Yunte Huang on Charlie Chan

Whenever I have a spare moment lately, I've been reading "Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History" by Yunte Huang.  I'm about half way through the book.

I owe my knowledge of the book to a commenter on a FaceBook page that I follow.  After I became aware of the whitewashing scandal of The Last Airbender film, I discovered Racebending, a discrimination awareness group focusing on the entertainment industry. 

Racebending's latest project is highlighting and critiquing the upcoming Akira film that follows The Last Airbender pattern of filling all the main good-people roles with Caucasians (although for Akira, and this makes the situation particularly ludicrous, they retain their Japanese names), and, on occasion, making the staggeringly generous decision of allowing the main bad character to be played by a person of color [sarcasm cleanup on aisle four].  On a post about it - I believe it was the one announcing Kristen Stewart's gracing of the cast with her presence - someone posted a link to an NPR article about Yunte Huang's book.

Huang's writing is wonderful, and the book is interesting and quite engaging.  According to Huang, his book details four versions of the Charlie Chan legend,

" The first story, of course, is the man himself, beginning with Chang Apana, the bullwhip-toting Cantonese detective in Honolulu. Then there is Earl Biggers's story, unwinding from the cornfields of small-town Ohio to the old-boy parlors of Harvard Yard, followed by Chan's reinvention on the silver screen, a legend annealed in Hollywood and America's racial tensions. And, finally, there is Chan's haunting presence during the era of postmodern politics and ethnic pride in contemporary America."

But in addition to being in bulk a biography of Chang Apana, the real-life person who inspired Bigger's character and providing a look at Hawaiian history that's in-depth enough to serve as a framework with which to view the rest of the book, Huang also relates and reflects on  some of his personal experiences, both from his childhood and days as a student in China and his studentship and eventual professorhood here in America. 

The book is a must read for history buffs, classic movie fans, and those who simply enjoy being treated to an alternative point of view from the mainstream Caucasian culture. 

LARKSTORM

In the years following the destructive Long Winter, when half the world’s population perished, the State remains locked in battle against the Sensitives: humans born with extra abilities.


As one of the last descendants of the State’s Founders, seventeen-year-old Lark Greene knows her place: study hard and be a model citizen so she can follow in her family’s footsteps. Her life’s been set since birth, and she’s looking forward to graduating and settling down with Beck, the boy she’s loved longer than she can remember.


However, after Beck is accused of being Sensitive and organizing an attack against Lark, he disappears. Heartbroken and convinced the State made a mistake, Lark sets out to find him and clear his name.


But what she discovers is more dangerous and frightening than Sensitives: she must kill the boy she loves, unless he kills her first.

Go to YA Highway to find out how you could win a copy of Dawn Rae Miller's LARKSTORM.

A Review of Kitty and the Midnight Hour by Carrie Vaughn

Wow. There’s a lot to discuss here. I placed Midnight Hour on hold from the North Carolina Digital Library about a month ago, because a) I thought I was getting an audio book and not an e-book, and b) because I thought it sounded mildly interesting, and if it wasn’t, my mind could just wander and I could let the pulp just wash past me.

Not so. Set in a world described to be the real one, its inhabitants are largely unaware of the supernatural creatures cohabiting this ‘real world’ and instead of working largely to continue the deception and concealment, the plot works toward a revelation – dragging most of the characters with it. This is especially interesting to me, because in my current WIP, I’m doing something similar; I’m almost positive that by the end of my book, the ‘real world’ inhabitants will become painfully aware of my magic-users from an alternate reality.

Vaughn has an interesting and detailed take on werewolves, in some aspects similar to Terry Pratchett in his Night Watch story arcs, most of which feature Sgt. Angua, a female werewolf. In Vaughn’s mythology, her interpretation leads to some rather disturbing sexual elements in the beginning of the story, but as the MC progresses through the story, she also shakes off the exploitation she has been suffering at the hands of her pack’s alpha male. Whereas Pratchett develops an idea of “Good dog/Bad dog” (as in the desire to be a Good Dog and the fear of becoming a Bad Dog), Vaughn explores the idea of needing companionship, needing an alpha, needing the approval of the alpha. In this vain, I was favorably impressed that Kitty separates herself from Carl, the pack leader, and does not enter into a different sexual relationship. Vaughn therefore shows the need for Kitty’s reliance on herself rather than simply on a different and better man than Carl.

Also, throughout the book, the author explores the different balances the individual members of the pack maintain between their “wolf” and “human” selves. Carl is portrayed as almost completely wolf-like, while his “mate” Meg, who schemes throughout the book, is portrayed as more human, therefore having the ability to scheme. Kitty lets her Wolf influence her actions throughout the novel, but in different ways at different plot points. In the beginning, as mentioned earlier, she lets Carl take advantage of her because of her Wolf’s need to please the alpha. Later, however, she completely surrenders to the Wolf’s more aggressive side, attacking and killing a rogue werewolf created by one of Meg’s plots to get rid of Kitty and dethrone Carl.

While I did find the book to be compelling, I have to wonder if the books in the rest of the series will be as good. It's hard to maintain depth of character when there are a lot of books with the same character in them. Once you work out the issues, they're worked out; anything after that seems shallow. The second book is on hold for me, but I have my doubts.

As a note on style, I have to say, Vaughn is excellent when it comes to dialog. She knows just when to have markers and when not.

And we haven’t even discussed the vampires yet! But maybe that’s for another day…

Three Bags Full

Miss Maple is the smartest sheep in her flock – in all of Glenkill, really. Mopple the Whale is the best memory sheep his flock has ever had. Zora and Othello are the bravest sheep in the flock. But when the flock’s shepherd is murdered, all the sheep will have to pull together in order to solve this crime and escape the butcher’s block!
This book is extremely clever and well written. The author, Leonie Swann, does a really good job in creating a believable culture for the sheep; according to her, sheep equate the size of a creature’s soul with the ability to smell (needless to say they consider humans as soulless). We see human behavior through the (often quite hilarious) misinterpretations of the sheep. Add in a good mystery and you have a quite entertaining read.

The Paradise War

The Paradise War. Awesome title, from an author I usually enjoy (Stephen Lawhead). The plot? Meh.
MC and MC's best friend visit ancient cairn in Scotland, best friend gets sucked into other world, MC has nervous breakdown before managing to go after best friend. Ends up in ancient Celtic setting. In the first scene in Albion, the other world, a man's head gets chopped off (by the best friend, who has, due to inter-world-time-discrepency, been there four years) and the MC is forced to carry it. MAJOR graphic adjectives. Not the best way to endear the book to this reader.
I'm almost seven hours into it, and I hate the MC's best friend, the MC I'm not too impressed with, and the macho dudeness is really, really getting to me. The obligatory tough-gal narcissists aren't helping either.
...On rereading this entry, it seems kind of harsh. Maybe I'm just not the target reader. Maybe the narrator of the audio book is just annoying.

Thursday 'View: The Complete Fairy Stories of Oscar Wilde

Good morning imaginaries: A book of Oscar Wilde's short stories was recomended to me by Craftypeople via a comment on the excerpt I posted as my first Sketches & Notes blog entry. And, although I don't think s/he is a regular reader (what kind of spot would that be on my imaginary record?) I would sincerely like to thank her/him. The stories are wonderful. Useually with an element of sadness, but *wonderful* sadness. Maybe it's because I haven't been reading as many classics as I was, say, before I started college (hey, you need to be sharp to read Dickens or Austen, and my pathetic attention span just gets eaten up by the class readings), but something about these stories really made me stop and think - of course, it might also be that Wilde has some very deep, thought-provoking messages in his stories. A lot of them, like so many others of that time, revolve around the ivory-towered rich and the in-plain-sight-but-still-out-of-mind poor. In others, a stronger element is a half-laughing, half-crying attitude toward the intelligentsia of the day. I still don't think I've caught on to all the nuances yet; this is definitely not a casual read. It requires as much mulling-over time as reading time. In other news, I plan to rectify my de-classified reading diet with [grits teeth] MacBeth (I'm glad you're all imaginaries, because otherwise I'd have to hide under the table to say that, no, all in all, I don't like Shakespeare. Bite me.) and The Great Gatsby. In still *other* news, an issue of world safety has come up, in that I, at nineteen years of age and being of slightly disturbed mind and pudgy body, am about to take my life (and probably the life of every other driver in North Carolina) into my hands and [try to] get my driver's license today. EDITED to say: @#%&!!! No license until the 16th.

Old Mother West Wind

I just found out that 2010 is the 100th anniversary of the publication of "Old Mother West Wind" by Thornton Burgess. Now, I realize that some of you imaginary readers out there may never have heard of this crown jewel among books and royal gem among childrens authors, but keep in mind that I lived in the world Burgess created for a good part of my childhood - and I've been trying to get back there ever since I left - so bear with me while I rant on the greatness of the occasion. Burgess was born in 1874 (January, so I missed his birthday) and died in 1965. Because he had to support himself and his mother, he took a lot of different jobs as early as his teens. Some of the jobs were out of doors, one of them being at Discovery Hill Road, a wood-and-wetland nature preserve. This became the setting for some of the best. Children stories. Ever. Burgess was an original conservation NINJA and received several awards for his efforts. He grew up in Sandwich, MA, and there's now a museum and nature center there, kept up by the Thornton Burgess Society. And boy, do I consider myself lucky to have been there several times, even if it was over ten years ago. (Pictured is Blacky the Crow, one of my personal favorites of the Burgess characters.)

Thursday 'View: Spindle's End

It's official. I've just decided to make Thursday book review day. Does it matter that I haven't finished the book I've decided to review? Well, not to me. Robin McKinley has a BREATHTAKING style. It's beautiful. Lush. Fantabulous. There just aren't words for it. Well. Now that I've relieved my admiration to a world-wide web that isn't listening, I'll go finish my book and find out what happens.