Review: Into the Beautiful North by Luis Alberto Urrea

This was my final choice for my summer book club. I chose it because it seemed so unusual and different and I suspected that it would inspire some fabulous conversation. That might have been the case but I had to miss the meeting because of a little thing called my daughter's dance tryouts. Would that I could have been with friends discussing this charming, well-written novel instead!

Nayeli is a young woman who works in a taqueria in Tres Camarones, a coastal village in Mexico too poor to be of interest to most people, attacting a few surfers occasionally. But then the village's remoteness and its lack of men (almost all of whom have gone north to the US) makes it appealing to those involved in the drug trade. With the help of two friends and her entertaining and spunky aunt Irma, Tres Camarones' new mayor, Nayeli concocts a plan to reclaim the village from the criminals. After seeing the movie The Magnificent Seven, Nayeli knows she must go to the US and find seven men to come back to Tres Camarones and defend the people. But this quest is more than just a public service to her village, Nayeli hopes to find her father who has long since disappeared into the US and to bring him home where he belongs.

When Nayeli and her two friends set off on their noble quest, the story really starts cooking along. The girls' travels through Mexico are vivid and not uneventful. After all, what is a noble quest without windmills to overcome? Unfortunately for the girls, the windmills are very often not of their imagining but instead real obstacles to their goal. Getting into the US is not easy and the irony of the matter is that once they are there as illegal immigrants, it will also be illegal for them to try and get back into Mexico. But first they must find seven men who are willing to return with them and then to take back their town.

The characters in the book are vividly written and just plain fun. They are real and entertaining and funny and a delight to spend time reading about. The tone of the book stays fairly light despite the deep and heavy themes of perseverance, illegal immigration, discrimination, poverty, and bravery. But it is this very lightness that allows the reader to think clearly about these loaded political and emotional issues. There is humor galore here and I read much of the book with a smile. Nayeli's strength is apparent to all but herself and she is a totally engaging and appealing main character. A well-constructed, beautifully paced novel, this is a great reading group choice, the adventure and the balanced look at life for illegals in the US make it eminently discussable as well. Because I already know you'll enjoy reading it.

Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy of the book for review.

Review: Petals From the Sky by Mingmei Yip

Meng Ning is finally going to see if her vocation is to become a Buddhist nun like her mentor, the lovely nun who saved her life so many years ago. Finally all but finished with her doctorate, Meng Ning signs up for a retreat to test her desire to enter the Empty Gate, forsaking love and marriage. But a fire breaks out in the convent and she is fortuitously rescued by a handsome American doctor, igniting in her a seed of doubt about her own path. More than a traditional love story, this is the tale of a woman discovering herself and her own desires.

As Meng Ning and Michael come to know each other better, their characters change fairly significantly and in ways that make them seem to be completely removed from who they were at the beginning of the book. Although Meng Ning's decision whether to marry Michael or to turn her back on family and the material world is a serious one, her constant waffling makes for tough reading. And the plot is completely anachronistic when she travels to New York and meets Michael's "friends." Certainly, Yip has done a reasonable job portraying a woman who has been hovering without making a decision for more than 10 years but there was just something a little off-putting here. The descriptions of the Buddhist life, its necessary intersections with the outside, material world, and the culture clash that is inevitable in a cross-cultural relationship are all interesting but they just can't quite carry the novel.

Thanks to LibraryThing Early Reviewers for sending me a copy of the book to review.

People of Color Reading Challenge

The People of Color Reading Challenge is another of those challenges floating out there in the blogging world that I have meant to sign up for and yet have not gotten off my lazy can to do it officially. I actually think I may have read enough to have completed Level 1 already so I definitely think I should sign up. I'm all about attainable accomplishments. ;-)

The rules are as follows:

For this challenge all you need to do is grab the button from the side bar and add it to a post saying you are committed to reading POC authors and characters in this coming year. You do not have to pick your books now but you have to sign up to a level of how many you will read. Leave a comment to your post stating how many books you will read this year and tada automagically you are done.

Level 1: Read 1-3 POC books
Level 2. Read 4-6 POC books
Level 3. Read 7-9 POC books
Level 4. Read 10-15 POC books
Level 5. Read 16-25 POC books

Leaving out my January reads, since I have no idea if I read them after the stated Jan. 19th start date (the challenge runs Jan. 19th through Dec. 31st), so far I've read:

The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories by Charles Chesnutt
Someone Knows My Name by Lawrence Hill
The Weight of Heaven by Thrity Umrigar
The Consequences of Love by Sulaiman Addonia
The Writing on My Forehead by Nafia Haji

That means I am firmly into level 2 (and I could have more but these are just the ones that I am pretty confident are written by people of color without doing any research). Since that it the case, I will shoot for hitting Level 3 or reading 7-9 books that fit the criteria. I have no idea what the next 2-4 books by POC authors will be yet but I'm pretty confident that I'll find some good ones if the above books are anything on which to judge.