Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson

   

Open Water is a beautiful, soulful, intimate story about two young, British-Ghanaian people falling slowly in love as they strive to survive and thrive in a world that is often hostile to people in Black bodies. This is a book to savor slowly. I absolutely loved this. I borrowed Open Water from the library but I’m need to but it because I need own my own copy and be able to reread it again and again. In the meantime here are a few of my favorite passages.

“You came here to speak of shame and its relation to desire. There should be no shame in open saying, I want this.” There should be no shame in not knowing what one wants. – page 2

“You are safe here, you said. You are seen here. You can live here. We are all hurting, you said. We are all trying to live, to breather, and find ourselves stopped by that which is out of our control. We find ourselves unseen. We find ourselves unheard. We find ourselves mislabeled. We who are loud and angry, we who are bold and brash. We who are Black. We find ourselves not saying it how it is. We find ourselves scare.” – page. 34

“You’re looking forward to forgetting, albeit briefly, the existential dread which plagues you, which tightens your chest, which pains your left side. You’re looking forward to forgetting that, leaving the house, you might not return intact.” – page 69

“Let’s home in for a moment, on the boy, who you glimpsed sitting on the wall, cuffed, surrounded by police officers. With his beautiful dreaded hair framing his face like open curtains, and how he wanted to be seen and heard. What led him here? What led him to outlet his anger into another? That anger which is the result of things unspoken from and now and then, of unresolved grief, large and small, of others assuming that he, beautiful Black person in gorgeous Black Body, was born violent and dangerous; this assumption, impossible to hide, manifesting in every word and glance and action, and every word and glance and action ingested and internalized, and it’s unfair and unjust, this sort of death – being asked to live so constrained is a death of sorts – so you don’t blame him for the anger, buy why did his anger have to find a home in another who looked just like him?” – page 76

“…you were scared, that walking home in the night worried you sometimes, because you didn’t know which fate would meet you, the one who looked like you or the one who couldn’t see you, or couldn’t see you as you were meant to be seen, or whether you would arrive home without incident, and live to fear another day.” – page 76

“To be you is to apologize and often that apology comes in the form of suppression and that suppression is indiscriminate. Except here you must unfold your arms and from your chest say, you are tired…You begin to choke and gulp for air as tears stream down your cheeks…You must be heard. You think you are alone in this until you realize, she is with you too….You do not need to apologize here. When she asks, are you OK, do not fear the truth. Besides, she knows before you speak. There’s no solace in the shade. Let yourself be heard and hear her words…There’s no solace in the shade. Let yourself be heard and hea her words. Have faith.” – page 76

“Faith is turning off the light and trusting the other person will not murder you in your sleep.” – page 106

“You want to tell her there are some things you won’t heal from, and there is no shame in your hurt.” – page 130

That Kind of Guy by Talia Hibbert

Rae is Ravenswood's newest misfit. She's 40, divorced, and has a big scar on her face. Twenty-eight-year-old Zach is Mr. Helpful. He goes out of his way to make others feel comfortable and helps whenever he can, whether the person needs an orgasm or a car to be fixed. Rae and Zach have a flirty friendship. When Rae needs to attend an awards ceremony that her cheating ex-husband will also be attending, naturally Zach offers to be her pretend boyfriend.

That Kind of Guy is sweet and sexy romance. The attraction between Rae and Zach is clear from page one. The highlight of Zach's day is when Rae stops by on her dog walks to say hello. The issues separating them are their various insecurities. Rae likes being single and is wary of trusting her heart with anyone again. Zach is tired of being used and of contorting himself to make other other people feel comfortable. It takes time, but not too much, for both to admit they have real feelings for one another.

I very much enjoyed this. I don't know why it took so long for me to read this.

The City We Became by N. K. Jemisin

    It’s difficult to explain the plot of The City We Became. It starts with a homeless kid. He’s New York, as in the city of New York – and he needs help. There are five avatars who are supposed to help him, but first they have to find him.

A man arrives in New York City and suddenly collapses. He doesn’t remember who is or where he’s from, but he knows he is Manhattan. A woman in Queens watches in horror as a couple neighbor kids are about to be swallowed by their pool and she realizes she has to help them and stop what’s happening and, in that moment, she realizes she is Queens. Women in the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Staten Island have similar experiences. The world suddenly shifts and they realize that they are the personification of their boroughs of their city.

I loved this. I loved it so much that I’m mad that I have to wait for the next book in the series. I loved the personification of the boroughs. Bronca, the Bronx avatar, is a queer Lenape woman who runs an art center. As a Lenape woman in the oldest of the NYC’s boroughs, she possesses the knowledge of and history of the city and what’s happening to it. Brooklyn is a rapper turned politician. She hears the city. Padmini, a Tamil immigrant graduate student, is the avatar of Queens, the borough of a starting over. Manhattan’s avatar, Manny, is a racially ambiguous new transplant to New York. He can’t remember his past and not sure if he wants to. He reflects the borough’s mix of cultures and edginess. Aislyn is the avatar of Staten Island. She never leaves her borough; her abusive father having impressed upon on her how the city is not for people like her. Of all the avatars, Aislyn is the most susceptible to the villain’s machinations.

Speaking of the villain, in old westerns the good guy wears a white hat and the bad guy a black hat. The white = good and black = bad is a trope that has been repeated ad nauseam. Jemisin flips this around, making the “woman in white” the villain. When the woman infects someone or something, white tendrils start growing out of them or it and you know no good will come of it.

I had no idea what to expect when I picked up this book. It did take a minute to get into it, but once I understood what was happening, I was all in. I really hope book 2 comes out soon.

Legendborn by Tracy Deonn

    Briana, or Bree for short, is our heroine. Her mother recently passed and Bree is deeply in grief but trying to put on a brave face and a tough exterior. One night she sees something she shouldn't, something magical and dangerous near her school's campus. After another incident Bree begins to wonder if what she saw is connected to her mother's death. What she finds is more than she, and certainly I, ever imagined.

Legendborn may be my favorite book of 2020. It is definitely the best young adult fantasy novel I have read in a very long time. It’s Black girl magic plus the King Arthur legend, with the complex history of the south and its legacy of slavery woven it. It all works beautifully. I loved this so much!

What I loved

Author Tracy Deonn has built a world that is complex, intricate, fun, and interesting. I went down multiple wormholes to learn more about the things referenced in the story.

It is effortlessly, realistically, and refreshingly diverse in terms of race, sexual identity, and sexuality. Better yet – it isn’t a big deal that there are different kinds of people in the story. They just exist, like they do in the real world, like they have throughout time.

“Growing up Black in the South, it's pretty common to find yourself in old places that just...weren't made for you. Maybe it's a building, a historic district, or a street. Some space that was originally built for white people and white people only, and you just have to hold that knowledge while going about your business.” (page 75)

A young Black woman is at the center of the story but there is no pretense that racism, sexism, or any other kind of -ism doesn’t exist. When Bree and her best-friend/roommate Alice get called in to a dean’s office, it doesn’t escape Bree’s attention when the dean calls Alice passive (Alice is Taiwanese American) and says that Bree has an attitude. Nor does it escape her (or the reader’s attention) that Bree gets involved with a secret society where people who look like her aren’t usually part of the membership.

“…there is an invisible energy all around us, everywhere in the world, that only some people know about. Some of those people call it magic, some call it aether, some call it spirit, and we call it root. There is no single school of thought about this energy? Is it an element? A natural resource? I think it is both, but a practitioner in India or Nigeria or Ireland may not agree.” (page 223)

Different traditions are respected. Rootcraft, (a fictional magic system modeled after rootwork, a living folk tradition and spiritual practice developed by enslaved Africans and their descendants under American chattel slavery, according to the Author’s Note) is on equal footing with the Arthurian legend.

Bree is a fully realized character. While fighting demons she also deals with grief and intergenerational trauma. Her parents are loving and intelligent, but not perfect. Bree is smart, but certainly not perfect.

I couldn't put this book down. It was fun and deeply emotional. Every time I picked up the book I got lost in the story. This book kept me up late reading, and got me up early to read more. There will sure be a sequel and I want it now!

Hearts Unbroken by Cynthia Leitich Smith

   This was a cute, quick, okay-written read. Lou, a Native American teenager, breaks up with her White boyfriend when he makes one too many insulting comments about Native American people. Luckily this wasn't drawn out. The boyfriend pops up now and again but for the most part, his story ends pretty quickly. The main conflict in the story arises when the high school drama teacher decides to hold "color blind" auditions, but the broader conflict is being brown in a society that is often hostile to brown people. Not surprisingly, some of the people in Lou's Kansas hometown aren't too happy when the auditions result in a Black Dorothy, a Native American tin man, and a Mexican American lion.

I can't say that I loved this book. The writing style didn't work for me. I can't pinpoint exactly what the problem was other than to say it didn't flow well. Also, there are several interesting ideas and story lines that start off well and then sort of peter out. For instance, Lou joins the high school newspaper. Inspired by a friend who is constantly working to help her dad and save money for college, Lou decides to do a series of interviews with students who work. It's a great idea but I'm not sure what the point is. We never learn how it all turned out. Nevertheless, I'm glad I read this. I am interested in the experiences of other people of color and this book did a good job pointing out some of the subtle and not so subtle crap Lou has do deal with as a Native American.

Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas

  Huh? That was my reaction upon turning the last page of Catherine House. That and, "What was this even about?" I love a good what-really-happens-behind-closed-doors mystery thriller set at a boarding school or college but this wasn't that. There is a college and strange things happen at the college but no one, including the main character, appears to be that interested in finding out what happens behind closed doors.

Inez is a girl with a troubled past who gets accepted at a prestigious school that counts many rich and powerful among it alumni. The deal is that students agree to spend 3 years (classes are year round) immersed at Catherine House and cut off from the rest of the world. No phone calls, no internet, no TV. No contact with family or friends. The school provides for all their essential needs - food, toiletries, clothes, and lots of wine.

So the school is special but why I don't know. The curriculum sounds like BS. No one is pre-med or trying to write the next great novel. There is a major called new materials which is the main thing the school cares about. Mostly the school sounded like a weird pseudo-science religious cult. It is clear students are being experimented on but it is all very low key. None of the students seem to mind or care that much, except for perhaps the new materials majors.

Inez, the main character, spends much of her time drinking and sleeping with other students but none of it seems to matter to her. Everything about Inez felt shallow. She is completely uninterested in questioning anything around her and her lack of interest made it difficult for me to be interested.

This story felt incomplete. If I could edit this book I would condense the 300+ pages here to half the size and then add a second part where either Inez digs deep into the mystery of Catherine House or figures out her life and makes a radical change that leads to her becoming more invested in her own life and the world around her.

Five Days at Memorial by Sheri Fink

  I have wanted to read this story for a long time, even more so after visiting New Orleans for the first time earlier this year. It is the story of what happened at Memorial Hospital during and immediately after Hurricane Katrina struck the city of New Orleans and the levees broke, and the resulting aftermath. Long story short, after Katrina hit medical personnel (mostly doctors & nurses), 100+ patients, as well as family members and pets of personnel and patients found themselves stranded at the hospital. They made it through the hurricane but then as everyone knows, the levees broke. The floodwaters rose, power in the building failed, the heat rose, and running water became a thing of the past. Help was slow in coming and was sporadic. Medical personnel made a decision about who should be evacuated first - the healthiest. As the days passed, another decision was made to administer what turned out to be lethal doses of medications to some of the patients. Later, after the waters receded and the city began to grapple with what happened criminal charges were brought against one doctor and two nurses for the second-degree murders of several patients.

For prosecutors the question in the case was did Dr. Anna Maria Pou and nurses Lori Budo and Cheri Landry administer morphine and other medications with the intent to hasten the death of certain patients or was their intent simply to ease patients pain? According to a grand jury, the answer was no. I would break this down into two questions: One, did they inject patients with drugs to hasten their death? Two, was that the right thing to do, or if not excatly right, at least justifiable and understandable given the circumstances? After reading Sheri Fink's account of what happened, my answer to the first question is an unequivocal yes. I don't at all believe Pou, Budo, and Landry were simply easing pain. In one case, a patient was given something like nine times the amount of morphine in a single doze that he normally received and he hadn't been complaining of pain. As to the second question, I don't know.

When something like this happens the people involved are either portrayed as heroes and villains, but in reality people are often a little both or maybe neither. One of the problems with portraying a story in black and white is that it leaves little room for nuance or for talking about what could be done better. Dr. Pou, Budo, and Landry are not villains as I see it, but nor are they unsullied heroes either. Perhaps better choices could have been made, but they did the best they could under the circumstances. That being said, it is bothersome that in the end there seemed to be no accountability for what happened. Dr. Pou and nurses Budo and Landry were not entirely forthcoming about what they did after the fact. (And, there was a fourth doctor that was never charged even though he also administered the lethal doses.) For legal reasons I get why those involved would be wary of telling the full truth of what happened. Still, I wish there could be a truth and reconciliation commission to discuss what they did, why they did it, and why the other doctors and nurses didn't intervene or speak up if they thought what was happening was wrong (or help if they thought it was right). Further, I wish the company that owned the hospital, especially the executives in charge, as well as state and local officials were held accountable for what they did and didn't do. One of the things that struck me in this story was how the possibility that New Orleans might be flooded was not a surprise to anyone. For decades that had been concern but few precautionary measures were ever taken.

"Forensic Expert Cyril Wecht did not care if Pou was punished. What he cared about was the truth and what could be learned from it. For heaven's sake, he thought, Memorial wasn't on a goddamn battlefield with enemy shells coming in. This was New Orleans, and there were helicopters and boats. And really, were they saying they couldn't get patients off the seventh floor? Given a choice, would someone rather die a painless death or live after being lowered, however uncomfortably, from a window? A great disservice was being done to the field of medicine, because the events were covered up and medical leaders reacted emotionally, without knowledge about what had happened. For now the lessons seemed to be that in a disaster if you're a doctor, you're in charge. If you feel giving large doses of morphine and Versed are appropriate, go ahead. It's your call. 'Is this what we want young doctors to learn?' he asked. It's a goddamn precedent, a very dangerous, bad precedent." [page 454]

Although I don't want to condemn the doctors and nurses involved in what happened in Katrina, I have to admit this book undermined my faith and trust in the American medical system just a little bit. So many decisions were made without talking to patients or their families even when it was possible. There didn't even seem to be consensus or a discussion among all the medical personnel present at the hospital. Rather a few people made a decision that effected many. But of course when there was a threat of criminal prosecution then all the doctors and nurses rallied together, leaving little room for a real discussion of how to make life and death decisions during a disaster. My biggest takeaway from Five Days at Memorial, and I mean this is all seriousness, is that if there is a major disaster, do not go to the hospital. The doctors and nurses might help you. They might not. Or they might take active measures to hasten the process of helping you "let go" (a euphemism used often in the book) because they have decided that your quality of life is poor enough to justify ending it, all without consulting you or your family. And the doctors and nurses will never have to justify their decisions, because unless one can prove they acted with actual malice it seems to be considered "unfair" to question the decisions of a doctor or nurse during a disaster.

Network Effect by Martha Wells

 

I’m so glad Liberty Hardy talk about the Murderbot Diaries on one of the Book Riot’s podcasts or else I might have missed this series that has become one of my very favorite things to read.

My favorite rogue SecUnit is back, the sentient AI with organic parts and its dry, sardonic humor. Murderbot is living and working with his chosen human family when another ship attacks and kidnaps him and Amena, one of the humans he is protecting. Once aboard Murderbot realizes he knows the ship. It’s ART’s ship and ART need’s Murderbot’s help.

The plot is great but what I love about this series are the characters. For a non-human, Murderbot has a lot of human feelings, mostly annoyance and anger with humans and their stupid decisions and messy feelings. Despite its best efforts Murderbot seems to be forming relationships attachments with humans and other AI. (Murderbot would of course have a sarcastic thought at the idea that it was in a relationship.)

I love this series so much an when I truly love something it is that much harder to explain why. So instead, here are some of favorite passages from Network Effect.

Quotes

Humans have a bad tendency to use weapons unnecessarily and indiscriminately. Of the many times I had been shot, a depressingly large percentage of hits had come from clients who were trying to “help” me. [page 20-21]

Since the festival had started, I had been taking note of a potential hostile that Amena had been associating with. Evidence was mounting up and my threat assessment was nearing critical like. Things like: (1) he had informed her that his age was comparable to hers, which was just below the local standard for legal adult, but my physical scan and public record search indicated that he was approximately twelve Preservation standard client years older, (2) he never approached her when any family members or verified friends were with her, (3) he stared at her secondary sexual characteristics when her attention was elsewhere, (4) he encouraged her to take intoxicants that he wasn’t ingesting himself, (5) her parental and other related humans all assumed she was with her friends when she was seeing him and her friends all assumed she was with family and she hadn’t told either group about him, (6) I just had a bad feeling about the little shit. [page 29]

If a bunch of desperate colonists came up in the drop box, the ship could just do a quick detach from the dock’s airlock and it would be unreachable. It wasn’t a foolproof method but it was 90 percent effective. (Foolproof is another weird word. Shouldn’t it be smartproof? It’s not like you’re going to breach and seize control of a ship attached to a space dock by tripping or forgetting to bring your weapon or something.) [page 228]

Overse added, “Just remember you’re not alone here. I never know what to say to that. I am actually alone in my head, and that’s where 90 plus percent of my problems are. [page 242]