Lovers of Multicultural Literature discussion

Sometimes I come across a book I think I would like to suggest for a future poll but often times "forget" what book I was thinking of.



House of Purple Cedar by Tim Tingle

“The hour has come to speak of troubled times. It is time we spoke of Skullyville.” Thus begins the House of Purple Cedar, Rose Goode’s telling of the year when she was eleven in Indian country, Oklahoma. Skullyville, a once-thriving Choctaw community, was destroyed by land-grabbers, culminating in the arson on New Year's Eve, 1896, of New Hope Academy for Girls. Twenty Choctaw girls died, but Rose escaped. She is blessed by the presence of her grandmother Pokoni and her grandfather Amafo, both respected elders who understand the old ways. Soon after the fire, the white sheriff beats Amafo in front of the town's people, humiliating him. Instead of asking the Choctaw community to avenge the beating, her grandfather decides to follow the path of forgiveness.

Sounds good!

It looks really interesting, but it also appears to be self published. I wouldn't have a problem with that, except that it probably means it won't be available through the library :(. If it gets picked, I could still check, though. It really does look good.

R.A. wrote: "It looks really interesting, but it also appears to be self published. I wouldn't have a problem with that, except that it probably means it won't be available through the library :(. If it gets pi..."

While the book is published by a small independent press - there is a chance that it is not widely available in a public library outside of fitting a specific community need. For example I live in NC and it seems my library purchases books by authors living in NC or about NC even if it is a small publisher.

But that is a good point you made about availability. I am a very big library user also.!

When they're not expensive I don't mind picking them up as ebooks. But even my books (with VERY small readership) are available through the library, so this one may be, too. They may just have to order it for me, if we go with it.

Yeah, you can always ask the library to order it for you.

The Frangipani Hotel by Violet Kupersmith

An extraordinarily compelling debut—ghost stories that grapple with the legacy of the Vietnam War

A beautiful young woman appears fully dressed in an overflowing bathtub at the Frangipani Hotel in Hanoi. A jaded teenage girl in Houston befriends an older Vietnamese gentleman she discovers naked behind a dumpster. A trucker in Saigon is asked to drive a dying young man home to his village. A plump Vietnamese-American teenager is sent to her elderly grandmother in Ho Chi Minh City to lose weight, only to be lured out of the house by the wafting aroma of freshly baked bread. In these evocative and always surprising stories, the supernatural coexists with the mundane lives of characters who struggle against the burdens of the past.

Sounds really good. Thanks for sharing.

The Book of Dead Birds by Gayle Brandeis

Ava Sing Lo has been accidentally killing her mother's birds since she was a little girl. Now in her twenties, Ava leaves her native San Diego for the Salton Sea, where she volunteers to help environmental activists save thousands of birds poisoned by agricultural runoff.

Helen, her mother, has been haunted by her past for decades. As a young girl in Korea, Helen was drawn into prostitution on a segregated American army base. Several brutal years passed before a young white American soldier married her and brought her to California. When she gave birth to a black baby, her new husband quickly abandoned her, and she was left to fend for herself and her daughter in a foreign country.

With great beauty and lyricism, The Book of Dead Birds captures a young woman's struggle to come to terms with her mother's terrible past while she searches for her own place in the world.

Here's a recommendation for our upcoming read: She Wore Red Trainers She Wore Red Trainers: A Muslim Love Story