“The Sound of Stars” Shows the Power of Art in Dark Times

by | Aug 18, 2022 | Book Review, Identity, Racism, Reading, Representation, The Afro YA

"The Sound of Stars" Shows the Power of Art in Dark Times

Two years after aliens known as the IIori invaded Earth and decimated a third of the population, a seventeen-year-old girl named Ellie Baker lives in an IIori-controlled center in New York City.

Although she is reduced to a state of surviving rather than living, she also quietly rebels against the IIori by hosting an illegal library of books. When her library is discovered by Morris, an IIori commander who loves banned pop music, the two gradually learn to trust each other and turn their mutual quiet rebellions into a louder one.

One of the strengths of this book is its compelling cast of characters. The main human protagonist, Elle Baker, is a Black bi demisexual with anxiety. She also loves books. Though she is very tired of the world that the IIori has forced her and her loved ones to live in, she is resilient, too. Before she meets Morris, the Ilori commander who is the book’s second protagonist, she is only surviving for the sake of her family and the chance to give people strength by loaning books from her illegal library.

Despite being a different species from Elle, Morris is also surviving more than living. Though he shares the DNA of the highest-born family in the IIori Empire and physically resembles a Latinx teen boy, he is treated badly due to being a lab-made IIori rather than a natural-born IIlori. He is also different from true IIori in that he feels emotions in a way similar to humans, has a strong appreciation of music from human music artists, and considers life to be sacred. Yet Morris is complicit in the destruction and subjugation of the human race, having following orders to maintain his own survival. There is also more to his role than initially meets the eye, a quiet rebellion similar to Elle’s that I can’t explain for spoiler reasons.

Not only does the book let the reader get to know Elle and Morris by alternating between each of their points of view, but Elle and Morris are also shaped by their experiences with certain secondary characters. Before and after the alien invasion occurred, Elle and her family had to deal with racism in their everyday lives from some white people who felt they were a threat. Mr. Hughes, landlord of the building that Elle and her family live in, is one example. To make matters worse, Elle’s mom is an alcoholic, while Elle’s dad is a shell of his former self after having been given the IIori vaccine that makes people obedient to them. Elle’s best friend is Alice, a blonde bi girl who was Elle’s first crush. Though Alice is loyal and a good listener, I wish Elle had been shown with Black girl friends, too.

Morris, on the other hand, has only his personal assistant, Avirola, as a loyal companion. His parents are far away, and his brother, Brixton, is loyal to the high-born IIori. Morris is engaged to Orsa, a cruel and vicious female IIori who he was arranged to marry and does not love at all. When asked by Elle why he loves music, he replies, “Music makes me feel. I like feeling.” For Morris, music is the only way he can feel like himself and not like someone unwanted.

Although Elle and Morris have their own artistic tastes, they gradually bond over music and stories. This is a poignant way for them to connect considering that all artistic forms of human expression are banned by the IIori. In addition to enjoying music and books from real-life authors and music artists, there is a fictional pop group known as The Starry-Eyed that the two gush over. The group’s thoughts and lyrics are featured throughout the book to give depth to Elle and Morris’ relationship and exemplify the importance of people using art to relate to each other.

In addition excellent characterization, Alechia Dow’s The Sound of Stars is a page-turner due to how it balances the bleakness of a postapocalyptic alien invasion with the hope of people connecting with each other through art. This is very true to life, because despite an ongoing pandemic, acts of racist violence, and the banning of books written by marginalized groups, people have still found strength and joy in books and music. The hope and despair that Elle and Morris feel is expressed in many quotable lines of dialogue such as, “If someone keeps stripping away our things, rights, freedoms, then we’ll hold on to what we know. That’s what we’ve always done.”

In fact, aside from Elle’s not having more Black friends, the only issue that I had with this book is that it ends on a cliffhanger. Although I didn’t go into the book expecting everything to be resolved at the end, finally reaching the ending made me want to read more.

All in all, The Sound of Stars is a beautiful book that shows the power of art in dark times.

The Afro YA promotes black young adult authors and YA books with black characters, especially those that influence Pennington, an aspiring YA author who believes that black YA readers need diverse books, creators, and stories so that they don’t have to search for their experiences like she did.

Latonya Pennington is a poet and freelance pop culture critic. Their freelance work can also be found at PRIDE, Wear Your Voice magazine, and Black Sci-fi. As a poet, they have been published in Fiyah Lit magazine, Scribes of Nyota, and Argot magazine among others.

“Mental Health High” Is a Complicated Read with a Messy Protagonist

by | Jul 19, 2022 | Book Review, childhood, Identity, Popular Culture, Racism, Reading, Representation, The Afro YA

"Mental Health High" Is a Complicated Read with a Messy Protagonist

After receiving a pink slip to attend summer school, Krissa Mia Williams gets abducted and taken to a mental health facility where everyone has special abilities. After Krissa receives her diagnosis, she believes she is a monster until she gets the opportunity to prove herself.

One of the most notable aspects of D. N. Kris’s Mental Health High is how it shows the messier parts of mental health issues, especially for mental health diagnoses that aren’t widely talked about. At a certain point in the book, it is revealed that Krissa has a personality disorder that some people associate with abusive adults.

Yet Krissa is a teenager who comes off as angry, whiny, and selfish, and people write her off with their own preconceived notions even before she gets her diagnosis. Her family thinks she is a lazy rebel, while Roy, her initial guide to Mental Health High, thinks she’s stuck up. It is also mentioned that an unspecified childhood trauma resulted in her personality disorder. While Krissa may come off as unlikeable to some, her character and certain aspects of the plot show that other people’s low expectations of others can be just as damaging as more overt forms of trauma.

Another memorable feature of this book is its format. Novels in verse allow for a more poetic narrative, and this book is no exception. Certain lines display the author’s spoken word roots, such as these: “All alone / The tears finally break through / knowing my life sucks / nobody gives a fuck / and the contemptible family I was born into is just / my luck.”

Mental Health High blends poetry with urban fantasy themes, which is something I haven’t seen done before. Although the urban fantasy themes are rougher than the heartwarming feel-good magic school of other books, this doesn’t make this book unworthy of reading. With a little more development, the fantastical aspects of the book would have been even better.

One of the flaws of the book is that there are several things that go unexplained and are presented as if the reader should just go with the flow. The character Roy, for example, never formally introduces himself, and seeing Krissa suddenly mention his name despite never meeting him beforehand was confusing. There is also the fact that it is never really shown how the kids who attend Mental Health High get their special abilities, though there is an explanation of how “guiding” allows them to use mental illness as a literal power. Finally, a rival “school” that appears halfway through the book is a sinister version of Mental Health High, but we only get bare bones information about it and its goals.

Another issue of this book is the lack of female characters other than Krissa. There is one female supporting character who is an antagonist, but she is also a character who embodies the “mentally ill violent person” stereotype. Given that mental health issues are stigmatized among Black women and other women of color, it would have been nice to see Krissa bond with another Black girl with mental health issues instead of only commiserating with mentally ill male characters.

If this book had a sequel and maybe became a series, then subsequent books could address the flaws of this book and give Krissa a fuller character arc. Krissa could become more sympathetic and powerful, the supporting cast could be expanded, and this book’s unresolved plot points could be tied up. While this book does have its highlights, the lack of information and uninspired cast of characters other than the main protagonist made it a somewhat tedious read.

At the same time, this book is worth reading for Krissa alone. Krissa isn’t a quirky fun manic pixie dream girl with mental health issues — she’s bitter, tired, and angry. Krissa is basically what happens when you’re so used to hearing you’re a crappy person that you become a crappy person. Yet by the end of the book, she’s learned that even she has the potential to do the right thing. She’s not trying to be a hero, but to keep others from suffering like she has. She represents the messiness of mental health acceptance — someone who isn’t likable, but who still deserves to be given a chance to heal.

All in all, D. N. Kris’s Mental Health High is perfect for those who want a more complicated depiction of mental health issues. If you’re tired of the tormented and likable mental health lead, then give this book a try.

The Afro YA promotes black young adult authors and YA books with black characters, especially those that influence Pennington, an aspiring YA author who believes that black YA readers need diverse books, creators, and stories so that they don’t have to search for their experiences like she did.

Latonya Pennington is a poet and freelance pop culture critic. Their freelance work can also be found at PRIDE, Wear Your Voice magazine, and Black Sci-fi. As a poet, they have been published in Fiyah Lit magazine, Scribes of Nyota, and Argot magazine among others.

“Right Where I Left You” Is Geeky Queer Bliss

by | Jun 16, 2022 | Book Review, childhood, Identity, Popular Culture, Racism, Reading, Representation, The Afro YA

"Right Where I Left You" Is Geeky Queer Bliss

Isaac Martin is an Afro-Mexican gay comic book geek who has been looking forward to spending one last summer with his best friend, Diego Santoyo.

The two of them were supposed to be attending Legends Con, the biggest pop culture convention in Georgia. When Isaac misses his chance to buy passes, he ends up gradually getting closer to his crush, Davi, and getting to know Diego’s gamer friends instead. However, as the day of the biggest teen Pride event approaches, Isaac finds himself drifting farther apart from his best friend.

One of the best things about this book is the complex depiction of various relationships that Isaac has and develops. At the beginning of the book, Isaac has a loving and mildly tense relationship with his Black mom due to their different opinions on Isaac’s dad, Carlos. He also has a somewhat tense relationship with his older brother, Iggy, and solid relationships with his older sister, Bella, his abuelito, and his best friend, Diego. As the book progresses, some of Isaac’s core relationships change due to his attempts to form new ones with Davi and with Diego’s gamer friends.

While Julian Winter’s past works also feature relationships ranging from family to crushes, this book shows how difficult it can be to keep them all balanced when you experience changes and have some unresolved issues. For instance, Carlos’s divorce from Isaac’s mom creates some cracks in Isaac’s relationship with Iggy, as well as his relationship with their mother.

At same time, Diego and Isaac have different plans post–high school, and Isaac’s social anxiety keeps him from communicating as well as he wants to. Diego wants to design his dream game, while Isaac will be attending college by himself in the fall. Isaac is scared to open up to new people and worries he will be alone once he goes to college, and this causes him to be clingy with Diego and also distance himself from potential new friends.

In addition to the various relationships, the depiction of different geeky interests is diverse and fun. Isaac’s love of comic books, particularly the Disaster Academy series, is displayed in the forum posts and fanfic comments featured at the beginning of each chapter as well as at other moments of the book. Diego’s passion for video games is shown through conversations with his friends and in his career aspirations. One of Diego’s friends, Zelda, enjoys cosplaying (i.e., dressing up as fictional characters) and the singer Whitney Houston, literally wearing both passions wholeheartedly.

Though the book does not take place at a pop culture convention, it introduces exotic hangouts for its characters that are wonderfully descriptive. There is the comic book store, Secret Planet, that has the homely feel of an indie bookstore, and Twisted Burger, a fast food restaurant with delicious burgers and enormous milkshakes. These places are presented in a way that makes them appear so well in the mind’s eye, you may wish they were real.

A final aspect of this book that is notable is how this book shows how difficult it can be to navigate queer identity and experiences. In particular, the queer crush subplot was well done, because Davi was going through something that wasn’t necessarily uncommon, but that is not talked about much. Isaac’s character arc shows how you can end up unintentionally lashing out and getting in your own way in the pursuit of personal happiness. Isaac also learns that some friendships don’t require deep bonds for every person, especially if the other person is initially hard to connect with.

All in all, Julian Winters’s Right Where I Left You is geeky queer bliss. With a memorable cast of characters, an assortment of teachable relationships, and a plethora of pop culture references, this book is the perfect summer vacation.

The Afro YA promotes black young adult authors and YA books with black characters, especially those that influence Pennington, an aspiring YA author who believes that black YA readers need diverse books, creators, and stories so that they don’t have to search for their experiences like she did.

Latonya Pennington is a poet and freelance pop culture critic. Their freelance work can also be found at PRIDE, Wear Your Voice magazine, and Black Sci-fi. As a poet, they have been published in Fiyah Lit magazine, Scribes of Nyota, and Argot magazine among others.

Favorite YA Comfort Reads

by | May 10, 2022 | Book Review, Identity, National Poetry Month, NPM 2022, Racism, Reading, Representation, The Afro YA

Favorite YA Comfort Reads

Everyone likes to reread certain books for various reasons, including comfort. There is nothing like rediscovering an old favorite book when you need some relief from bad times.

In the young adult genre, there are a variety of books that can become comfort reads depending on the reader’s tastes.

For me personally, I like both wholesome and low-stress reads as well as books that feature difficult subject matter in creative ways. From coming of age with poetry to becoming a magical girl in college, here are my favorite young adult comfort reads by Black authors.

The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo

The Poet X tells the story of Xiomara, an Afro-Latina teen who feels suffocated by her mother’s strict religious parenting and frustrated by the way the world perceives her as a brown girl with burgeoning sexuality. Initially, she writes down her thoughts in a secret poetry journal to have a safe place to express herself without judgment. Eventually, she joins the school’s poetry club and gradually learns to express herself openly.

Afro-Dominican poet Elizabeth Acevedo deeply moved me with this book. I felt I was seeing some of my younger self in these pages as Xiomara wrote poems about herself and the world around her. Since the novel is in verse, I also got to see Xiomara’s thoughts on things that would influence her poetry, such as other poets and music. This book is a reminder to never lose your creative voice, even when others try to silence it.

 

Let’s Talk about Love by Claire Kann

In addition to being one of the all too few YA books that feature a college-aged protagonist, this book also features a Black biromantic asexual lead named Alice. During an eventful summer, Alice must figure out what she wants to study in college while dealing with a crush on library assistant Takumi and the changes in her friendships with Feenie and Ryan.

I really liked how some of this book focuses on a “coming-to-terms” rather than a coming out narrative around sexuality, because you can still have some complicated feelings about your orientation even after coming out to yourself and others. I also like how love is examined through different relationships and things besides romance, and how Alice unabashedly indulges in her love of pop culture and food.

 

The Stars and the Blackness between Them by Junauda Petrus

Told from the dual viewpoints of an African American queer female teen named Mabel and a Trinidadian female teen named Audre, this book tells the story of two girls finding comfort in each other when each of them experiences bad events. I originally borrowed this book from the library a year or so ago, but I was so moved that I eventually bought my own copy.

This book is unabashedly Black and queer, featuring Mabel and Audre extolling the virtues of things ranging from Whitney Houston to Afro-Caribbean herbal healing. They also live their lives regardless of what others deem respectable. One line from this book sticks with me: “The stars and the blackness between them is the melanin in my skin.”

 

The Summer of Everything by Julian Winters

Nothing says comfort like a book set in a bookstore. This novel tells the story of Black gay comic book geek Wes, whose summer plan of working at the used bookstore Once Upon a Page are interrupted by looming adulthood. Now Wes has to figure out how to balance his crush on his best friend, Nico Alvarez; helping out with his big brother’s wedding planning; and saving his favorite bookstore before the end of the summer.

This book felt like the summer vacation bookstore version of the teen film Empire Records. You’ve got a quirky cast of characters, a homey atmosphere in the bookstore, and a coming-of-age story that is fun and poignant. If Once Upon a Page were a real bookstore, I would totally visit it.

 

Magnifique Noir Book 1: I Am Magical by Briana Lawrence

The first book in Briana Lawrence’s Magnifique Noir series tells the story of college student and gamer girl Bree Danvers. After having a few run-ins with monsters and a mysterious magical girl named Galactic Purple, she is invited to become a member of the magical girl team Magnifique Noir.

This visual novel combines illustrations, mini comics, and text to tell a colorful, cute, and down-to-earth magical girl story with an all-Black and queer magical girl team. In between battling monsters with frosted cupcake attacks and 8-bit video game graphics, the women also tackle things like street harassment, dysfunctional families, and misogynoir. Throughout it all, these Black women support each other and help each other remember that they are magical.

The Afro YA promotes black young adult authors and YA books with black characters, especially those that influence Pennington, an aspiring YA author who believes that black YA readers need diverse books, creators, and stories so that they don’t have to search for their experiences like she did.

Latonya Pennington is a poet and freelance pop culture critic. Their freelance work can also be found at PRIDE, Wear Your Voice magazine, and Black Sci-fi. As a poet, they have been published in Fiyah Lit magazine, Scribes of Nyota, and Argot magazine among others.

Top photo by No Revisions on Unsplash

Poetry Month Spotlight: Jessica Jacobs

by | Apr 29, 2022 | NPM 2022, Poetry, Reading, writer's life

Poetry Month Spotlight

Jessica Jacobs

Artist Statement

When the pandemic hit, I was midway through writing a manuscript in conversation with the Book of Genesis—eerie company during a plague whose scale felt biblical.  Yet with my world suddenly so small, I was grateful for the infusion of energy and inspiration this immersive study provided.  While reading religious texts can often be a rather rote experience, writing about them allowed me to push back against these teachings, to ask if there are other ways to be and believe, to read between the lines to better see figures often pushed to the margins or simply ignored, and to question my own ways of being in the world. For whatever your practices or beliefs (and I’m still in the process of exploring those for myself) this is a foundational text, one on which so much of contemporary culture—for better and often for worse—is built. And, to my great surprise, this ancient work has made me feel more connected to our painful present moment, leading me to grapple with subjects I might not have known how to approach on my own: from historic patterns of racism and antisemitism to the climate crisis to questions of free will and fate.

 “Before the Beginning” attempts to imagine back past the moment of creation, to a time when every bit and being of the world was bound in primordial unity.

“Covenant Between the Pieces” examines the relationship between Sarah and Hagar, bound and divided by their relationships with Abraham, and tries to use their opposing placements on the field of the page as mimetic of the distance between them.

 

Before the Beginning

Covenant Between the Pieces

About Jessica Jacobs

Jessica Jacobs is the author of Take Me with You, Wherever You’re Going (Four Way Books), one of Library Journal’s Best Poetry Books of the Year, winner of the Devil’s Kitchen Reading Award and Goldie Award, and a finalist for the Brockman-Campbell, American Fiction, and Julie Suk Book Awards. Her debut collection, Pelvis with Distance (White Pine Press), a biography-in-poems of Georgia O’Keeffe, won the New Mexico Book Award in Poetry and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and Julie Suk Award. An avid long-distance runner, Jessica has worked as a rock-climbing instructor, bartender, and professor, and now serves as the Chapbook Editor for Beloit Poetry Journal. She lives in Asheville, NC, with her wife, the poet Nickole Brown, with whom she co-authored Write It! 100 Poetry Prompts to Inspire (Spruce Books/PenguinRandomHouse), and her collection of poems in conversation with the Book of Genesis will be published by Four Way Books in 2024.

Find Jessica at https://jessicalgjacobs.com/ and follow her on Twitter @jessicalgjacobs and Instagram @jlgjacobs

Jessica and her wife, the poet Nickole Brown, offer free monthly generative writing sessions (https://sunjune.org/write-it-generative-sessions/). Jessica will be teaching a workshop on spiritual writing (for people of all faiths and none) in Provincetown in June: https://fawc.org/summer-program/in-the-space-between-exploring-the-sacred-through-poetry/

National Poetry Month
National Poetry Month

BMP Celebrates National Poetry Month

As the pandemic has continued into its second year, we at Brain Mill are thinking about spaces & places: how we exist in space, the importance of access, and the particulars of navigating places. We have gathered together in ways that may have been new to us over the last few years, greeting each other in small squares of connectivity, developing relationship and care with virtual check-ins, follows, and voices translated via technology. In our best moments we have learned to listen; in our worst, we have been caught up by all the ways we need to do better and think more deeply about community systems and for whom entry is barred.

Poetry Month Spotlight: Stephen Roger Powers

by | Apr 27, 2022 | NPM 2022, Poetry, Reading, writer's life

The Space Where Words Are Formed

A Poetry Month Spotlight on Stephen Roger Powers

Artist Statement

I’ve had a progressive hearing loss since I was three years old. All my life, I have had to pay attention to the space where words are formed—the lips, the teeth, the tongue—in order to understand what I am listening to. The pandemic upended all of our lives, but for me and other hearing impaired and deaf people, it also cut off an important avenue of communication, lip reading. I fully support mask wearing to reduce virus transmission because the science is simple and indisputable; however, if I need to understand what someone wearing a mask is saying, I am forced to ask them to pull their mask down while speaking. People are generally nice about this, of course, though a handful insist on shouting through their masks, which is no help. I came to realize too that asking people to pull their masks down while speaking put me at greater risk for infection, which has made me question how necessary it was to understand something in most circumstances. Because it feels so personal, and because it is something that marks me as “different,” I have been reluctant to write seriously about hearing impairment, other than a mention here and there in a poem. I also felt maybe it would come across as gimmicky. Several years ago, I did publish a short story in Bryant Literary Review inspired by the stand-up comedy act I used to do about my hearing impairment. Jokes about hearing impairment are easy because they are a defensive mechanism. Navigating a world hostile to hearing loss is far from easy. Nevertheless, masks forced me to consider my hearing loss in ways I hadn’t before, so a few poems ended up focusing on it. I’ve been a Dolly Parton fan all my life too. Every time I get a new pair of hearing aids, they make the world sound so different that I have to go through an adjustment phase lasting weeks or months as my brain relearns what the world sounds like. I’ve had the pair of digital hearing aids I’m wearing now for three years, and I still haven’t completely gotten used to them. Part of the reason for that is my hearing loss has gotten a little worse lately. Age might have something to do with it. Music, though, sounds very different now. I have to turn it off. My memory is the best place to play songs I know by heart. Tinnitus is common with hearing loss, and what once was white noise in my left ear now often is music.

 

Hearing Loss Is Difficult To Describe

The Most Common Question People Ask Is How Can I Hear Dolly

 

Mornings on the porch are best without my hearing aids.
I can still hear traffic, but I’m not sure if it’s traffic I hear
or a memory of what traffic once sounded like.
A cochlear implant might help me more,
but asking you to pull down your mask
so that I can read your lips feels safer for now
than drilling my skull.

I’ve always wondered if maybe I love Dolly
because I’m hearing impaired and hear her differently.
An artist once asked what losing hearing is like,
so I described a realist painting morphing
slowly to impressionism,
then abstract expressionism,
which gives me the most freedom to interpret what sounds are.
He said what if I get a cochlear implant
and hate what Dolly really sounds like?

Mornings on the porch are when I hear Dolly clearest,
as if records were playing in my head.
I’ve heard her songs so many times
they are what I know best, memorized like DNA.
I will still have them when the day comes
I lose the rest of my hearing.

 

Subtitlefocals

 

My new hearing aids make me worry about Russia.
They are rechargeable, so how will I hear
once Putin hijacks our power grid?

Words sound so different with these new ones
I still cannot understand you.
Your tongue and teeth are now
rattlesnakes in a popcorn popper.

Why doesn’t someone invent subtitlefocals?
Glasses with speech recognition technology
projecting subtitles below the speaker’s mouth?
My choice of fonts and colors?

At my age it will get worse before it gets better.
I can feel it coming like a whale’s water displacement
rising up from under me, lifting me before I see it.

My tinnitus ear worms are worse too, so clear and distinct a radio
might as well be playing, like the one my grandmother left on
in her kitchen all night to scare burglars.

That’s why I am on the move so much.
I am trying to find silence.
Silence is a destination,
but my tinnitus ear worms are forever
harmonizing with whatever tune
the tires are singing.

About Stephen Roger Powers

Stephen Roger Powers is the author of three poetry collections published by Salmon Poetry and Highway Speed, a collection of short stories. Other work has appeared in 32 Poems, Shenandoah, The Southern Poetry Anthology Volume V: Georgia, Rabbit Ears: TV Poems, and Stone, River, Sky: An Anthology of Georgia Poems. He was an extra in Joyful Noise with Queen Latifah and Dolly Parton, and he can be seen if you know just where to look.

Find him at www.stephenrogerpowers.com and follow on Twitter @dollypoet and Instagram @dollyfan

National Poetry Month
National Poetry Month

BMP Celebrates National Poetry Month

As the pandemic has continued into its second year, we at Brain Mill are thinking about spaces & places: how we exist in space, the importance of access, and the particulars of navigating places. We have gathered together in ways that may have been new to us over the last few years, greeting each other in small squares of connectivity, developing relationship and care with virtual check-ins, follows, and voices translated via technology. In our best moments we have learned to listen; in our worst, we have been caught up by all the ways we need to do better and think more deeply about community systems and for whom entry is barred.