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Howdy!

Welcome to my course blog for Lit 345: Horror, Fantasy, and Science Fiction. I'll be sharing my musings on any of the readings done for the course, so stay tuned.

Until next time!

Squish

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NEW WEIRD: Wilder Girls by Rory Power (Novel)

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CONTEMPORARY URBAN FANTASY: Labyrinth Lost by Zoraida Cordova (Novel)

As a writer, reading is the most important thing that can be done to improve your craft. Provides a richer well from which to draw (try saying that five times fast). For a long time, I wasn’t reading. Nothing quite gripped me after I stopped reading Rick Riordan’s work religiously. (Funny how he has come up by name twice in a row.) I struggled to get through any long-form fiction until, ironically enough, Aru Shah and the End of Time. What broke me out? The decision to, as much as possible, stop reading fiction written by cisgender heterosexual white people. A choice that has upped my game significantly, both in terms of reading and writing.      Even more so than Aru Shah, Zoraida Cordova’s Labyrinth Lost was the first book that I read in years that felt like the literature that made me care about writing and storytelling. It was adventurous, provocative, and inspiring in all of the ways that I want my YA to be.      Labyrinth Lost follows Alejandra Morti...
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WITCHES AND WOMEN: Akata Witch (What Sunny Saw in the Flames) by Nnedi Okorafor (Novel)

Before sinking my teeth into Akata Witch , I want it on the record that the book’s title is different in Nigeria and in the UK because of the fact that the word akata is an anti-African-American slur more or less translating to “cotton picker.” Little meaning would be changed if the title were “Nigger Witch," an anti-Black slur. All that is to say, hearing that repeatedly made me itchy. But, as an akata, I will continue using that version of the title in my writing.      Comparing Akata Witch to Harry Potter feels almost like a disservice to Nnedi Okorafor’s work. Mostly because I actively resist the idea of comparing an Author of Color’s work to a white author, basically saying ”it’s this thing but brown.” (Which, by the way, is what everyone seems to say about Roshani Chokshi’s Gilded Wolves , calling it a brown Six of Crows .) It puts an idea on the table that fails to really encompass the depth that Akata Witch goes to. For example, one of the biggest things that...
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