Welcome to Litsy!

Dr Anita Heiss shared this great list of Maori ad Pasifika authors - read brown !

https://www.anzliterature.com/feature/arent-reading-brown/

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Well done Huia publishing for getting this accomplished short story collection by debut NZ author Gina Cole out in the world.
I loved it.
It was fun to see this author try out many personas and situations and yet thread them through with what I came to think of as, ice, science and bad luck.
I am ambivalent about short stories but this book surprised me. The writing is assured and it feels like a new and exciting NZ / Fijian voice.

Serafina followed Bubu as the old woman walked up the narrow lane to the waiting taxi, bent over at a scoliotic right angle to the ground. Her mind remained nimble, from the constant weaving of intricate patterns held in her vast memory. Serafina believed that weaving kept Bubu alive.
[image from museumvictoria.com.au ]

My friend, she Hani girl from Yunnan province on machine next row, orange scarf row. She big sick. Smell make girl sick we think. She go home. Girl go home ... no good. No come back. Hani girl, she die last week. We girl have sick. We girl know. 6 month, cough start, you die. I start cough 5 month now when monsoon come, wash out cycle-way, we walk in mud. I grateful la Allah I 10 year old in 3 week. I want die 10 year old.

Bianca was the same: petite and slight, a stick-insect woman, and if she turned sideways, she disappeared. In fact she was fly paper: if she turned sideways all you could see was the glue, and I was a fly. I couldn't keep away: I was stuck fast and dying.

This short story collection has made such an impact on me that I'm still processing its effect a week after finishing it. Selina Tusitala Marsh wrote: "Aotearoa New Zealand has yet to hear a voice as striking as this one from its Pacifika diaspora: Fijian-infused, queer-inflected, and crafted with legal precision."
#lgbtq

#currentlyreading one story a day from the 2016 Short Story Advent Calendar, as well as working my way through a collection by a part-Fijian queer author from New Zealand (Gina Cole). Also a fun cookbook (Dandelion and Quince), an audiobook (Excellent Women by Barbara Pym) and rereading an ebook (North East by Wendy McGrath) for book club.

"Wai had told them about how delicious the pigeons would taste when steamed in the lovo between a bed of hot rocks and a covering of warm earth and banana leaves, their nutmeg and fruit diet infusing delicate flavours into the meat."
[This makes Fijian pigeons sound so much more tasty than their Canadian counterparts. I don't even know what pigeons eat during Edmonton winters.]