Staff Picks

I wouldn't recommend this book to everyone, but if you're into ambiguity, transgressive sexuality, and a plot that doesn't fully resolve, read on. Dhalgren is a wonderfully strange book with amazing worldbuilding and eclectic characters. I read it a few years ago and think of it almost weekly.

 

Publisher's description:

In Bellona, reality has come unglued, and a mad civilization takes root A young half-Native American known as the Kid has hitchhiked from Mexico to the midwestern city Bellona-only something is wrong there...In Bellona, the shattered city, a nameless cataclysm has left reality unhinged. Into this desperate metropolis steps the Kid, his fist wrapped in razor-sharp knives, to write, to love, to wound. So begins Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany's masterwork, which in 1975 opened a new door for what science fiction could mean. A labyrinth of a novel, it raises questions about race, sexuality, identity, and art, but gives no easy answers, in a city that reshapes itself with each step you take...

 

This graphic novel centers around Mia, a teen girl who has recently been assigned as a crew member of a team that rebuilds broken down structures in space. On a Sunbeam is split between two timelines: the first features Mia and her new space crew as they bond and go on missions together throughout space. The second timeline shows Mia in boarding school and falling in love with a fellow classmate named Grace. The reader is forced to make connections between the two timelines to figure out why Mia is now in space with her crew and not in school anymore with her love, Grace. The timelines converge in a thrilling conclusion. This was a wonderful graphic novel. I loved the space setting and science fiction elements. The art style is simple but striking. The outer space imagery is beautifully depicted, and the spacecraft setting is excellently crafted. I loved that it is split in two timelines, one in a boarding school and one aboard a spacecraft, both of which are really fun settings. Mia's crew members all have their own compelling storylines and relationships, and the reader falls in love with all of them. Mia is a lovely, flawed protagonist. She's a little lost and confused, but the reader can't help but root for her. I also found it incredibly interesting that there is never a mention of men in the story at any point. All the characters are in relationships with women, and there seems to be no men in this universe, which is such a unique and interesting detail.

 

Publisher's description:

A ragtag crew travels to the deepest reaches of space, rebuilding beautiful, broken structures to piece the past together. Two girls meet in boarding school and fall deeply in love, only to learn the pain of loss.

 

Find On a Sunbeam in our online catalog.

 

 

In The Adventures of China Iron, Gabriela Cabezón Cámara re-writes Martín Fierro, an epic poem about the founding of Argentina from a feminist, LGBT, postcolonial point of view. Our protagonist is named China (pronounced chee-nah), the Quechua-derived word for an indigenous woman, Iron, which alludes to Fierro. China's personal journey parallels that of the development of early colonial Argentina, but Cabezón Cámara subverts the dominant, genocidal, Euro-centric narrative, asking what if history was inclusive? The book ends in a racially and sexually heterogeneous utopia based on shared understanding and mutual cooperation. Told with humor and sophistication, this joyful and hallucinatory novel suggests that other worlds are not only possible, but that they might exist, hidden in plain sight, right alongside this one.

 

Publisher description: 

This is a riotous romp taking the reader from the turbulent frontier culture of the pampas deep into indigenous territories. It charts the adventures of Mrs. China Iron, Martín Fierro's abandoned wife, in her travels across the pampas in a covered wagon with her new-found friend, soon to become lover, a Scottish woman named Liz. While Liz provides China with a sentimental education and schools her in the nefarious ways of the British Empire, their eyes are opened to the wonders of Argentina's richly diverse flora and fauna, cultures and languages, as well as to its national struggles. After a clash with Colonel Hernández (the author who 'stole' Martín Fierro's poems) and a drunken orgy with gauchos, they eventually find refuge and a peaceful future in a utopian indigenous community, the river-dwelling Iñchiñ people. Seen from an ox-drawn wagon, the narrative moves through the Argentinian landscape, charting the flora and fauna of the Pampas, Gaucho culture, Argentinian nation-building, and British colonial projects.