This year I made myself some non-specific, qualitative-rather-than-quantitative resolutions that will probably become clear as I continue blogging. But as far as this blog is concerned, I plan to focus it more and have more consistent “columns” and themes. I’ll continue doing my informal research updates on biracial literature, but I’ll also be using that reading for actual academic research that I hope to present at a conference or two and then turn into a paper. I’ll write here more consistently, but not at the expense of the stuff I should be writing–namely school stuff and the novel(s). Finally, I’ll keep better track of my reading not just numerically but qualitatively, writing more, privately and publicly, about what I’m reading, why I chose to read it, what it’s meaning to me, and how it relates to my schooling, my creative projects, my intellectual pursuits, or just my general enjoyment/interest. Like Nick Hornby did in The Believer, I also want to keep track monthly of books I buy, books I borrow/check out from the library, and books I read, as well as magazines and journal articles that I read, and do a beginning and end of month roundup of those things.
Also, more extra media stuff. I’m trying to remember how to have a vocabulary for discussing music, another important part of my life, in the same way I discuss literature. Should be interesting, not to mention relevant to one of my novel(s).
BUT, since it’s always fun to be a little quantitative when you can rub your awesomeness in other people’s faces, I did decide to make an infographic of what I read this year. Continue reading
(Veera Hiranandani) is one of the better titles for these books, I think. Especially for a middle grade novel. This novel focuses on the life of Sonia Nadhamuni, a sixth grader who is half Indian and half Jewish, and whose father has just lost his job, forcing her and her sister to leave their private community school for regular public school. Like in any good middle school story, Sonia has to navigate the shark-infested waters of popularity, friendship, and academics, and she of course makes iffy choices along the way. She joins a cheerleading team, has to decide whether to sit with the black girl who likes books and writing like her or sit with the popular kids who exoticize her, and has to deal with being the formerly rich girl who now goes to public school. 
I read a lot of books, period, and lately I read a lot of food books. So I don’t think I’m being too cavalier when I say that this is the BEST food book I’ve read all year. 
was that proverb, “A fish can love a bird, but where would they build their house?” And I’m willing to bet that at some point, it was on Dolamore’s mind as well.
by Joan Steinau Lester. I would throw it more on the lower end of YA, for its language, treatment, and plot. Most simply, it’s about a 15-year-old biracial girl, Nina, in Northern California whose black father and white mother are separating. Her father is going on a sort of back-to-Africa kick, and Nina is beginning to become cognizant not only of racial difference itself, but also her privilege, assumptions, and appearance when she rides the bus through the black section of town to get to her father’s apartment, when she finds herself angry at her mother for trying to relate to Nina’s feeling of ostracization and discrimination, and when she begins to branch out from her white group of friends but then realizes that everyone expects her to choose either the white group or the black group. At the same time, there is a parallel story through the frame of a novel-in-progress written by Nina’s father about his great grandmother, Sarah, who escaped slavery. Nina begins to identify strongly with Sarah’s journey and struggles, and there’s an inkling that Sarah might actually be biracial, too, so we get the parallels with being biracial and told to choose, and being biracial by way of being the product of master-slave rape. Nina becomes totally overcome with feelings of guilt (it’s hard when you’re friends with people whose ancestors were slaves with your ancestors but also you’re friends with people who owned people like, again, your ancestors might have, etc. etc.) and confusion, and that is coupled with trying to comprehend the result of the Oakland fires and the portrayals of looters by the media.
