A smart, wide-ranging collection of works by Black women on why veganism is a social justice imperative. There’s so much wisdom in here.

#books #Bookstodon #WomenWriters #POCWriters #QueerWriting #vegan

For a long time I was an English professor. In that profession, you’re encouraged to look down on certain genres so I’m only now rediscovering fantasy & speculative fiction — and, wow, women & queer people of color are blowing my mind! Rivers Solomon & N. K. Jemisin are deservedly well known (check out An Unkindness of Ghosts & The Fifth Season!), but do you know this book?

The writing is strong (some rough spots, but some beautiful moments, too), the characters are so real, the world-building so rich, that I was enthralled immediately & remained so throughout. I can’t recommend this wonderful, complicated, beautiful trilogy-in-process highly enough. And the leads are queer women! What can be better?

#books #QueerWriting #POCWriters #WomenWriters

This brilliant, gorgeous book is a retelling of The Great Gatsby from the p-o-v of Jordan Baker, a secondary character in the book. The original Gatsby is narrated by Nick Carraway, so Vo gives us a woman’s take & she makes Jordan Asian, so we get a POC take, as well. And there’s magic.

I wrote my dissertation on the work of Scott & Zelda Fitzgerald & I’ve read & taught Gatsby many times, so this book is like the richest of chocolate cakes for me. If you don’t know Gatsby well, you might want to read it first to fully appreciate Vo’s genius.

I’m only 60 pages in but I had to post about it. I want to tell everyone how freaking amazing this book is!

#books #Bookstodon #POCWriters #WomenWriters #BooksOfMastodon #QueerWriting

I’m in the middle of this & it’s SO GOOD, so horribly believable.

#books #climate #dystopia #SpeculativeFiction #POCWriters

from “Don’t Call Us Dead” by Danez Smith (2017)

just this morning the sun laid a yellow not-palm
on my face & i woke knowing your hands

were once the only place in the world.
this very morning i woke up

& remembered unparticular Tuesdays
my head in your lap, scalp covered in grease

& your hands, your hands, those hands
my binary gods.

#poetry #Bookstodon #QueerWriting #POCWriters

Black Baby (1929)— Anita Scott Coleman

The baby I hold in my arms is a black baby.
Today I set him in the sun and
Sunbeams danced on his head.
The baby I hold in my arms is a black baby.
I toil, and I cannot always cuddle him.
I place him on the ground at my feet.
He presses the warm earth with his hands,
He lifts the sand and laughs to see
It flow through his chubby fingers.
I watch to discern which are his hands,
Which is the sand. . . .
Lo . . . the rich loam is black like his hands.
The baby I hold in my arms is a black baby.
Today the coal-man brought me coal.
sixteen dollars a ton is the price I pay for coal.--
Costly fuel . . . though they say:
-- If it is buried deep enough and lies hidden long enough
'Twill be no longer coal but diamonds. . . .
My black baby looks at me.
His eyes are like coals,
They shine like diamonds.

#HarlemRenaissance #poetry #WomenWriters #POCWriters

If We Must Die (1919)

If we must die—let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursed lot.
If we must die—oh, let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
Oh, Kinsmen! We must meet the common foe;
Though far outnumbered, let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one deathblow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back! — Claude McKay (1890-1948)

#HarlemRenaissance #poetry #POCWriters

All the natural wonders that don’t grow there
(Nor tree nor river nor a great plains lifting grain
nor grass nor rooted fruit and
vegetables) forever curse the land
with wildly dreaming schemes
of transformation
military magic
thick accomplishments of blood. — June Jordan, from “ To Sing a Song of Palestine”

#Bookstodon #poetry #WomenWriters #POCWriters

I never saw my beauty
We kept looking past each other
in search of some boy
And ain’t that being a Black woman
Being forced to destroy herself
To make a man more comfortable — Justice Ameer, from “My Beauty”

#Bookstodon #WomenWriters #POCWriters #poetry