Episode 404: Own Voices

Hello and welcome to the 4th season of Reading With Libraries! Thank you so much for being here! We’re so glad you’re able to join our podcast book group.

This week we’re talking about books in the Own Voices category. Own Voices is a movement that began as a hashtag, started by Corrine Duyvis. The hashtag #OwnVoices is meant to showcase works that are created by authors/illustrators who share the identity of their characters, such as a book with a d/Deaf protagonist written by a d/Deaf author

As always, in our book group, we like to talk books and share information for our library community doing Reader’s Advisory work. It’s hard to be an expert on all the great books out there!

So we pick a new genre or topic each week to discuss and explore to help you learn more about an area that you may not be familiar with.

We like to keep things casual here, there are no “right” or “wrong” books to share! We are excited to share titles and add to our TBR lists!

Beverages:

Each week we like to connect the theme of our books with our beverages, and we each came prepared with our own drink to enjoy while we talk about our books. You are an important part of this book group, so if you don’t have your beverage to enjoy, go get one! We’ll wait!

Ready? Let’s share what we’re drinking! Each of our beverages will have a recipe or a link on our episode page, so you can try them yourself! This week we’re sampling different traditional beverages from a variety of cultures:

Chamoyada

  • Shaved ice, mixed with fruit, chamoy and chili, it’s a comination of spicy sweetness (and doesn’t look too hard to make yourself!

Kompot from Russia

  • Kompot, which is basically, stewed fruit, is a traditional dessert beverage originated from Russia.
  • This drink is a combination of different fruits with rich syrup. The base of this drink is the fruit. Among the copious variations of this drink, some of the most favorites include dried fruit, berries, and even preserved fruits – or simply a combination of anything you think is good and edible. Depending on what kind of fruit is used, the level of sweetness and spicing is typically attuned to make the flavor of the fruit compote the best.

Rooibos Tea from South Africa

  • ¨Rooibos is a tisane or herbal tea and doesn’t contain Camellia sinensis, the main ingredient of black and green tea. It is only in recent years that it has become a popular drink outside the borders of South Africa.
  • Most brew Rooibos as they would a black tea or herbal tea letting it sit between 4­-7 minutes before it is drunk. The fact is that the longer Rooibos is steeped, the more of the antioxidants and other health benefits are released. Traditionally in South Africa, Rooibos was boiled in water rather than water being added to the infusion once it boiled. The longer the rooibos is left to stew the more intense the flavour becomes. So much so that it bares little relation to the light orange liquid one gets after a four minute steep. The Rooibos, in this case, is served with milk like a traditional chai. This might not be the method of choice for a quick cuppa as the recommended cooking time is 30 minutes but the results are guaranteed to satisfy.

Genre Discussion:

We gave a definition of Own Voices at the beginning of the podcast but we will share it again here:  #OwnVoices is a term credited to author Corinne Duyvis, who suggested the hashtag on Twitter in 2015 to “recommend kidlit about diverse characters written by authors from that same diverse group.”

From the YALSA blog:

“The reason that #OwnVoices creators are so important is because, as marginalized people, we’re the best authority on telling our own stories. It’s great that more people are talking about how to write authentic, sensitive stories outside their experience, and getting sensitivity readers involved, but it’s also important that marginalized people are able to tell their own stories. And that’s what #OwnVoices does—it allows us to be a voice in our own storytelling, when stories about marginalized communities have historically been told by privileged people.”

Kayla Whaley of Disability in Kidlit explains why #OwnVoices is important for representation in publishing: “Time and again, marginalized people have seen their stories taken from them, misused, and published as authentic, while marginalized authors have had to jump hurdle after hurdle to be published themselves.”

There has recently been some controversy surrounded the Own Voices movement. This quote is from the article “What is Own Voices Doing to Our Books?”

“But in its present form, the impact of this movement on the landscape of YA has turned increasingly toxic, leading to callouts, controversy, and cancelled books — often for the underrepresented authors it was supposed to help. And no author learned this lesson more harshly than Kosoko Jackson. His debut novel A Place for Wolves, was set to publish March 26, but was cancelled for not being #ownvoices enough instead.

It’s not lost on minority authors that the quest to police their books is largely being led by white gatekeepers who desperately want more diverse books, but are terrified of being seen as racist, ableist, or otherwise un-hip to progressive values if one of their books “gets it wrong.”

It’s also become the source of awkward and inappropriate conversations between young writers and their editors and agents. “I had an agent actually ask whether I had a history of mental illness,” says another YA author, who recently sold her debut novel to one of the big-five traditional publishers. With #ownvoices extending to everything from medical conditions to sexual orientations, authors describe feeling compelled to either reveal private information in order to assert their right to tell a given story, or abandon the material entirely.”

If you want to learn more about this movement, and find more books to read and recommend to your community, we have several suggested resources available below:

Suggested Reading Resources:  

Our Book Discussion

Now we are a little more familiar with this week’s genre, and we have enjoyed some of our special beverages, let’s get to the book discussion!

As always, if you click thru the links below to go to Amazon.com, and then buy anything (including books!), CMLE will get a small percent of Amazon’s profits. Thanks in advance for your support!!

The City of Brass: A Novel (The Daevabad Trilogy), by S. A Chakraborty “On the streets of eighteenth-century Cairo, Nahri is a con woman of unsurpassed skill. She makes her living swindling Ottoman nobles, hoping to one day earn enough to change her fortunes. But when Nahri accidentally summons Dara, an equally sly, darkly mysterious djinn warrior, during one of her cons, she learns that even the cleverest of schemes can have deadly consequences.

Forced to flee Cairo, Dara and Nahri journey together across hot, windswept sands teeming with creatures of fire and rivers where the mythical marid sleep, past ruins of once-magnificent human metropolises and mountains where the circling birds of prey are more than what they seem, to Daevabad, the legendary city of brass.

It’s a city steeped in magic and fire, where blood can be as dangerous as any spell; a city where old resentments run deep and the royal court rules with a tenuous grip; a city to which Nahri is irrevocably bound—and where her very presence threatens to ignite a war that has been simmering for centuries. “

Sofia Khan is Not Obliged: A heartwarming romantic comedy, by
Ayisha Malik ” Sofia Khan is single once more, after her sort-of-boyfriend proves just a little too close to his parents. And she’d be happy that way too, if her boss hadn’t asked her to write a book about the weird and wonderful world of Muslim dating. Of course, even though she definitely isn’t looking for love, to write the book she does need to do a little research . . . “

We Set the Dark On Fire, by Tehlor Kay Mejia “At the Medio School for Girls, distinguished young women are trained for one of two roles in their polarized society. Depending on her specialization, a graduate will one day run a husband’s household or raise his children. Both paths promise a life of comfort and luxury, far from the frequent political uprisings of the lower class.

Daniela Vargas is the school’s top student, but her pedigree is a lie. She must keep the truth hidden or be sent back to the fringes of society.

And school couldn’t prepare her for the difficult choices she must make after graduation, especially when she is asked to spy for a resistance group desperately fighting to bring equality to Medio.

Will Dani cling to the privilege her parents fought to win for her, or will she give up everything she’s strived for in pursuit of a free Medio—and a chance at a forbidden love?”

Blasphemy: New and Selected Stories, by Sherman Alexie ” A bold and irreverent observer of life among Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest, the daring, versatile, funny, and outrageous Alexie showcases his many talents in Blasphemy, where he unites fifteen beloved classics with sixteen new stories in one sweeping anthology for devoted fans and first-time readers. Included here are some of his most esteemed tales, including “What You Pawn I Will Redeem,” in which a homeless Indian man quests to win back a family heirloom; “This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona,” a road-trip morality tale; “The Toughest Indian in the World,” about a night shared between a writer and a hitchhiker; and his most recent, “War Dances,” about a man grappling with sudden hearing loss in the wake of his father’s death. Alexie’s new stories are fresh and quintessential, about donkey basketball leagues, lethal wind turbines, a twenty-four-hour Asian manicure salon, good and bad marriages, and all species of warriors in America today. “

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, by Lisa See ” In nineteenth-century China, when wives and daughters were foot-bound and lived in almost total seclusion, the women in one remote Hunan county developed their own secret code for communication: nu shu (“women’s writing”). Some girls were paired with laotongs, “old sames,” in emotional matches that lasted throughout their lives. They painted letters on fans, embroidered messages on handkerchiefs, and composed stories, thereby reaching out of their isolation to share their hopes, dreams, and accomplishments.

With the arrival of a silk fan on which Snow Flower has composed for Lily a poem of introduction in nu shu, their friendship is sealed and they become “old sames” at the tender age of seven. As the years pass, through famine and rebellion, they reflect upon their arranged marriages, loneliness, and the joys and tragedies of motherhood. The two find solace, developing a bond that keeps their spirits alive. But when a misunderstanding arises, their lifelong friendship suddenly threatens to tear apart.

On the Come Up, by Angie Thomas “Sixteen-year-old Bri wants to be one of the greatest rappers of all time. Or at least win her first battle. As the daughter of an underground hip hop legend who died right before he hit big, Bri’s got massive shoes to fill.

But it’s hard to get your come up when you’re labeled a hoodlum at school, and your fridge at home is empty after your mom loses her job. So Bri pours her anger and frustration into her first song, which goes viral…for all the wrong reasons.

Bri soon finds herself at the center of a controversy, portrayed by the media as more menace than MC. But with an eviction notice staring her family down, Bri doesn’t just want to make it—she has to. Even if it means becoming the very thing the public has made her out to be.  “

A Safe Girl to Love, by Casey Plett “Eleven unique short stories that stretch from a rural Canadian Mennonite town to a hipster gay bar in Brooklyn, featuring young trans women stumbling through loss, sex, harassment, and love.

These stories, shiny with whiskey and prairie sunsets, rattling subways and neglected cats, show growing up as a trans girl can be charming, funny, frustrating, or sad, but never will it be predictable.”

Fingersmith, by Sarah Waters ” Sue Trinder is an orphan, left as an infant in the care of Mrs. Sucksby, a “baby farmer,” who raised her with unusual tenderness, as if Sue were her own. Mrs. Sucksby’s household, with its fussy babies calmed with doses of gin, also hosts a transient family of petty thieves—fingersmiths—for whom this house in the heart of a mean London slum is home.

One day, the most beloved thief of all arrives—Gentleman, an elegant con man, who carries with him an enticing proposition for Sue: If she wins a position as the maid to Maud Lilly, a naïve gentlewoman, and aids Gentleman in her seduction, then they will all share in Maud’s vast inheritance. Once the inheritance is secured, Maud will be disposed of—passed off as mad, and made to live out the rest of her days in a lunatic asylum.

With dreams of paying back the kindness of her adopted family, Sue agrees to the plan. Once in, however, Sue begins to pity her helpless mark and care for Maud Lilly in unexpected ways…But no one and nothing is as it seems in this Dickensian novel of thrills and reversals.”

Dread Nation, by Justina Ireland “Jane McKeene was born two days before the dead began to walk the battlefields of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania—derailing the War Between the States and changing the nation forever.

In this new America, safety for all depends on the work of a few, and laws like the Native and Negro Education Act require certain children attend combat schools to learn to put down the dead.

But there are also opportunities—and Jane is studying to become an Attendant, trained in both weaponry and etiquette to protect the well-to-do. It’s a chance for a better life for Negro girls like Jane. After all, not even being the daughter of a wealthy white Southern woman could save her from society’s expectations.

But that’s not a life Jane wants. Almost finished with her education at Miss Preston’s School of Combat in Baltimore, Jane is set on returning to her Kentucky home and doesn’t pay much mind to the politics of the eastern cities, with their talk of returning America to the glory of its days before the dead rose.

But when families around Baltimore County begin to go missing, Jane is caught in the middle of a conspiracy, one that finds her in a desperate fight for her life against some powerful enemies. 

And the restless dead, it would seem, are the least of her problems.”

Ember in the Ashes, by Sabaa Tahir “Under the Martial Empire, defiance is met with death. Those who do not vow their blood and bodies to the Emperor risk the execution of their loved ones and the destruction of all they hold dear.
 
It is in this brutal world, inspired by ancient Rome, that Laia lives with her grandparents and older brother. The family ekes out an existence in the Empire’s impoverished backstreets. They do not challenge the Empire. They’ve seen what happens to those who do.
 
But when Laia’s brother is arrested for treason, Laia is forced to make a decision. In exchange for help from rebels who promise to rescue her brother, she will risk her life to spy for them from within the Empire’s greatest military academy.
 
There, Laia meets Elias, the school’s finest soldier—and secretly, its most unwilling. Elias wants only to be free of the tyranny he’s being trained to enforce. He and Laia will soon realize that their destinies are intertwined—and that their choices will change the fate of the Empire itself. “

For Today I am A Boy, by Kim Fu ” At birth, Peter Huang is given the Chinese name Juan Chaun, “powerful king.” To his parents, newly settled in small-town Ontario, he is the exalted only son in a sea of daughters, the one who will finally fulfill his immigrant father’s dreams of Western masculinity. Peter and his sisters grow up in an airless house of order and obligation, though secrets and half-truths simmer beneath the surface. At the first opportunity, each of the girls lights out on her own. But for Peter, escape is not as simple as fleeing his parents’ home. Though his father crowned him “powerful king,” Peter knows otherwise. He knows he is really a girl. With the help of his far-flung sisters and the sympathetic souls he finds along the way, Peter inches ever closer to his own life, his own skin, in this darkly funny, emotionally acute, stunningly powerful debut. “

Conclusion:

Thank you so much for joining us for this discussion about Own Voices books!

Join us next Thursday with another genre, more guest hosts for our book group, and more books to share and discuss. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast so you don’t miss a single episode! And if you want to hear more about the work we do in libraries – which is always interesting! – subscribe to our podcast Linking Our Libraries.


Bring your book ideas, bring your beverages, and join us back here on Thursday!