A great thing has happened: I’m all caught up on book reviews. Yeahie me! Thing is, I have nothing else planned, so here’s a book tag.
I was tagged by the wonderful Rae at Rae’s Reads and Reviews for the Black Blogger Book Tag, which is actually the Black Booktuber Tag created by Blkandsapphicreads. But since I’m a book blogger — Black Blogger Book Tag it is.
Tell us a little bit about yourself!
Umm, well. What can I say? I started blogging a long time ago so that I can chat about books with people as interested in books as me, but I only started to take blogging seriously a couple years ago.
I go by Zezee on here and other social media channels I use that’s associated with my blog, but that’s not my name. I was born and raised in Jamaica before moving to the U.S. in my teens, so… as of right now, I’ve spent a little over half my life living in the U.S. I read just about everything, but I love fantasy novels and zombie movies and am SO hooked on Kingdom, the South Korean TV show on Netflix, right now.
Who’s a Black author you love that a lot of people don’t know about?
Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi
I read Makumbi’s Kintu about two years ago and loved it. It’s a family saga set in Uganda about the cursed Kintu clan. The story opens in the year 2004 but jumps to 1750 to show us how the Kintu clan became cursed. As the story leads up to the present, we see how Uganda changes over the years. It’s such a good read! And it’s the only book I’ve read so far by Makumbi, but I have a copy of her A Girl Is a Body of Water (which is also titled the First Woman), which I hope to get to eventually. I just don’t see many bloggers and vloggers talking about her (then again, I do follow a lot of fantasy bloggers so…).
Favorite book about the Black experience:
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
I consider it a modern classic. It’s historical fiction about two sisters from Ghana, one sold into slavery and one who became wife to an overseer, I believe. The story follows their descendants and each chapter focuses on a different member of their family.
First of all, this is a great, well-written book. It’s a family saga that wraps up in 300 pages, and it does a great job of tapping into various facets of Black experience and Black history. I highly recommend it to everyone and believe it should be required reading.
Favorite book by a Black author:
A hard choice. There’s Homegoing and Kintu, both of which I’ve mentioned above, and there’s also —
salt. By Nayyirah Waheed
It’s a poetry collection about Black female experiences. I’m not a fan of poetry. High-school AP English classes spoiled it for me and now I hate it. But salt snuck in and made me love it. Here are two of the poems:
you broke the ocean in
half to be here.
only to meet nothing that wants you.
— immigrant
~
take the art.
slice it from their skin.
leave the color behind.
— flower crowns and bob marley t-shirts
Recommend a Black + queer book.
Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James
Marlon James is one of my favorite authors, although I’ve only read two books by him, lol. The first book I read was The Book of Night Women, which is historical fiction set on a plantation in Jamaica. I loved that book and decided that he’s my favorite author after finishing it.
Although I didn’t like Black Leopard, Red Wolf as much, it was a good read because James is a very talented author. Black Leopard, Red Wolf is a fantasy novel about a man called Tracker searching for a kidnapped prince. The story is violent, dark, and gory and quite difficult to get through in the first couple chapters, but it gets more and more interesting as it goes on. James drew on several African folklores to create the fantastic world it’s set in. A queer romantic relationship develops in it. (I’m being vague to avoid spoiling things.)
Recommend a book with a Black person on the cover.
Dread Nation by Justina Ireland
It’s one of few recent YA novels I’ve read and loved — it’s on my favorites list. It’s alt-historical fiction set shortly after the Civil War. Those who died during the war became zombies, so children of African and Native American descendant are sent to schools to be trained to defend rich White folks.
I really enjoyed reading this because the protagonist is feisty and a bad-ass, and there are ZOMBIES!!! 😀 I need to read the second book.
Recommend a book by a Black author that makes you happy.
Umm… I don’t think I’ve read a book by a Black author that has made me happy, but here’s one that is light-hearted:
Rocket Says Look Up! by Nathan Bryon, illus. by Dapo Adeola
It’s a children’s picture book about a girl who wants to become an astronaut when she grows up and is eager to see a comet that will pass over her area. It’s a nice story and the illustrations are fun.
Talk about a book by a Black author that’s coming in 2021.
The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris
It’s a thriller that’s slated to be published in June. I actually received an ARC of it from one of my jobs, so I can’t wait to dig in.
Tag some Black book bloggers!
Well, I’m not tagging anyone, but here are some Black book bloggers to check out.
Lovely post – I definitely want to check out Homegoing so thanks for highlighting that one – it sounds like something I would really enjoy.
Lynn 😀
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Certainly give it a try. It’s worth it.
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Congrats on the catch up! I don’t even blog anymore and I’m still behind on reviews 🤣
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🤣🤣🤣 that’s hilarious!
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I just added Homegoing to my TBR, looks like a book well worth reading. Any chance you’ve seen the film, One Cut of the Dead? It’s a Japanese film about a crew filming a really low budget zombie movie. If you haven’t seen it but decide to, don’t stop watching, stick with it. I was about to stop not that far into it, thinking this is just so incredibly low budget to the point of being bad, but I kept watching and by the end really enjoyed the film. A slightly new take (for me) on the genre.
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It is! I hope Homegoing goes well for you too. Some peeps had difficulty with the format since each chapter focuses on a different chapter, but I thought of them as connected short stories and that helped.
Thanks for much the zombie movie rec!! I haven’t watched it, but I’ve seen it mentioned somewhere before or someone recommended it to me… I’ll check it out. I was looking for more zombie flicks to watch.
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Love this tag. I really need to read Dread Nation–it’s in my TBR but I haven’t gotten around to it yet (story of almost every book in my TBR womp womp).
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Lol! Same here! So many books…
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Hi Zezee,
I really enjoyed reading this post and learning about some of your favourite books by Black authors. Thanks for sharing!
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Glad you liked it 🙂
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Thank you for the tag! I need to make Homegoing a priority this year. I started it and enjoyed it, but never finished it. I’m not a big poetry person either but I have Salt on my TBR. I hear it’s so good!
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You’re welcome! 🙂
Homegoing is worth it. It’s such a great read! Some folks don’t like it because it comes across as a bit choppy since each chapter focuses on someone new, but thinking of it as a book of connected short stories may help.
And Salt is another one that’s certainly worth the read.
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I love tags like this where I get to know the blogger behind the screen. I have Homegoing on my TBR shelf. It’s high on my priority list because it sounds brilliant.
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Oh it is so brilliant! Hope it goes well for you.
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Love the recommended titles–I think you finally convinced me on Homegoing, I’ve been on the fence about putting it on my TBR. Great post! 🙂
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I’m glad I did 🙂 I’d held out on it too because of the hype before finally trying it and loving it.
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Tag, Im it! 😀 I’ll start working on it! Thanks!
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Awesome! 😀
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What a fantastic tag! This certainly added another pile of books to my TBR!
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Am glad it did 🙂
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Homegoing is one of my favourite books, and also the first book I read by a Black author. After discovering Yaa Gyasi I started reading more Black authors, so I’m on an exciting journey out of my “literature bubble” 🙂
You mentioned that you received an ARC from one of your jobs – may I ask what job you have (what industry)?
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Oh cool. I heard Gyasi’s second book is just as great.
I sometimes work at a bookstore. We get ARCs sometimes so I got lucky with these.
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Thank you for the answer! 😀 Have a lovely day!
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Thanks! Hope you have a wonderful day too. 🙂
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