me about it in the comments I'd love to hear about it.

Peace. Love. Pray.