books about colonizers – Equal Opportunity Reader

[REVIEW] Survivor, by Octavia Butler

A tablet displaying the cover of Survivor(a woman trapped in a green tree with a furry blue man growing from the top of it, on a red background) held in front of metal stakes chained together standing in the grass

(UPDATE, May 11 2021: I just found out that the Afro-Speculative bookshop Sistah SciFi has this title available as an ebook! Find it HERE and enjoy!) (This novel is out of print. Find other works by Octavia E Butler HERE.) This novel was originally published in 1978. It’s been out of print since 1979–unlike allContinue reading “[REVIEW] Survivor, by Octavia Butler”

[REVIEW] PostColonial Love Poem, Natalie Diaz

(Buy it HERE.) You know the face that jazz and blues musicians make when someone’s playing real good? That stank face, that disbelieving, how is this real, umph-umph–UMPH this is so good it almost hurts face folks get when the art is hitting every bit of your spirit right? You know that face? ⠀⠀ ThatContinue reading “[REVIEW] PostColonial Love Poem, Natalie Diaz”

[REVIEW] Emergency Skin, N.K. Jemisin

By now we’ve all heard the incredible news that the Grande Dame Nouvelle of Black speculative fiction, and spec-fic in general, N.K. Jemisin herself, is one of the 2020 recipients of the MacArthur Genius Grant. (If you hadn’t heard–well, now you have!) I’m a huge Jemisin fan, considering her the heir apparent to the throneContinue reading “[REVIEW] Emergency Skin, N.K. Jemisin”

[REVIEW] The Lesson, Cadwell Turnbull

(Buy it HERE.) At first this book seems like a simple alien invasion with a little interspecies love gone wrong subplot, set in author Cadwell Turnbull’s native US Virgin Islands. Not an unusual story, but set in an unusual(for sci-fi) place. An alien race called the Ynaa descend on Water Island in a conch-shell shapedContinue reading “[REVIEW] The Lesson, Cadwell Turnbull”

[REVIEW] In Search of Kazakhstan: The Land That Disappeared, by Christopher Robbins

(This book is also published under the title Apples Are From Kazakhstan). ⭐ star out of 5. ⠀🗺⠀This is a weird one. I appreciated this book–it’s a travelogue of two years spent exploring Kazakhstan–but I didn’t like it at all. It did a great job selling me on how fascinating Kazakhstan and its history are,Continue reading “[REVIEW] In Search of Kazakhstan: The Land That Disappeared, by Christopher Robbins”

[REVIEW] When My Name Was Keoko, By Linda Sue Park

(Buy it HERE.) This middle-grade book by Newbery-medal-winning Korean-American author Linda Sue Park explores an episode of history that seems curiously underexposed, if my own world history and Asian history classes in school are any indication. When My Name Is Keoko is set during the oppressive Japanese occupation of Korea in the 1940s. Pause forContinue reading “[REVIEW] When My Name Was Keoko, By Linda Sue Park”