A haunted house story for the 21st century, INFIDEL follows an American Muslim woman and her multiracial neighbors who move into a building haunted by entities that feed off xenophobia.
Story: Pornsak Pichetshote, art: Aaron Campbell, José Villarrubia
“I got grabbed and detained by cops this morning, but then released (thanks to Samuel and Brenda for being there to de-escalate the cops and for sticking around) for apparently inciting a vehemently anti-refugee crowd.
I was on my way to work and saw tons of banners claiming Trudeau is responsible for the murder of Marissa Shen. For those who don’t know, Marissa Shen was a 13-year old girl who was murdered in Burnaby in 2017. Her murder was devastating, and particularly so in Burnaby (close to my extended family’s place) as it was in Central Park where so many families, especially immigrant families, congregate. A few months ago Ibrahim Ali was charged, and the media has been hyper-focused on the fact that he arrived to Canada as a church-sponsored refugee from Syria.
This has had huge ripple effects. Faith Goldy has been picking up on this. Laura Thompson, who is running to be school trustee as a white supremacist anti-SOGI candidate, was a previous similar rally. I am obviously not a fan of Trudeau, but he’s become the target for letting in ‘too many refugees’ by the fascist white supremacist right by people like Goldy and Thompson and Ibrahim’s migration background – which should not be relevant- is now part of their arsenal. This is part of a frightening global trend with escalating white supremacist rhetoric and policies against refugees esp Muslim refugees in Europe.
I walked by the rally and started talking to a group of people about why they were focused on the refugee process, and explaining how the refugee process is already too stringent, expressing my concern that this fixation on his refugee background has contributed to a strong overall anti-refugee climate (and i know this concretely because i have been talking to progressive churches about sanctuary for a family who are facing deportation and the churches are worried about the hostility and can’t take on sanctuary at this moment), and why weren’t we talking about violence against women and girls and vulnerability to violence as a priority instead.
The conversation is heated and I keep getting baited about ‘supporting murderers’ and my own personal background (am i a mom, a canadian, my ethnicity and religious background)
As soon as media cameras noticed the conversation, the whole rally surrounds me, I can’t physically leave, and they start yelling and baiting me with: (I probably dont have the order of everything right coz it was intense and all in all was around 20 mins or so)
“no bail for murderers’ ’ you support murderers’.”
I respond that I work and am connected to a community reeling from the grief of serial murderers.
“how do you know the pain of a mother, you probably aren’t a mother.”
Yes I am
“Are you a Muslim”
No I am Sikh, but so what if I was.
“Sikhs have created so many religious problems too”
Wow. That’s a fcked up thing to say.
I start to respond more fully to that one, but then loud chanting begins:
“We don’t want a refugee flood.” “More screening for refugees”
There isn’t a flood, Canada accepts less than 0.01 percent of the worlds’ refugees. And aren’t you here for some reason of your own? (the crowd is entirely Chinese folks).
“Are you a refugee? We are hard working Canadian citizens”
A guys spits on me and at me, so I can’t even respond to that one. I move back, the cops move in. Cops tell me I am obstructing, I start to debate with the cops about how that is even possible given that i am surrounded and its public space, then they tell me I am inciting a crowd – a crowd that is literally surrounding me and chanting over me about ‘Don’t support murderers. No bail. Screen refugees’.
More happened in between and the cops grab me, but I was tearing and close to crying at the end. Not from debate or confrontation – that is familiar though never comfortable – but because this is the brutal fucking reality of some immigrants with deeply conservative values that align with capitalism and white supremacy, of working with and supporting women dealing with daily endemic violence and to have a horrific murder of a young girl suddenly become about everything *except* violence against women and girls, of being forced to defend a government policy that is so abyssal to begin with, of not knowing if this one family – or any other family – will be able to get church sanctuary anytime soon because of this huge chill effect, of being overwhelmed by the number of people i know who are in detention right now facing deportation who have a right to be free.
At the end, one woman comes over to talk for bit, we have a decent conversation about the problematic anti-refugee rhetoric and how suddenly the conversation has pivoted to refugees when before he was charged there is some discussion about increased safety for women and girls in the area – which was a more relevant and necessary conversation. We hug and she gives me a flower and asks if I will attend her chinese womens book club that has been talking about this. I say yes and she gets my number. Samuel Holmes graciously encourages her to see the big picture too.
But the intensity and immensity has me shook and I feel even more frustrated at how deep multi racial, cross community, racial justice work and relations is sorely lacking in our city.“
India’s rape crisis has a new female face, but it’s not what you think.
A new comic book, Priya’s Shakti, is making waves in India for its unconventional heroine: a rape victim-turned-superhero who fights gendered violence with the help of the Hindu goddess Parvati.
According to the comic’s website, the storyline focuses on Priya, a mortal woman who experienced a brutal rape and ensuing social stigma and isolation. Inspired by Parvati, Priya breaks her silence and reveals her assault, encouraging people around the world to take action against sexual violence.
Fiction Week Book Rec: Faerie Blood by Angela Korra’ti So I just want to talk about this lesser known gem, Fairie Blood, by Angela Korra’ti. I don’t quite recall how I stumbled upon it, but i’m 100% glad I did.
“I was on my way home from work, biking along the Burke-Gilman trail, when a troll decided to eat my face.”
I was hooked by that first line and just as engrossed through the entire book. It starts off, as you can see, with a troll trying to eat Kendis Thompson’s face.
In fact, there’s all sorts of magical creatures that Kendis can suddenly see and have somehow decided to notice her too, or rather attack her. And it’s because of one thing: her faerie blood is awakening. And now there are dangerous Fae out there who simultaneously want her… and want to kill her.
This book is incredibly well-written and charming and I didn’t want it to end! It’s urban fantasy, with a pleasant current of action and a dash of romance that’s incredibly cute yet chaste (hot protective gentlemanly Scottish dudes…how can you not love that?!) Plus! It’s pretty all around diverse with a cast of PoC characters and also a gay couple, one being an Asian man of color. Oh and Kendis is a Black WoC.
Overall I highly recommend this book for a semi-light, very fun read. Plus Book two is in the works so look out for that!
As for where to buy it, right now the ebook is on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and a few other places for 99 cents!!!
I really do hope ya’ll decide to check Faerie Blood out. It’s incredibly deserving of our love!
Bought it last week, read a few pages this morning and that was enough, finished it in a day. Today, actually. I sneaked reading breaks in the bathroom to finish it, it is JUST that good!
It is generally accepted among people with functioning empathy and a basic understanding of history that Christopher Columbus is not a figure worth celebrating. Well, this Columbus Day, I’ve got you covered!
With the Theonite Series, you can enter a world in which Columbus never sailed, Europe never colonized the the Americas, and the modern world is dominated by a highly sophisticated West African society!
PLEASE DO NOT THROW THE YA GENRE UNDER THE BUS it is filled with diversity that goes far beyond whatever makes it to the movies! Please give it a chance!
We’re hanging out with our book date, Mirage by Somaiya Daud. Here’s what it’s about:
An
“enriching, thrilling, and captivating” (BuzzFeed) epic fantasy
inspired by the author Somaiya Daud’s Moroccan heritage about a poor
young woman who must become the body double of a princess of a ruthless
empire.
There aren’t many words that I can use to describe how good The Night Masquerade, the third and final volume in the Binti series, is, and if there were any words I could use, they would probably spoil it. So here’s what I can say.
I can say that the conclusion to the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning series more than does the first two volumes justice. It in fact blows all of the science fiction novels I have read out of the water entirely, evoking Bradbury, Le Guin, and Butler while at once being, of course, completely new.
I can say that you might expect certain things from this conclusion, and I would warn you not to expect anything from a series that defies all expectations.
I can say that Nnedi Okorafor’s world-building continues to blow me out of the water, and that it’s given me a new love for grasshoppers, and that it makes me want to lay out beneath a night sky, and visit a desert, and that I am still held in wonder of the things she has created.
I can say that I read it late into last night as my anxiety and insomnia kept me awake, and that this book twisted me into unending circles in the best way. I can say that I read it on the way to work today like someone entranced, and that it twice shocked me into tears, and that it once made me stop in my tracks and say, “How dare you,” loudly enough that a fellow commuter walking in the other direction stopped to give me a very strange look.
I can say that as you begin this book, Nnedi Okorafor holds all the rules of science fiction in her hands, and that as you read, she drops them at your feet to smash, and she laughs, and you laugh too.
The Night Masquerade comes out in January 2018. I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. You should preorder now. You won’t want to miss the conclusion of the to-be-science-fiction-classic that is Binti.
Blurb: Years after the Civil War was derailed by the rising of the undead, Jane McKeene is studying to become an Attendant, trained in both weaponry and etiquette to protect the well-to-do. But that’s not a life she wants. When families around Baltimore County begin to go missing, Jane is caught in the middle of a conspiracy, one that finds her in a desperate fight for her life against some powerful enemies. And the restless dead, it would seem, are the least of her problems.
I avoid zombies as a rule, but this book is not to be avoided. And I’m a big fan of the way the zombies are handled in this book. They have a well-defined set of rules with just enough flexibility to make them interesting, and the story as a whole is not gory, but still dangerous enough to be exciting. That’s the sweet spot for me. I felt the tension and creepiness, but wasn’t turned off by excessive gruesomeness.
Jane is a great main character (I especially enjoy how each chapter begins with an excerpt of her lying outrageously in her letters to her mother). She’s smart and confident and funny. Kate, the next most important character, is introduced as the type of mean pretty girl who is usually the main character’s rival for no reason in lower-quality books books, and turns out to be much more nuanced. Watching her and Jane accept their need to stick together and help each other even though they’re very different people is really satisfying.
Jane also weaves her backstory from the home she was taken from into the main story, in little pieces that really grabbed my interest. The way she keeps vaguely eluding to the events of her past but only giving you the truth a little at a time is really well done, especially because of the dry humor of the book. I didn’t expect the backstory to end up having a plot twist of its own, or that it would hit so emotionally at the end.
I love the development of Jane becoming a leader in her own right, and the commentary this alternate history setting lends itself to. Seeing how Justina Ireland weaves in historical references and what actually happened after the Civil War to make her version of events fit in was really interesting. She takes the concept of the horrible boarding schools Native children were forced into in reality and expands it into a whole system that could have been formed by the real social mores of the time.
As for any flaws, I think the book is a little too slow at times (or maybe I was just too slow of a reader, getting distracted by other books), and I personally wasn’t invested in Jackson, another important character, at all. But overall I really enjoyed this book. Because I thought it was a standalone I was surprised that the ending leaves Jane on the edge of another adventure, but I will definitely be reading the sequel.
13-year-old boy must save the world by unraveling an ancient Mayan prophecy
Zane must not only grapple with a family history that connects him to the Mayan gods, but with newly acquired knowledge that his ancestry may have something to do with a leg deformity that requires he use a cane — not the greatest reality for a middle schooler.
Feisty heroes, tricky gods, murderous demons, and spirited giants are just some of the pleasures that await in this fresh and funny take on Mayan mythology, as rich and delicious as a mug of authentic hot chocolate
Stressed, Depressed, and Story Obsessed 