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renatasnacks 's review for:
Black Girl Unlimited
by Echo Brown
LOL this popped up as a Kindle Daily Deal or something and I read: "Echo Brown is a wizard from the East Side, where apartments are small and parents suffer addictions to the white rocks. Yet there is magic . . . everywhere." and I was like, cool, I'm into urban fantasy, let me check out this teen wizard.
But it's uhhhh magical realism where she learns that trauma can distort her perception of time and space and that in turn she can help others unlock their potential.......which is totally a valid kind of book, it's just that I stopped reading after the first half of the blurb and was like, "where's Hogwarts." There is no Hogwarts.
This is semi-autobiographical and the author is also a playwright, and knowing that helped me cope with the dialect. To me, a white reader, the way that she wrote out the dialect for the crack-addicted adults in this book....I mean, if a white author had written these lines I would have been like "this is racist". Like, "This ain't no place for a girl chile. Lawd, I prays fo da day when someone heps da lil girl chiles of dis worl', 'sepcially da black ones." (That's on page 3, the first time Echo's mother speaks...but there are a LOT of lines like that. On page 11, her mom says Echo's father "is a lyin'-ass, conniving-ass, no-good-ass mothafucka wit' thirteen kids by different womens, and he don't take care a' none of 'em.") Which, if Echo Brown also writes plays I could see her being more used to writing out dialect that way? And since it's semi-autobiographical I guess her mom talks like that?
Once I sort of got over the dialect, I mean, the writing is beautiful, and her story is inspiring. This has gotten like, across the board rave reviews and I think it will mean a lot to other teens who have gone through similar traumas? It's just...a lot to take in.
Oh also one super weird nitpick and maybe this was intentional? Like this is definitely magical realism and the narrative moves around mid-paragraph but it's set in the late 90s and rooted in pop culture (like they go see Titanic and Rush Hour at the theater) but then there are references to like RuPaul's Drag Race (and not JUST RuPaul who I know was a pop culture figure in the 90s but like specifically Drag Race which was later...) and the movie Get Out?
But it's uhhhh magical realism where she learns that trauma can distort her perception of time and space and that in turn she can help others unlock their potential.......which is totally a valid kind of book, it's just that I stopped reading after the first half of the blurb and was like, "where's Hogwarts." There is no Hogwarts.
This is semi-autobiographical and the author is also a playwright, and knowing that helped me cope with the dialect. To me, a white reader, the way that she wrote out the dialect for the crack-addicted adults in this book....I mean, if a white author had written these lines I would have been like "this is racist". Like, "This ain't no place for a girl chile. Lawd, I prays fo da day when someone heps da lil girl chiles of dis worl', 'sepcially da black ones." (That's on page 3, the first time Echo's mother speaks...but there are a LOT of lines like that. On page 11, her mom says Echo's father "is a lyin'-ass, conniving-ass, no-good-ass mothafucka wit' thirteen kids by different womens, and he don't take care a' none of 'em.") Which, if Echo Brown also writes plays I could see her being more used to writing out dialect that way? And since it's semi-autobiographical I guess her mom talks like that?
Once I sort of got over the dialect, I mean, the writing is beautiful, and her story is inspiring. This has gotten like, across the board rave reviews and I think it will mean a lot to other teens who have gone through similar traumas? It's just...a lot to take in.
Oh also one super weird nitpick and maybe this was intentional? Like this is definitely magical realism and the narrative moves around mid-paragraph but it's set in the late 90s and rooted in pop culture (like they go see Titanic and Rush Hour at the theater) but then there are references to like RuPaul's Drag Race (and not JUST RuPaul who I know was a pop culture figure in the 90s but like specifically Drag Race which was later...) and the movie Get Out?