Welcome to Litsy!

We are almost to our vacation destination! In the Uber car rolling down 295S. I enjoyed this story and it featured indirect pie (meringue, quiche, tarts). My reviewing skills have deteriorated! This was sad, packed with great sentences, characters to cry with and for/thru some tragic happenings and choices. I would read more by this author. #debut #PieinLit #NewEngland

From the plural “we” perspective, brown girls of Queens tell their stories from childhood through adolescence and adulthood. They form relationships, they struggle, they persevere. Some become mothers, others begin careers but through it all they connect with one another.
I listened to the audiobook which was excellent. This was at once a wide take on the lives of the titular brown girls, as a whole, but also includes scenes from a singular life.

What I‘ve finished recently — Friday Reads April 28: #booktube #comics #LGBTQ #memoir #poetry #Translation #audiobooks #prizelists

https://youtu.be/0HxNAbWRU2c

A song, an incantation, a celebration of brown-girlness in first-person plural. Poetic vignettes follow a multi-ethnic group of friends, growing up in the 90s in Queens NYC. From childhood into old age—and some die too young. Their parents are immigrants from Asia, Africa, Latin America & the Caribbean. They are straight & queer, shy & brash, leave & stay, have children & remain childless. A joyful, complex portrait of being American.

Why did we ever believe home could only be one place? When existing in these bodies means holding many worlds within us.

Brown girls brown girls brown girls who, in their bones, are beginning to understand that they are the sum of many identities, many histories, at once.
The colonized, the colonizers. Where do we fall?

Short-listed for the Carol Sheilds Prize. Told in a choral voice throughout this short novel. I admire the writing, but the chorus also held me at arms length. Worth a read. 3 🌟 #carolsheild

This is short but packs a real punch. Set in a too soon future where climate change has destabilised power and weather this is a character led story if a group of neighbours from a mainly black neighbourhood fleeing from a racist mob as@society falls. It‘s hopeful in the face of certain hopelessness and beautifully written. The ending is ambiguous but powerful for it. I think might be my favourite read of the year so far

#BlackHistoryMonth Recommendations
Day 6
Fiction

A compilation of short stories that are so vivid a year later and I can still picture scenes in my mind. My Monticello the novella as the anchor this short collection Set in a beginning apocalypse time where a group of Black folk run from white nationalists and end up making camp at Monticello. History and current political unrest is talked about but to not too heavily, a character driven take.

Quick lil read - a bit like a long essay, detailing growing up non-White in multicultural Queens. Got my copy autographed by the author. 💖