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Book Review: Unquiet Spirits: Essays by Asian Women in Horror edited by Lee Murray and Angela Yuriko Smith, foreward by Lisa Kroger

Cover art for Unquiet Spirits: Essays by Asian Women in Horror edited by Lee Murray and Angela Yuriko Smith

Unquiet Spirits: Essays by Asian Women in Horror edited by Lee Murray and Angela Yuriko Smith, with a foreword by Lisa Kroger.

Black Spot Books Nonfiction, 2023

ISBN-13: 978-1645481300

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition

( Bookshop.org | Amazon.com )

 

I read an uncorrected ARC of this book.

 

Unquiet Spirits is a collection of 24 personal essays by women across the Asian diaspora, grounded in the authors’ family history, relationship to their culture, and the supernatural.

 

One of the takeaways from reading this is that the Asian diaspora is far from monolithic. Each of the authors has a distinct background and set of circumstances: one certainly cannot speak for all.

 

Some of the authors include Nadia Bulkin, who is Javanese-American, Geneve Flynn, who is a Chinese-Australian born in Malaysia, Rena Mason, who is a first-generation immigrant to America of Thai-Chinese descent, and Tori Eldridge. who was born in Hawaii and is of Hawaiian, Korean, and Norwegian descent, all of whom approached their essays differently.

 

The diversity of the authors and their choices of what each individual focused on is what really drew me in. That I read almost 300 pages in tiny print on a PDF is a testament to the quality of the writing.

 

I learned a lot from these essays: in Lee Murray’s essay on displaced spirits I learned that Chinese immigrants to Australia expected to be returned to China for burial, or become hungry ghosts, and from Nadia Bulkin’s essay that the terms “amok” and “latah” originated in Indonesia, to name just a few. The authors wrote about growing up feeling out of place, feeling unwilling or unable to meet expectations about filial duty, marriage, and motherhood. They wrote about hungry ghosts, fox demons, and yokai
They wrote about finding and using their voices.

 

I read this a few essays at a time. There’s a lot to think about in each one, so I think that’s a good way to approach this book. I highly recommend taking the time to do so.

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

Posted on January 7, 2023 by , Reply

Book Review: Women in Horror Month: The Year I Flew Away by Marie Arnold

(  Bookshop.org  |  Amazon.com )

The Year I Flew Away  by Marie Arnold

Versify, 2021

ISBN-13 : 978-0358272755

Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition, audiobook

 

Ten-year-old Gabrielle has left her home, family, and friends in Haiti to live in America with family she barely knows. Arriving in New York City in the winter, she is being bullied, having a hard time learning and understanding English and fitting in. She knows better than to trust a witch, but determined to be accepted, she accepts three slices of mango from the witch Lady Lydia. Each piece Gabrielle eats will grant a wish, but take something else away.

Gabrielle is a character who squeezes everything she can out of life. At the beginning of the book, she is mischievous and playful, active, curious, imaginative, loving, strong-minded, and brave. Marie Arnold sets her story to be descriptive of all the senses: flavors, textures, colors, and smells.  As much as Gabrielle loves her home, there is still poverty, hunger, and violence, and her parents, unable to get papers for themselves, decide to send her to America on her own, to stay with her uncle’s family. The qualities that serve Gabrielle well in Haiti, though, aren’t appreciated or apparent in New York City.

When she meets the witch, Lady Lydia, Gabrielle is wary, but after turning Lady Lydia away several times, Gabrielle finally decides she wants to belong enough to accept the consequences. Lady Lydia warns Gabrielle that if she eats all three pieces of the mango, she will have to give her essence to Lady Lydia. Gabrielle wishes for perfect English, and gains friends (Carmen and a talking rat named Rocky) but she also loses understanding of her home language, Haitian Creole, meaning she can no longer speak to or understand her family. What will the next wish take away? Gabrielle, along with help from her friends, must save herself and her family from Lady Lydia and figure out how to balance fitting in as an American with pride in her Haitian identity.

Arnold does a really wonderful job depicting the varying characters in the book, and addresses skillfully tough issues like racism and anti-immigrant sentiment. She presents a rounded picture of Gabrielle’s aunt and uncle, Carmen’s large family, and even the girl who bullies her. The tricky Lady Lydia is dramatically and vividly depicted, as is her nearly completed and disturbing spell. This is an entertaining, thoughtful, witchy, #OwnVoices book for middle grade students, and although the protagonist is a little young, could also be enjoyed by middle schoolers. Highly recommended for ages 8–12.

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

Posted on February 7, 2021 by , Reply

Book Review: Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas

cover art for Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas

Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas ( Bookshop.org  |  Amazon.com )

Swoon Reads, 2020

ISBN-13 : 978-1250250469

Available:  Hardcover, Kindle edition, audiobook

 

Yadriel is a Latinx trans boy whose community lives in the cemetery and serves Lady Death. When they are fifteen, boys are presented to Lady Death for a blessing to become a brujo and receive a portaje, a dagger that allows them to draw blood to direct their magic so they can cut the ties between spirits and this world to send them to the afterlife before they become malevolent. At the same age, girls who go through the ceremony and receive the blessing become brujas and are presented with a rosary as their portaje, that allows them to heal using blood.  As a trans boy, Yadriel did not go through the girls’ ceremony as he was expected to do, but was not allowed to go through the boys’ ceremony to become a brujo because the community does not accept that he is a boy. Impatient to prove himself, Yadriel secretly goes through the ceremony to become a brujo.

When his cousin Miguel goes missing and is suspected dead, Yadriel searches for him in an old church on the cemetery property. Finding a necklace with a medallion, Yadriel makes a guess that it might be a way to summon Miguel’s spirit. Instead, he accidentally summons a teenage troublemaker from his high school, Julian, who refuses to move on to the afterlife until he knows if his friends are okay. Yadriel has to resolve things quickly and quietly, before his father finds out and Dia de los Muertos begins. There is something much more sinister and terrifying going on than the limited blood magic practiced by the brujx community.

Thomas interweaves issues and messages related to and positive representations of trans, gay, and lesbian characters in general and specifically in Latinx communities. Lady Death and the mythology of Yadriel’s community is not limited to one nationality– immigrants from many countries in the Latinx diaspora participate, and issues related to immigration (like whether the individuals are documented) curtail the options of the members in seeking help from the police, and this is all well-integrated into a unique storyline. There’s also a sweet love story of the kind that LGBTQ+ teens deserve to see more of. The only disorienting moment is near the end when there is a sudden switch in point of view from Yadriel to Julian, but that’s a minor quibble in a high-quality story that can sweep you out of the everyday with its magic. Highly recommended.

 

Contains: Violence, blood, attempted murder

 

Posted on November 29, 2020 by , Reply
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