Favorite diverse reads of 2019: 12/16/19

This list of favorite was drawn from all of the diverse books I read in 2019, including backlist ones. Rather than do a top ten, I'm sharing twelve, a favorite from each month of reading and reviewing.

Black Enough edited by Ibi Zoboi

Black Enough edited by Ibi Zoboi is a collection of seventeen short stories by contemporary Black authors featuring a delightful cross-section of life in America from a Black teen / young adult perspective. It is, hands down, the best short story anthology I've read in the last decade. Read more

The Dragon Thief by Zetta Elliott

The Dragon Thief by Zetta Elliott is the sequel to Dragons in a Bag. One of the dragons is still in New York and needs to be taken to its magical home before it gets too big. To do that, Kavita has to work with Jaxon, if they can find each other. Read more

For a Muse of Fire by Heidi Heilig

For a Muse of Fire by Heidi Heilig is the start of a trilogy set in a fantasy world that draws its influences from the author's Chinese-Hawaiian heritage. The world she has created reminds me of also of Vietnam and Sri Lanka. Read more

Genesis Begins Again by Alicia D. Williams

Genesis Begins Again by Alicia D. Williams is YA contemporary fiction about a black girl struggling to love herself as her family struggles to stay together. The family has been put out four times. House number five seems too good to be true, in a well to do suburb of Detroit with a well funded school for Genesis to attend. Read more

A Good Kind of Trouble by Lisa Moore Ramée

A Good Kind of Trouble by Lisa Moore Ramée is a contemporary middle grade coming of age novel about a Black girl in West Los Angeles. Shayla is twelve and has been in a trio of friends, the United Nations, but now in junior high school they seem to be drifting apart. Read more

Love From A to Z by S.K. Ali

Love From A to Z by S.K. Ali is a YA romance set in Doha, Qatar. The A is Adam, a Canadian born resident returning home after dropping out of university. The Z is Zayneb, a high schooler sent early to her aunt's after being suspended from school because her social science teacher is a xenophobe with an agenda, one that the administration seems willing to overlook. Read more

On the Come Up by Angie Thomas

On the Come Up by Angie Thomas draws from her experience as a teen rapper. Bri wants nothing more than to follow in her father's footsteps and be a rapper. Her mother would prefer she go to college like her brother. Her home life, though, is rocky and there's no guarantee that if she got into college she would be able to afford it. Read more

One Night in Georgia by Celeste O. Norfleet

One Night in Georgia by Celeste O. Norfleet is a historical novel set in 1968 during a road trip from Harlem to Atlanta. Zelda Livingston, tired of being at home with her mother and new stepfather, agrees to let her two college chums drive her down to Atlanta even with her reservations. She's concerned about Veronica's cherry red sports car and how safe driving through the South will be like. Read more

An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon

An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon is set on the HSS Matilda, a generational ship heading towards the Promised Land. The narrative is split between people: Aster, a midwife living in the lower levels — the enslaved levels. The other is Theo, a doctor who has ties to the current head of the ship and is privileged enough to live in the upper levels of the ship. Read more

We Set the Dark on Fire by Tehlor Kay Mejia

We Set the Dark on Fire by Tehlor Kay Mejia is the start of a YA fantasy series set on an island dystopian island built on latinx culture. Medio is a corrupt nation running on the fears of institutionalized classism and xenophobia. Read more

The Weight of the Stars by K. Ancrum

The Weight of the Stars by K. Ancrum is a YA science fiction romance. The set up reminds me of the anime short Voices of a Distant Star (ほしのこえ) (2002). This time, though, it's a female/female romance with a slow burn between narrator Ryann Bird, the orphan daughter of NASA scientists, and Alexandria, the daughter of a woman on a oneway trip into space for a private space company. Read more

Wind/Pinball: Two Novels by Haruki Murakami and translated by Ted Goossen

Wind/Pinball: Two Novels by Haruki Murakami and translated by Ted Goossen is a single volume containing the first two Rat novellas: Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973. I read these two in quick succession after having seen The Night is Short, Walk on Girl which has nothing to do directly with Murakami besides being surreal and Japanese. Read more

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