New Crayons is a meme in which you share what multicultural books you got for the week. They can be gifts, from the library, bookstore, etc. The only requirement is that you spotlight the multicultural titles. Created by Color Online
Before we get to the books, have you heard about the Carl Brandon Society's Octavia Butler Scholarship? No?
The Carl Brandon Society announces a prize drawing to support The Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship Fund.
The Carl Brandon Society, an organization dedicated to racial and ethnic diversity in speculative fiction, will hold a prize drawing of five eReaders to benefit the Butler Scholarship, a fund that sends two emerging writers of color to the Clarion writers workshops annually.
In keeping with the Society’s support of literature from and about people of color, the prizes include five eReaders: two Barnes & Noble Nooks, two Kobo Readers, and one Alex eReader from Spring Design. Each eReader will come pre-loaded with books, short stories and essays by writers of color from the speculative fiction field. Writers include: N. K. Jemisin, Nisi Shawl, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Terence Taylor, Ted Chiang, Shweta Narayan, Chesya Burke, Moondancer Drake, Saladin Ahmed, Rochita Loenen-Ruiz and more.
“Octavia wanted everyone to enjoy the powerful stories writers of color can produce when we write speculative fiction, so this drawing would have made her very happy. It’s a wonderful win-win-win event, raising money for a scholarship that helps writers of color while sharing their creations with the world,” said Carl Brandon Society co-founder Nisi Shawl, winner of the 2008 James Tiptree, Jr. Award.
“It’s so appropriate that booksellers are supporting the development of the next generation of writers, with the next generation of reading devices. This fundraiser will help ensure that great and thought-provoking literature will be coming out of our community for a long time,” added Claire Light, CBS Vice President.
“We’re thankful for the generosity shown by Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Spring Design in donating the devices for this drawing,” said K. Tempest Bradford, Special Events volunteer. “Thanks to them we can offer some of the best eReading devices available.”
The drawing’s tickets will cost one dollar US ($1) and can be purchased at http://carlbrandon.org/drawing.html. Entrants may purchase an unlimited number of tickets, which will be available from November 5, 2010 through November 22nd, 2010. Sales will close at 11:59PM EDT on November 22nd. Winners will be drawn randomly from a digital “hat” and announced online.
To purchase tickets, read details about the eReaders, or to learn more about the Carl Brandon Society, please visit carlbrandon.org/drawing.html.
About the Carl Brandon Society
Carl Brandon Society’s mission is to increase racial and ethnic diversity in the production of and audience for speculative fiction. We envision a world in which speculative fiction, about complex and diverse cultures from writers of all backgrounds, is used to understand the present and model possible futures; and where people of color are full citizens in the community of imagination and progress.
About the Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship
Established in 2006 after the author’s passing, the Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship provides funds to writers of color accepted to the Clarion and Clarion West writers workshops. The scholarship has been awarded every year since 2007 to a total of seven students. The fund allows the Carl Brandon Society to further the author’s legacy by providing the same experience/opportunity that Octavia had to future generations of new writers of color. In addition to her stint as a student at the original Clarion Writers Workshop in Pennsylvania in 1970, Octavia taught several times for Clarion West in Seattle, Washington, and Clarion in East Lansing, Michigan (now located in San Diego, California), giving generously of her time to a cause she believed in.
So hurry and enter!
A Gift
26a by Diana Evans
In the attic room at 26 Waifer Avenue, identical twins Georgia and Bessi Hunter share nectarines and forge their identities, while escaping from the sadness and danger that inhabit the floors below. But innocence lasts for only so long—and dreams, no matter how vivid and powerful, cannot slow the relentless incursion of the real world.
-Thank you Tricia! It sounds really really good, biracial (half Nigerian) twins. I haven't read much about twins so this is new. Although I've heard the last few pages are tough to get through. Oh boy.
Bought- I am not having any more contests or buying any more books for awhile. I spend waayy too much money! (I know, I know, I always say that).
For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf by Ntozake Shange
From its inception in California in 1974 to its highly acclaimed critical success at Joseph Papp’s Public Theater and on Broadway, the Obie Award–winning for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf has excited, inspired, and transformed audiences all over the country. Passionate and fearless, Shange’s words reveal what it meant to be of color and female in the twentieth century. First published in 1975, when it was praised by The New Yorker for “encompassing . . . every feeling and experience a woman has ever had,” for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf will be read and performed for generations to come. Here is the complete text, with stage directions, of a groundbreaking dramatic prose poem written in vivid and powerful language that resonates with unusual beauty in its fierce message to the world.
-Do I even have to state why I want to read this? I'm probably going to see the movie and I want to compare the two.
Rain Is Not My Indian Name by Cynthia Leitich Smith
The next day was my fourteenth birthday, and I'd never kissed a boy -- domestic style or French. Right then, I decided to get myself a teen life.
Cassidy Rain Berghoff didn't know that the very night she decided to get a life would be the night that Galen would lose his.
It's been six months since her best friend died, and up until now Rain has succeeded in shutting herself off from the world. But when controversy arises around her aunt Georgia's Indian Camp in their mostly white midwestern community, Rain decides to face the outside world again -- at least through the lens of her canera.
Hired by her town newspaper to photograph the campers, Rain soon finds that she has to decide how involved She wants to become in Indian Camp. Does she want to keep a professional distance from the intertribal community she belongs to? And just how willing is she to connect with the campers after her great loss?
-I adore Cynthia Leitich Smith (her work and her personality) so I'm really looking forward to reading this. And I need to start reviewing more books by/about Native Americans.
Operation Redwood by S. Terrell French
Clandestine e-mail exchanges, secret trips, fake press releases, and a tree-house standoff are among the clever stunts and pranks the kid heroes pull off in this exciting ecological adventure.
"Sibley Carter is a moron and a world-class jerk!" When Julian Carter-Li intercepts an angry e-mail message meant for his high-powered uncle, it sets him on the course to stop an environmental crime!
His uncle's company plans to cut down some of the oldest and last California redwood trees, and its up to Julian, and a ragtag group of friends, to figure out a way to stop them. This action-packed debut novel shows the power of determined individuals, no matter what their age, to stand up to environmental wrongdoing.
-When Steph Su says this is the best MG novel she's read in awhile, you have to get it. It already sounded cool, poc main character combined with an environmental mystery but her ringing endoresement sealed the deal.
All summaries from Amazon.com
Other Links
I made a list for the holidays: the best multicultural books with male main characters (and yes I haven't read three of the books I recommended but they've been recommended to me and I intend on reading them before 2010 ends).
Also, the Read in Color Holiday Book Exchange was spotlighted at Buy Books for the Holidays. If you haven't signed up yet, please do! (and I have a button! It will be revealed soon).
What did you get this week??
Thanks for posting about this :) We appreciate every signal boost. Today is the last day of the drawing and we're hoping to see one last surge!
ReplyDelete