hello! as in the title above, want books like this. i am a woc (southeast asian) and became tired of not properly being exposed to books that only discuss about racial identity and the connecting traumas. booktok sucks you know?
i unfortunately do not have many books that come into mind as a reference. i do like character driven and very dimensional characters. mainly the kind where i can love them and pull my hair out because of them.
i also loveee dialogue so much. so any stories with great dialogue would be great!
by cathartic_cart
4 Comments
I’d provisionally recommend Nalo Hopkinson’s “Midnight Robber.” It’s very, *very* rooted in the Black Caribbean experience but Black folks and aliens are the only ones on the planet, so racialized trauma isn’t really a theme here.
(other kinds of trauma on the other hand…)
Binti by Nnedi Okorafor might work for you. Far-future sf setting.
Here are some I have liked:
* The earlier works of Samuel R. Delany. My personal favourites are Babel-17 and Nova. Babel-17 is pulp sci fi. I don’t know if the characters will quite be substantial enough for you, but I thought it was really ahead of its time. The dialogue in Nova is very melodramatic and definitely puts the “opera” in space opera. Nova is more literary, serious, and the characters are much deeper.
* The Xenogenesis series by Octavia E. Butler. This author has a very bleak and serious writing style, but I think she does a great job writing characters and stories with fascinating ideas. Most of this author’s writing does feature racialized and identity-based trauma, but not this one, as far as I recall.
* New Suns 2 edited by Nisi Shawl. An anthology of stories each by a different author. Some are about race and identity-based trauma, but most aren’t. This is perhaps the most consistently amazing anthology by different authors I’ve ever read.
* Rakesfall by Vajra Chandrasekera
* The Jinn-Bot of Shantiport by Samit Basu. A fun sci fi fantasy adventure.
* The Butcher of the Forest by Premee Mohamed
* The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw. I liked this one, but many disliked the prose.
Imaro by Charlie Saunders. Its just a conan/tarzan style pulp power fantasy but centering a bloke from an african style tribe. It doesnt care about accuracy, it doesnt care about racialism but it does look at tribalism and community quite a bit. Honestly imho its as good or better than other sword and sorcery stuff.