Teaser Tuesday (2nd January 2018)

Happy New Year.

I hope yours got off to a good start. I feel like mine did, in no small part because I woke up writing this and something much darker, and incomplete.

And now I’m doing  Teaser Tuesday which I found due to Brainfluff.  It’s one of the memes I do to keep networked with the blogging community, and also because I love books and bookish activities.

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by The Purplebooker.com.
Anyone can play along! Just do the following:
• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Here goes.

Current read Nectar in a Sieve  by Kamala Markandaya.

“She is endowed with beauty,” Old Granny said. “It will make up for a small dowry – in this case.”

And

‘Its rich heavy folds make her look more slender than she was, made her look a child…I darkened her eyes with kohl and the years fell away more; she was so pitifully young I could hardly believe she was to be married today.’

A bit more – This book’s synopsis describes it as a novel “about a woman’s struggle to ind happiness in a changing India” and the story so far bears that out. “Married as a child bride to a tenant farmer she had never met, Rukmani works side by side in the field with her husband to wrest a living from a land ravaged by droughts, monsoons, and insects.” It is written by Kamala Markandaya, a pseudonym used by Kamala Purnaiya Taylor, an Indian novelist and journalist born in Bangalore, India in 1924. Nectar in a Sieve was published in 1954. My active reading pile is kind of scarily high right now but though it’s been slow at times, and the narrative voice really quiet, this one has held my interest. Interesting insights to a culture I don’t know a lot about. Where I am now Rukmani  is marrying off her very young daughter much as she was married off at a very young age – and I was particularly touched by the sections I pulled. I don’t know how this ends as I’m only up to chapter 6.

How about you, what are you reading?

And have you voted for your favourite Antiguan and Barbudan book of 2017?

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As with all content on Wadadli Pen, except otherwise noted, this is written by Wadadli Pen founder and coordinator Joanne C. Hillhouse (author of The Boy from Willow Bend, Dancing Nude in the Moonlight, Oh Gad!, Musical Youth, With Grace, and Lost! A Caribbean Sea Adventure). All Rights Reserved. If you enjoyed it, check out http://jhohadli.wordpress.com Please note that, except otherwise noted, images on this site also need to be cleared if you wish to use them for any purpose. Thanks.

 

Read Beyond

Sharing this, because we get stuck in reading mainstream Western literature and forget there’s a whole world of books out there.

A book display at the 2015 University of the (United States) Virgin Islands Lit Fest.

 

Starting with, the wonderful series on Ghanaian lit by African Book Addict. My inner ramblings on scanning the list – apart from I really need to check out more Ghanaian literature… the only one I’ve read on the list is Changes by Ama Ata Aidoo (which I read in University, one of two African books I remember reading and enjoying in that particular course; the other was Nervous Conditions by Zimbabwean writer Tsitsi Dangarembga). Already on my bookshelf but unread: The Beautiful Ones are not Yet Born by Ayi Kwei Armah. Now I’m curious about: Two Thousand Seasons by Ayi Kwei Armah, something by Kofi Awoonor (but need a rec from the blogger, for the uninitiated), and Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi (hmmm I feel like I’ve seen her on the Daily Show. Was she on the Daily Show?).

I’ll also share this post from my blog which was prompted by a friend’s facebook post asking for globally acclaimed/commercially successful novels published in the last 20-30 years that does not have an American/British character or any other significant connection to the US/UK (plot, setting etc.)? – you can see what we came up with in Whose Gaze? Whose Story? Whose POV? over on my author blog.

That post includes some of my Caribbean picks and I’m reminded of an earlier conversation, also on my facebook, about favourite Caribbean novels. I posted about that, too, right here on this blog. It was posted in 2010 and was called simply Caribbean Favourites, as it included the picks with reasons. Of course, that was seven (7) years ago and many books have come out since. For some of those you might check my lists (use the search feature to the right) for the short lists from Bocas, Burt, Guyana Lit Prize, or just search for the Caribbean’s best books (a very subjective term, I assure you).

2016 Bocas titles.

It would be remiss of me not to point you to another popular feature on the blog, John Robert Lee’s carefully curated Caribbean bibliography – Discovering Caribbean Literature in English: A Select Bibliography. Also, while not limited to Caribbean books, feel free to check out my Blogger on Book series here and on the other blog.

 

Ann Morgan’s book.

 

If you’re a follower of the blog, you already know that I’ve been a fan of UK writer Ann Morgan’s Reading the World project ever since I discovered her blog. I’ve discussed her Caribbean picks, I’ve interviewed her, I’ve read and reviewed the book that came out of that blog project, I’ve recommended a read to her (post-project), and I still read her blog. You know what’s coming, right? I recommend you check it out, too. She’s still reading the world.

I’ll end with another of my favourite blogs – BookerTalk: Adventures with Great Novels from Around the World – which has a wonderful The View from Here series of interviews on world literature. I was interviewed on Caribbean literature for this series which also includes interviews with writers from the Phillipines, Japan, India, Colombia, and others (though, I just noticed – yikes – that the listing refers to Antigua and Barbuda as Antigua and Barbadoes – the kind of error that rubs Caribbean people the wrong way; Barbuda is Antigua’s sister island and Barbados is a whole other country) but which also has the blogger’s insights on books she’s read and she reads widely. A good spot for discovering books beyond…

What about you, how often do you read beyond mainstream Western lit? Any links to share?

As with all content on wadadlipen.wordpress.com, except otherwise noted, this is written by Joanne C. Hillhouse (author of The Boy from Willow Bend, Dancing Nude in the Moonlight, Oh Gad!, Fish Outta Water, Musical Youth, and With Grace). All Rights Reserved. Seriously, a lot of time, energy, love and frustration goes in to researching and creating content for this site; please don’t just take it up just so without even a please, thank you or an ah-fu-she-subben (credit). If you enjoyed it, check out my page on Amazon, WordPress, and/or Facebook, and help spread the word about Wadadli Pen and my books. You can also subscribe to the site to keep up with future updates. Thanks.