Name of the book: The Chaos
Author: Nalo Hopkinson
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books
What's the book about? "Sixteen-year-old Scotch struggles to fit in—at home she’s the perfect daughter, at school she’s provocatively sassy, and thanks to her mixed heritage, she doesn’t feel she belongs with the Caribbeans, whites, or blacks. And even more troubling, lately her skin is becoming covered in a sticky black substance that can’t be removed."
Why am I reading the book? Nalo Hopkinson is a gifted writer. She knows how to combine psychological insight with just the right detail to keep you reading. YA Lit is a new genre for her, and she is pitch perfect in capturing adolescent angst.
Quote from the book:
"I tried not to listen to my own voice, to how off my accent sounded. Half Jamaica. Pretend Creole. If I didn’t watch myself. I turned “batty” into “baddy” too."
Where to buy: http://amzn.to/LialPR
Stephen Narain, Kelly Baker Josephs, and I are also discussing the novel @loveaxe: http://loveaxe.wordpress.com/
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THE CHAOS (reviewed on March 1, 2012) by Kirkus Reviews.
Noted for her fantasy and science fiction for adults, Hopkinson jumps triumphantly to teen literature.
Scotch’s womanly build and mixed heritage (white Jamaican dad, black American mom) made her the target of small-town school bullies. Since moving to Toronto, she’s found friends and status. Now both are threatened by the mysterious sticky black spots on her skin (she hides them under her clothes but they’re growing). When a giant bubble appears at an open-mic event, Scotch dares her brother, Rich, to touch it. He disappears, a volcano rises from Lake Ontario and chaos ripples across city and world, transforming reality in ways bizarre and hilarious, benign and malignant. A lesbian folksinger with Tamil roots becomes a purple triangle with an elephant’s trunk; jelly beans grow teeth; buried streams resurface. Scotch searches for Rich across a surreal, sensual cityscape informed by Caribbean and Russian folklore. Although what they represent and where they come are open to interpretation, the manifestations are real to everyone and must be dealt with. Hopkinson opens her YA debut conventionally but soon finds her own path, creating a unique vocabulary with which to explore and express personal identity in its myriad forms and fluidity. Anything but essentialist, she captures her characters in the act of becoming.
Rich in voice, humor and dazzling imagery, studded with edgy ideas and wildly original, this multicultural mashup—like its heroine—defies category. (Fantasy. 12 & up)
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WINNERS OF FIRST CARL BRANDON SOCIETY AWARDS ANNOUNCED
Awards ceremony Sunday, May 28, 8:45 p.m. at WisCon 30, Madison, WI, USA
Madison, WI – Walter Mosley and Susan Vaught are winners of the debut awards from the Carl Brandon Society recognizing excellence and diversity in speculative fiction. Each winner will receive $1,000 and a trophy at a ceremony held at WisCon 30 in Madison, WI.
Mosley is awarded the Carl Brandon Parallax Award for his young adult novel, 47. The jury deemed this work "a powerful, moving work appropriate for young adult readers and yet a good read for adults" with writing that "shows beauty in the depiction of people of great courage, character and creativity in the midst of impossible circumstances."
Vaught is awarded the Carl Brandon Kindred Award for her young adult novel, Stormwitch , praised by a juror as "a fine work … written as a young adult novel, it works for adults as well."
The CBS Parallax Award recognizes works of speculative fiction created by people of color. The CBS Kindred Award recognizes works of speculative fiction dealing with issues of race and ethnicity; CBS Kindred award writers may be of any ethnic group.
CBS Parallax award jurors were Celu Amberstone, Steven Barnes, Karin Lowachee, MJ Hardman and Jennifer Stevenson. CBS Kindred award jurors were Jewelle Gomez, Ian K. Hagemann, Ursula K. Le Guin, Debbie Notkin and Cecilia Tan.
Each jury also released a shortlist of recommended works; juror commentary for each has been provided in a separate attachment (complete short and long lists will be available at http://www.carlbrandon.org.
Carl Brandon Society Parallax Award Shortlist
Ø Banker, Ashok, Prince of Ayodhya (Penguin India)
Ø Buckell, Tobias , Toy Planes (Nature, Oct. 13, 2005)
Ø Butler, Octavia E. , Fledgling (Seven Stories Press)
Ø Chaponda, Daliso , Trees of Bone (Apex Science Fiction and Horror Digest, #3)
Ø Douglas, Marcia , Marie-Ma (Femspec, Vol. 6, #1)
Ø Goto, Hiromi, Nostalgia. (Nature, Sept. 1, 2005)
Ø Jemisin, N.K., Cloud Dragon Skies (Strange Horizons, Aug. 1, 2005)
Ø Jennings, A.H., Owasa (Farthing, July, 2005)
Ø Johnson, Alaya Dawn . Shard of Glass (Strange Horizons, Feb. 14, 2005)
Ø Khan, Ahmed, The Meaning of Life and Other Clichés (Another Realm, March, 2005)
Ø Nyoka, Gail, Mella and the N'anga: An African Tale (Sumach Press)
Ø Okorafor-Mbachu, Nnedimma , Zahrah the Windseeker. (Houghton Mifflin)
Ø Shawl, Nisi, Wallamelon (Aeon Magazine, #3)
Ø Singh, Vandana, The Tetrahedron. (Intranova, March 15, 2005)
Carl Brandon Society Kindred Award Shortlist
Ø Buckell, Tobias, Toy Planes (Nature, Oct. 13, 2005)
Ø Butler, Octavia E. , Fledgling ((Seven Stories Press)
Ø Chaponda, Daliso , Trees of Bone (Apex Science Fiction and Horror Digest, #3)
Ø Gilks, Marg, Before the Altar on The Feast of All Souls (Tesseracts 9)
Ø Mosley, Walter, 47 (Little, Brown)
Ø Okorafor-Mbachu, Nnedimma, Zahrah the Windseeker (Houghton Mifflin )
Ø Williams, Liz, La Gran Muerte (Asimov's Science Fiction, April 2005)
The Carl Brandon Society began in 1997 at WisCon 23 as an informal gathering of people dedicated to addressing the representation of people of color in speculative fiction. It is named after the fictional black fan "Carl Brandon, Jr.," who was created in the mid-1950s by Terry Carr and Peter Graham, just as the Tiptree Award is named after writer Alice Sheldon's pseudonym "James Tiptree, Jr." Much as Alice Sheldon played with concepts of gender in her writing as Tiptree, so did Carr and Graham challenge concepts of race when writing as Brandon.
Among its activities, the society administers the Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship Fund, which enables writers of color to attend one of the Clarion writing workshops where the acclaimed writer got her start.
As speculative fiction increases in diversity, the Carl Brandon Society will work to raise awareness of issues of race, ethnicity and culture within this genre we all love, fostering a needed dialog.
We have many ways for you to become directly involved, and our membership is open to all ethnicities. Visit our website, http://www.carlbrandon.org for more information.
