Grab Bag Reads!

Some people say that reading graphic novels is not reading, I disagree! Lucy Knisley’s graphic novels about her life are engaging and well-written, especially An Age of License. Remember when you were a young to mid-twenty something and trying to figure out where you were going in life and what you wanted out of it? She captures this perfectly in An Age of License where she describes the joys and woes of this tumultuous stage of life as she travels around Europe.

It’s the nineties again! Stray City by Chelsea Johnson is set in Portland, Oregon and follows the post-break up struggles of Andrea Morales. Andrea is twenty-four and a struggling artist, estranged from her strict Catholic parents because she is gay. Her ex-girlfriend Flynn broke her heart and Andrea feels like her friends don’t really understand the place she is in emotionally. She starts hanging out with a drummer from a band, Ryan, just as friends until a drunken night leads to Andrea getting pregnant. Ten years later her daughter Lucia wants to learn about the Dad she has never known.

Set in a post-apocalyptic Sudan, Onyesonwu, is a fearless girl, raised in the desert by her mother until age six. She wishes she could be a normal girl of Jawhir, the city the settled in, unfortunately Onyesonwu will never be normal. She has strong magical powers, some inherited from the man who raped her mother and some from her mother, Najeeba. She is ostracized from the rest of the village because she is Ewu, a child of mixed-race and usually the product of violence. The local sorcerer Aro refuses to teach her how to use her powers because she is a girl. However, after years of demanding Aro to reconsider he finally relents after Onyesonwu accidentally raises the dead. When Onyesonwu decides to find and kill the man who raped her mother she might change the course of history along the way. Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor, is more than a teen novel, and more than Science-Fiction, it brings to light topics that are rarely talked about and I look forward to reading more titles by this author.