Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison My rating: 5 of 5 stars Milkman’s father, the man with the weird name and mysterious past, teaches his son to ‘own things’. His sister is ‘wild’, she inhabits the opposite pole. Ownership does not occur to her. When a kind woman brings her cherry jam on white bread,… Continue reading What will flower out of this?
Sistah Vegan: Food, Identity, Health, and Society: Black Female Vegans Speak by A. Breeze Harper My rating: 4 of 5 stars Here is a personal story, which you are welcome to skip (view spoiler)[I first read about this book in the first issue of Bitch magazine I ever read, which featured an interview with Dr… Continue reading Not on a Plate
A Proper Marriage by Doris Lessing My rating: 4 of 5 stars This novel follows Martha Quest and personally I advise readers to come to this after reading the beginning of Martha’s story. The tone of self reproach (taking Martha to be an avatar of the author) is perhaps a little softer here, and the… Continue reading social body
In the Eye of the Sun by Ahdaf Soueif My rating: 4 of 5 stars After 800 pages of easy reading emotional turmoil I was so involved with the characters I wanted to read on and spend more time with Asya and her generation as they grew older – my hunger to know them better… Continue reading An intimate epic
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers My rating: 5 of 5 stars McCullers adopts an omniscient author pose as completely as the anonymous teller of fairy or folk tale, her sentences as rhythmic, martial, unequivocal as their subjects are opaque, suggestive, unnerving. They get inside your mind-corners like sand into your clothes… Continue reading Genius frustrated
The Woman from Tantoura by Radwa Ashour My rating: 5 of 5 stars This narrative opens with a gloriously ambiguous, searingly romantic image that heralds a lyrical portrait of life in the narrator’s idyllic home town on the Palestinian coast. The seeds of a story are sown and I joyfully anticipate a woman-centred tale of… Continue reading Carrying the Keys
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith My rating: 3 of 5 stars 3.5 stars Cassandra is mostly wisely honest with herself as well as being generous spirited and loving, and the combination makes for pleasant reading. There is a feast of interesting details, though the castle makes me feel cold, and some nicely sketched… Continue reading My Castle…
Black Style by Carol Tulloch My rating: 5 of 5 stars I ordered this online and I wasn’t expecting the content to be so great (fashion books can be so much marshmallow). My only complaint is that it’s such a slim volume, though its lack of heft did make it easier to read in bed… Continue reading arts & spirits of cloth
No Place to Call Home: Gypsies, Travellers, and the Road Beyond Dale Farm by Katharine Quarmby My rating: 4 of 5 stars Quarmby discusses the history of GRT* persecution drawing heavily on the work of Romani academic Ian Hancock and other historians. British legal history includes waves of hostility towards ‘vagrants’ and ‘itinerants’ and Gypsies… Continue reading A really important book
Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler My rating: 5 of 5 stars This was a compulsive page-turner for me. Compared with at least one contemporary USian perspective, say, that of the low waged service worker, Lauren lives in one version of utopia: a close-knit community, like a village, shaped by an ethics of… Continue reading Dreaming from a dark place
(I am because you are) 