Gay cherishs women deemed "difficult" by society and gives them stories which reflect their complexity. Her characters struggle in a racist patriarchal world, but they also explore different coping mechanisms, solidarity and love. Even though many of these stories are quite bleak there is a glimmer of hope. My only negative: There is some repetition (there is a lot of writing about (hetero) sex and in these scenes my problem was most apparent).

#literaryworldtrip Trinidad

This is Capildeo's seventh poetry collection. Published in January 2016 it went on to win the Forward Prize for best poetry collection (a prize Rankine had won last year). The book tackles the question of what it is of living between homes, places, traditions, ideas. Capildeo's style is varied, sometimes her poems sit right on the edge between poetry and short stories others are shorter and way less narrative driven.

#literaryworldtrip Ireland

This novel takes place in only seven days and recounts how Penelope (short Pen) deals with the death of her longtime partner Cara, who died in an accident. The women had met during their school years in a Catholic school, where Pen still teaches and everyone believes that Cara was her flatmate. This book is packed with memorable characters and places (from the Catholic school to the Attic, a lesbian feminist commune).

#literaryworldtrip "Junglee" means wild and it is used to describe the protagonists of these stories, wo try to engage with their sexuality in a context where sexualized violence is normalized and female desire unspoken of. The stories meander between the realistic and the fairytale-esque, including a girl who cries 100 tears every day. The scope of the collection is limited and some scenes are be a bit disturbing, but still an interesting book.

#literaryworldtrip Hungary

When Budapest was invaded by German troops during World War II Miriam Katin's mother faked hers and Miriam's death, left everything behind and fled on foot. In this graphic memoir Katin revisits these traumatic experiences and interrogates her ensuing struggle with faith. The story is told in pencil drawings - predominantly in black. Only scenes set after the 1940s are in colours. The style is highly effective.

#literaryworldtrip Ethiopia
One of my favourite poetry collections this year. Shiferraw takes colour imagery, turns it around, subverts it, makes it her own. She writes about experiences of sexual violence, the tolls war took on her family, Addis Ababa, hair politics, resilience and love. The eulogy for her late grandfather made me cry. She manages to tell approachable stories clothed in deeply metaphorical phrases and makes you feel and think.

#literaryworldtrip Democratic Republic of Congo
A book like a jazz album, in which lines are repeated over and over again. Lucien is a professional writer fleeing the repression of the Back-Country. He finds his refuge in the City-State with his kind-of friend Requiem, who makes his money in all different (dubious) kind of ways. The centre of their life is Tram83, a night club close to the train tracks, where everyone comes together.

#literaryworldtrip Cuba

This book consists of blog posts written between 2007 and 2010 from Sánchez' blog "Generacion Y". There is the Soviet elevator in her apartment building, which always gives troubles, the black market and the sometimes strange kinds of lessons her son has to take part in school. The book is an insightful read, but the style of blogposts can get a bit tyring and sometimes all the bits and pieces seem a bit disjointed.

#literaryworldtrip Côte d'Ivoire

In 2000 Kourouma published the novel Allah n'est pas obligé about a boy who becomes a child soldier. In "Quand on refuse in dit non" we meet this boy, Birahima,again when he escorts Fanta, the daughter of the iman, out of the war zone. On their trip Fanta starts to teach him about the complicated history of the Côte d'Ivoire.

Unfortunately this book stays unfinished. Kourouma died in 2003 and left the manuscript.

#literaryworldtrip Canada

Allen is one of the key figures, who built a dub poetry scene in Canada. In the introduction to this collection she wrote: "The first generation of dub poets wrote of police brutality, of dashed immigrants' dreams, of hard work and little pay, of the opression of Black women at the hands of Black men, of the need to nurture and fight back. We made art part and parcel of political work." Themes which still resonate.

"How do we know what's true and what's not? Which is truer? To paint your mouth with lipstick or leave it its natural colour? Which is truer, to force a situation and make your own wishes prevail, or to give up one's desires, in order to avoid a clash? What's so absolute about our desires?"

#literaryworldtrip Brazil: Helena Parente Cunha „Woman in Mirrors“

A woman stands in between a three-way mirror and looks at her reflections trying to piece together a coherent self. This experimental feminist novel published 1983 dissects binaries like author-protagonist, pure-promiscuous, self-other in order to look at what it means to be a woman in a highly patriarchal world (and to write in this world) - also considering class and race.

This book is about a girl, who fells ill after she moves with her family to a National Park. On one of her prescribed walks she stumbles upon a hibernating bear, who is wounded.

The book is a nice fast read, but from the cover and title I expected something a bit more poetic, I guess.

If you are interested in the life and work of the fantastic late Zimbabwean writer Dambudzo Marechera, then I have great news. The Dambudza Marechera archive is now online and you are able to look at documents/ poems/ interviews/ photos, listen to audio material and watch video material.

This is the link: https://rs.cms.hu-berlin.de/marecheraarchive/pages/home.php?login=true

This is a great collection of creative non-fiction writing by authors from the African continent. Allfrey managed to get together a collection of texts which differ widely in style and content, but put them in such an order that some of the texts speak to eachother like a text about a political refugee from Kenya in Uganda being followed by a text about LGBTI refugees from Uganda in Kenya. There are true crime stories, travel writing and more!

I watched the movie last weekend and was well entertained. I bought the screenplay mainly because of the beautiful cover and I still want my Harry Potter collection to grow 😂 (And just today my t-shirt by OutOfPrint arrived and I am in love!)

Today is the International Day For the Elimination of Violence Against Women and I am dressed accordingly.

This manatee especially wants to remember/ point out/ organize against the violence trans women, women of colour, sex workers, lesbian and queer women, poor women, diasabled women and people, who live in the intersections of these groups, experience.

The tagged book is one of the best non-fiction books I read this year.

This poetry collection chronicles parts of Faber's wife's last year, her death and the following months. A lot of poems on death are on the sentimental side, but Faber instead mixes the sentimental with anger, confusion and of course profound sadness to create a highly relateable (beautiful written) account. He writes about well-meaning people, daunting task of preparing a funeral, doctors who sent his wife home to google the diagnosis and more.

In concept I should love Erdrich's poetry for many of them are quite narrative driven and still are very lyrical, but in the end somehow it did not work for me. It is for sure not a bad collection, but not for me. I might just prefer her novels (which I love very very much).

#nativeamericanheritagemonth

Started this one yesterday: Already the introduction by Ellah Wakatama Allfrey is so worthwhile, seamlessly she writes about growing up in Zimbabwe on the brink of independance and the magic of watching the first Star Wars movie in the cinema. The first essay in the collection is by Hawa Jande Golakai, a Liberian novelist (and trained immunologist). In diary form she recollects her experiences during the Ebola crises.

#nonfictionnovember

Finally I managed to finish this short story anthology today and highly recommend it. It not only contains SciFi, but also other kind of speculative fiction. The stories vary in style and content a lot, but most of them end on a rather hopeful note, which is also something nice to hold on to.

#nativeamericanheritagemonth #lgbtiq

Swing Time is a wonderful musing on friendship, growing up, ideals, dance - with an astute focus on race and class. I found all these characters compelling and while some might attest the book a slower pace, I loved the small descriptions and scenes. This book reminded me more of On Beauty than NW. (And I liked both of these, they are just quite different in style.)

Today in free downloads! #nonfictionnovember

It's #nonfictionnovember! I got to read less non-fiction during the last two weeks than I had hoped for (mostly because I finished a draft of one of my dissertation's sub chapters - basically 20 pages of my own non-fiction ?). At the moment I read Rebecca Solnit's "A Field Guide To Getting Lost", but I fear I lack the right focus at the moment. So instead I show you today two of my non-fiction shelves. What are your favourite non-fiction reads?

But elegance attracted me. I liked the way it hid pain.

Great poetry collection, strong in themes and style. I had never read anything by her before but definitely will check out more. My favourite part were the couple of "Dear Patience" poems which are like fictional advice letters to real life poets and their problems.

Finally starting this one!

I had started this book months ago but after 40 pages put it back into my tbr stack for it could not hold my attention. I am so glad I now finally finished it. Aboulela created such a fascinating read following academic Natasha and her student Oz, who is suspected of being a terrorist, in the 2010s and the Chechen's resistance against the Russian Empire in the 1850s. The book is about belonging, family, religion, assimilation and so much more.

A woman comes to Kolkata, moves into a new flat and finds a panty by a woman who had lived there before. The book is told in varying perspectives, jumps in time forwards and backwards and at least I way not always sure what was happening. This book is about trauma, (be)longing, surrender - and sex. I am glad I read it, but am still not sure what to make of it.

#readwomen #readdiversebooks

weekend reading stack - let's see how far I get...

#diversebooks

First of all a little more apt title for the book might be "Queer Theory: A Graphic History". It does cover other things but a examination of queer theory/ theories lies at its heart. If you know this, I think, you get a nice introduction which shys not away from showing contradictions. Some takes in this book l are at least debatable, but the book gives you a lot of starting points for further discussions and readings.

#nonfictionnovember

This book presents 26 US-American women, who did great things: artists, activists, scientists etc. I really liked their choices (of course with 26 people there is always something and someone missing, but still). I had problems with a few phrases and descriptions, but in general a great book to introduce younger readers to interesting women (and to inspired them to create change themselves).

#feminism

post-election reading

#USelection #readwomen

Finished this one last evening and struggle to put down coherent thoughts, but I absolutely loved this one. It's about Brexit, pop art and love. Or is it? Maybe it is also about exclusion/ inclusion, dissent, the way history is made (up) and the question of what is truth. This book made me laugh out loud, wonder, feel and sometimes confused. I can see how people might find it a bit disjointed in style and tone, but Autumn just spoke to me.

#nonfictionnovember

This book tackles a really important topic, bringing together voices from different activists/scholars/writers. There are lots of good points made concerning the Broken Window approach and the industrial prison complex. Unfortunately many of the informations repeat quite often, which makes it not the best book to read from start to finish. Also - due to the title - I had hoped for a even stronger focus on global connections.

Just finish this debut poetry collection and highly recommend. Booker writes about (be)longing, (hi)stories of violence and resistance, migration and the women in her family.

"We stayed where we were, in the margins of truth."

Re-reading once again for my PhD.

Putting together a pile for #nonfictionnovember...

Helen Oyeyemi asks you to abandon all disbelief and then takes you on a wild fairytale inspired (sometimes in regard of content, almost always in regard to tone) ride. I absolutely loved this short story collection, in which characters (re)appeared in different stories and keys and locks were a key (haha!) element. Rating: 5/5.

+ I was (pleasently) suprised by how many characters are lesbian, gay, bi etc.

My queen of intertextuality.

The poetry in this collection is definitely well crafted, witty and intelligent. I love the idea of the overall theme to look at wives of famous men (be it mythological, historical etc.). But in the end I felt there were also limits to the approach (at least in the way Duffy took it on) which kept the whole collection rather heteronormative. (Also the idea that good sex is rather experienced with the 'bad' men was at best boring).