Why Scalzi can stick a spoon up his nose June 2, 2013

He’s not the president of the USA. He’s not the president of a major fortune 500 company. He’s not the president of a home owners association.

He’s the president of a select group of writers. They write. They read. They publish. The organization has 1 (one) official paper. You would think he could read it. You would think he could see the blatant sexism and stop it if he actually cared. But let’s continue to praise this white dude for being such an upstanding feminist sci fi writer. Homeboy is going through standard bullshit apologies and doing the whole “I take full responsibility for my actions” garbage which means nothing in this instance. Taking full responsibility would’ve meant doing something before hand. Reading the article in it’s entirety there is no way he thinks they would’ve been open to some editorial direction. What would he have changed? A word here? A phrase there? The entire tone of the SFWA article was to praise sexism (and also racism). The article in question would’ve had to be entirely rewritten by a different human being, and thus not be the same article. Because there is nothing of value in it.

Why do you need a task force? This shit isn’t hard to stop. Maybe change the focus of your organization from protecting the interest of 50 year old white dudes?

But white dudes gonna stay reppin for white dudes and all you suckers are just gonna keep falling for them.

 

Iron Man 3 May 6, 2013

I don’t have time to do a bigger review of it and if I wait I’ll forget too much stuff. So here we go.

So, this movie does this really gross thing where it uses physically disabled people as literal weapons. The plot of the movie centers around a series of explosions that no one can explain or stop.

We find out that these explosions are people who are missing limbs. The program can grow limbs back but it might explode you if you can’t figure it out. They also turn you into a super soldier. But if you can’t accept the treatment or get fixed you will explode in a way that leaves nuclear shadows like in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Seriously. They did that.

None of these bomb people are characters. They are literally all nameless thugs (except for the end boss). Who wasn’t missing any limbs, just couldn’t walk well.

Oh. Quick side note. Tony Stark exhibits signs of PTSD centering around the events of the warp hole in the Avengers. Did they do anything cool with that? No. Not at all. He just freaks out twice. That’s it. He fixes his social anxiety by blowing up all of his iron man suits. So now he’s fine. I’m taking bets on whether or not when he becomes iron man again if he’ll have his anxiety back. I’ll give you my Ultimate Iron Man toy if he does.

Okay. So the next thing is that Tony makes everyone in his life dependent on him. No one can do anything without Tony. Pepper is totally dependent on tony, Rhodes is to a lesser extent dependent on tony to be a super hero near the end of the movie. He refers to her as an object. She’s the thing that’s most important to him. He also refers to fixing her. Like he fixes other stuff in his life. But she isn’t a thing, she’s a person, and you don’t fix people. Pepper gets to wear the iron man suit only to save tony and then tony just kind of takes it from her without knowing if she’s safe or not. It’s a little thing, but annoying. The other female character is really confusing and ends up being shot for absolutely no reason. She’s just not well fleshed out.

So this brings us to the thing that so many people like and I just do not understand in the slightest. Ra’s Al Ghul.

Or the Mandarin. Similar issue. Much worse here though. So they set up Ben Kingsley as The Mandarin, a vaguely ethnic bin laden esque character. He’s a brown terrorist taking pictures with loving brown people and small brown kids talking about how evil america is and how it’s going to have justice done upon it. This, of course, causes America to send Don Chedle to attack a bunch of poor brown people (at least he doesn’t actually attack anyone. He just kind of talks to people awkwardly). Anyway, turns out to no one’s surprise that The Mandarin is an actor.

People are applauding this. It just makes me sick. So they movie spends all this time building up this Islamaphobia situation and then, as it turns out, it’s just a rich white dude pulling the strings of people of color (as tends to happen in these super hero movies). So here we are where brown people have no agency and get to take the blame for the evil actions of white men, and this is in no way examined. They just leave it out there. I’m just so confused as to why people are so excited, like “I’m so happy that the brown people were just pawns and there’s going to be no end of political fallout from this and inside this country there aren’t going to be untold number of brown people who are harassed and killed as a response to this bogey man brown person! YAY!”

Remember just a few weeks back when Reddit falsely identified random brown person as the dude who planted bombs at the marathon? Remember what happened? Remember the brown dude who was running away from the bomb and the white people tackled him and detained him until the police could detain and interrogate him even though he had nothing to do with anything because we just assumed because he was brown that he had something to do with it? Remember when that white dude shot up a Sikh temple last year? Remember all the rhetoric spouted about how we have to take away rights from any Muslims and spy in their mosques and tap their phones and all that? How easily we forget. So when, in Iron Man 3, they set up fake brown terrorist as the fall guy for their weapons (which let’s not forget, are people. Not people with bombs strapped to them. But they are people, who were previously missing limbs, and then they explode. They’re objects) misfiring.  That’s it. It’s not smart commentary. It’s trafficking in the same racism people claim they’re satirizing or whatever. They didn’t flip anything on any heads anywhere.

They turn physically disabled people into bombs with no agency of their own. Pepper Potts needs to be locked in stark’s place to be protected. She gets weak kneed at white guy villain being totally creepy and going sexual harassment at her. Then when she doesn’t need protection any more Tony has to fix her. And fictional brown terrorist just shows that brown people can really only get roles as terrorist. Oh, I love the scene where all the girls in the generic middle eastern clothes plant are soo greatful to the american robot for freeing them. The fact that the person in charge was blonde explodey girl doesn’t make anything better at all, because recycling the image of poor brown girls being thankful for american militaries coming in to destroy their worlds is still disgusting.

So yeah, I hated Iron Man 3. A lot. And I’m not fighting with you about this.

Late Registration April 28, 2013

Wake up Mr. West. It’s time for your sophomore album.

Heard ‘Em Say

A belief of mine is that the opening track of an album is way beyond important. It colors your view of the entire album. Frontload an album with something great and the good vibes take you through. Songs about being black in america never get old for me. Especially when they’re as well crafted and divergent as this song is. I can’t get enough of it.

Touch the Sky

duuuuuuuuuuuuuude, these horns. What’s better than an awesome intro. Two killer songs in a row. First pianos  then horns. I love horns. The world needs more big brass sections. This was also my introduction to Lupe Fiasco.  This song is just throwing good vibes everywhere. It has a weird sort of nostalgia feeling that’s difficult to pin down. If more radio rappers talked for serious about how they grew up in the game and the struggles they went through and the life they were living at the time I might listen to the radio. It’s so rare to hear someone as big as Kanye was even at this time just talk about the mundanities of every day life for someone trying to get signed.

Also, love Curtis Mayfield

Gold Digger

Jamie Foxx really thinks he’s Ray Charles, which is cool with me. This is a song that’s much smarter than it’s given credit for. On it’s surface it’s stupid hating stuff or whatever, about gold diggers and other shit stupid people say, but you gotta listen to it. You might learn something, like Kanye West learning about the way small super insular dating circles of celebrities. Shit’s a trip. This song isn’t about people, it’s about that really fucking weird subsection of pretty rich people.  The second verse does perpetuate misinformation about how child support payments actually work. I have some books on the subject if Kanye is interested. Thing is, it’s noted that gold digging is a hustle and if you gonna be out here treatin women bad and like they’re some sort of commodity this is the life you live and you can’t get anything close to mad about them flipping the game on you.

The third verse is awesome. The way the beat switches up here is actually a pretty classic trick, doesn’t make it any less effective.  It’s just a separation of parts. Simple and beautiful. It’s there the whole time. Listen on vinyl.

BROKE BROKE BROKE FI BROKE WE AINT GOT IT

Drive Slow

I’m going to attempt to put into words something that doesn’t work in a literary medium. The way the beats drop on this song, in conjuction with the oregon, with the synth voice in the background, with the saxophone note coming in occasionally  with the midi clarinet, the high hat hits. All of it, it’s wizardry. The slow motion of this song without actually being chopped and screwed, it’s. . . I don’t know. It’s really great. The first time I heard this song I didn’t hear a single word Kanye said. Sometimes I still miss the first verse. This is what good music does.

The thing about hearing music you’ve created pump out through someone’s speakers is so real though. That shit gives you fucking super powers.

Paul wall was a thing, you remember that?

That beat is still kicking it, and it doesn’t change. I’m always suckered in by interplay between two rappers. The sort of two man game that springs up has really high potential.

Then it gets screwed. And I died. My spirit just left my body.

My Way Home

A common track found it’s way to Kanye’s album. Weird. Common is cool. Sometimes too boring and caught up in being common, but often times just really good. He is so good at what he does. Just a slow and steady flow of rhymes. Then it’s just a beautiful old R&B song. Like, this Kanye is my favorite Kanye.

Crack Music,

This is my Kanye. This is my Rap Music. This is my life.

This is what I live for in music. This is a religious experience. From the hard basss drum kicks with the smooth snare into the high hats all the way to the synth horn to the lyrics. This is where I fell head over heels in love with Kanye West. Want an introduction to radical black theory? Listen to this song. Seriously. This is the intro to black nationalism. This is a pure distillation of everything I had to learn outside of school and my parents as a child. Right up into the questioning of God, which is something that was not something to do in thinking about the sort of prototypical black american experience.  The thing about the black panthers is spot on. The stuff about just the grimey parts of growing up in substandared living conditions hits hard.

Then we get poetry and with the beat behind it it’s a crucial piece of the entire song.

Roses

This is the only song you need to dispute everything everyone ever says negatively about rap music. Everything. The beginning is so painful and just overloaded with thick emotions. I know how it feels to sit around a hospital room not knowing what’s going on and if someone is going to make it and how long every second feels. All the things we say to each other in that situation, the deep hopelessness that exist because there’s NOTHING you can do. You manufacture things to do and try to learn everything you can knowing that it is all ultimately useless.

This is another frontloaded rap song. The reasons behind this one are different though. it is supposed to leave you with a different feeling than you had at the beginning of the song. He stops rapping on a purely happy note and that changes the timbre of the melody for the next two minutes. Nothing in the music actually changes, but just the spark of good news gives this an entirely different feeling. That’s just good music.

Bring Me Down

This song has a whole lot going on in it. There’s this dancing of the piano and strings over good old fashioned hip hop drums that carries a lot of feeling with it. Brandy is putting it fantastic work here as well, and her voice is well suited to what is going on here.  As toned down as this younger Kanye West is you see the path he’s taking. This song, as much as the album as a whole, is a confidence builder. It’s sort of a self reassurance exercise.

The opening line here is six levels beyond brilliant. It needs a standing ovation. Listen to it again.

I still have a sort of love for this early Kanye where songs played with conventional set ups by frontloading them.

Addiction

This is just a song that I like.  It’s so understated. It’s just Kanye’s voice and not as many bells and whistles going on. It’s a song about sex. And it’s not objectifying and it’s not skeevy in really any way. It’s just a song about sex. That’s awesome. There are so many places this song could fall apart and it doesn’t. I didn’t realize it was Etta James in the background until I was listening to an old album of hers and just heard the line. It’s also about drugs and alcohol, but in the context of sex as well. People should strive for this sort of thing more. Nothing against lude sex songs, but there’s something very nice about a song being this subdued and relaxing. There’s a negotiation for a threesome that’s hilarious.

Diamonds from Sierra Leone [The Remix]

Shirley Basset really could belt it out in the 70s. She kicked the shit out of all those James Bond Songs.

This song is so fucking real. This applies to so much more than just diamonds. It’s about everything we do in life. Diamonds, gold, leather, shoes, computers, smart phones, clothes and jeans, and cameras and all that shit. All of what we do is built on exploitative labor and the histories of these labor markets are just gross and disgusting.

But are we going to give any of it up? Nope!

Hey! It’s Jay-Z! What’s he rapping about? Jaz-Z? You got it! Did you know he sold cocaine? He’s also a business. Which is true. I love when Jay-Z verses on Kanye tracks just keep going.

We Major

FUCK DUDE. This is my jam. This gets me up in the morning when I can’t muster it much myself. This gets me to work when I’m not really feeling it. This gets me out of a bad funk. This song makes my day better. Just turn the volume all the way up and let it soak through you.

Now, it’s annoying that he traffics in the stupid women are someone else’s property thing with the idea that you won’t like creepin on chicks when it’s your daughter.

The rest of the song is dope though.

It doesn’t matter what anyone else actually says. We’re just having a good time here. Just having that trumpet circulate through the blood stream is enough. That synth drum hit is so staccato.  The harshness provides cotrast for the rest of the song.  Really Doe just lays down life affirmation in the chorus.

Yo. The end of this song just raises the spirits of eveyone who hears it. This is how you should get dressed. Kanye can talk to me as much as he wants on track though.

Okay. Just sing along now. Roll the windows down on the car and belt it. Throw all your cares away.

Hey Mama

Kanye cant’ sing, but that’s PERFECT for this song. The childishness of singing this for his mom is too much. I’ll probably tear up half way through this. This is black music for real. Not everyone has great moms, but some people do, and it’s great when you get songs like this. Black women got it rough, and don’t get nearly the respect they deserve through the whole of American Culture. That thing about his mom supporting him even though he went the opposite of the way she wanted for him hits close to home. The sort of longing and hope of this song mixed with the sort of regret of not pleasing her sooner mixes perfect with the realization of all of his hard work and how much of the credit for his success she deserves. It’s super touching and super heartfelt and just great. And fuck everyone who hates Kanye. It’s cool also, because as specific as this song is about Kanye and his mother, it’s totally designed to work as a reflective tool for the listener. It works.

Celebration

I love these strings. This is just another feel good song. That’s part of why I love Late Registration so much. So much of the album just feels good. Just relaxing party stuff. Not wild Andrew W.K. parties, but the kind where you might actually be able to hear the person beside you while talking.  I love these short verse songs. Just like four five bars of verse and a small rotating chorus .

Gone

Uh oh! I like when Kayne just raps. Kanye rapping about how obnoxious Kanye is is high class Kanye. Kanye knows he has a big ego, and that he annoys you, and he doesn’t care. He interweaves his life with the fictional story of other people with fictional stories of himself with real stories of other people with random rap music rhymes and lyrics.

KNOCK KNOCK

WHO’S THERE

KILLA CAM

KILLA WHO

KILLA CAM

that’s not how knock knock jokes work Cam’Ron.

I’ve never really understood the appeal of Cam’Ron.

Consequence fucking kills it. Just how this story unfolds with rapping about a non event that ends up in the worst way is so great. Especially after whatever the fuck Cam’Ron did.

Then we get music. And is the song gonna go on for three minutes with no more rapping. It would be in keeping in line with the rest of the album,

but no. Surprise.

It’s Kanye West. Ahead of his time. Sometimes years out. Still with the talking about how hard it is to do what you want sometimes. Sometimes fame isn’t great. The struggle to get up off his cheap ass sofa is real.  Getting fired from taco bell for giving out free food is real. This is just sort of an onslaught of good rapping from Kanye here at the end.

He gone.

Silence.

Diamonds From Sierra Leone

Yeah, we’re back. This is the version without Jay-Z. That means we get a WHOLE OTHER VERSE. Cool, no? I think so.

I love Kanye talking about how mad he was about the grammy. He did get robbed though. Like, for real, he got jobbed.  I love the idea of plaques for Kanye saying Kayne. I love how unrelenting he is about how good he is and how much people fucked up by sleeping on him.

We Can make It Better

This isn’t on the US version of the album.  This song is the truth though. I like songs about doing better. There is so much stuff in here just for black people though and it’s wonderful and dangerous.

I love the mini verses. A bunch of good rappers not overstaying their welcome. I like it. Talib rocks it. Q-Tip comes in and is cute and adorable. Common is common and it’s surprising how good he is in this short format. Rhymefest shows up and kick ass here too. Just good work all around.

Late

Aww yeah hidden track.

There’s some awesome musical theory stuff happening in this song. His second verse on the track mixes up lyrics on purpose. Not says them wrong, but you could read them in a different chronological order. His voice is working at odds with the beats which are working in harmony with the bass line and come across to the sample of the whatnauts. This is all you can really ask for from a

ahahahaha

 

bonus mode: Check out Late Orchestration. It’s so good. Live orchestra and Live DJ make so many tracks on this album so much better. His energy on this concert recording is just fucking phenomenal.

College Dropout is really good

I mean, yeah, we knew that nine years ago, but I think it’s worth coming back to.

The way I decided to do this was to go song by song and only write as much about the song as I could fit into the time it takes to listen to it.

The skits are funny, I don’t really deal with them because I NEVER listen to the anymore. I listened to them this time around to see how they flow with the album, and they work surprisingly well without destroying the pace, which happens less often than I like with rap albums.

We Don’t Care

As the first thing you hear from Mr. Kanye West on his debut album “We Don’t Care” is kind of brilliant. It lets you know what this album is sort of all about. It’s a rare thing these days. It’s a rare thing in general. All the themes about being broke, the things you do to survive, the facts of living in a culture of drug dealing without being an actual part of the drug dealing, the shit that is the American school system, and how much he likes his mom. It’s all here. Along with the desire for a much much better life.

That’s important. It’s important to this album and it’s important to the rest of Kanye’s career. “We Don’t Care” sets the stage for the just absurd level of stunting that goes on in “My Dark Beautiful Twisted Fantasy.”

With music, the first song on an album goes a long way. It’s hard to come back from a terrible first track, and a brilliant opening can cover up a lot of mess. People still out here thinking Thriller one of Michael’s best albums largely on the strength of “Wanna be startin’ somethin’.”

All Falls Down

Thing 1. Lauryn Hill is amazing. This isn’t her, but that’s where it’s taken from, and any excuse to wax poetic about her is great.

Anyway, still on the college sucks tip and the first verse doesn’t take a step out of place. He doesn’t overstay his welcome on the subject (which is something a lot of dude rappers could learn). It isn’t that dudes can’t rap about the struggles of black women at all, but since it ain’t your struggle it really isn’t your place to be around dictating and shit, and this verse kinda gets that well. Then the focus turns onto Kanye and from Kanye to the world kanye grew up in. It’s really touching and hits you in the heart. Syleena is cool people too, much respect to her.

I’ll Fly Away

I said I wasn’t doing skits, but whatever. It’s not a skit, it’s an old church songs, and one of my favorites. It’s also noteworthy for making sense with spaceship coming right up next.

Spaceship

My. Fucking. Life.

But really, like anyone who’s been black and worked retail. It’s more universal than that, but the specifics really hit home to being black and all the fucking garbage you have to put up with just to make minimum wage. Managers stay on that racist shit up and leave you with this need to commit acts of violence but it’s all bluster because you know how poorly that’s going to go. That’s been at the root of the American black community power dynamics and domestic violence and all that shit from the start. I like how succinct it is put here. And the part about how they stay throwing you out at black customers like you gonna sprinkle magic negro powder on them to get them to buy stuff from you is so spot on and so annyoing.

This was my introduction to GLC, and to this day I’ve only ever heard him on other people’s stuff. I like him that way.

Jesus Walks

This is fascinating work. There was that time when rappers and R&B folks woud randomly appear on gospel tracks, and some would include super overt religious shit in their albums and a lot of it felt ham fisted and didn’t work. This is what so many of them were actually aiming for.  This isn’t a song about religion. This is the kind of song skinny white people write and get praise and adoration for. This is that introspective look into Kanye’s relationship with jesus and the fact that it’s not preachy and not about how much he feels god working powers in his life all the time is a credit to him and this song.

Never Let Me Down

Hey it’s Jay-Z! He’s so doing that Jay-Z thing where he talks about how awesome Jay-Z is and how not awesome everyone else is and how he became awesome, and you know what? It still works. He’s a really really good rapper. The chorus kicks in and he just keeps rapping and it melds together so well. 

Then comes fucking Kanye West. I love Kanye talking about his mom all the time. I like how appreciative he is of where his people come from. Not black people as a whole, but his in specific.

Hey it’s J Ivy. This is my entire view of what slam poetry is. The fact that kanye can turn J Ivy into a rapper is woderous. He’s just doing what he does and kanye fit the entire song around it and it all works. That and J Ivy is just speaking entirely in fire while he’s here takes the whole experience up a notch.

Hey! it’s Jay-Z again! I love when songs just keep going. Hey, Jay-Z; still awesome. And his history, still awesome. I love Jay-Z.

Kanye would break gospel music in half. All these gospel rappers and producers trying to get the kids need to just stop and go home. Bow at Kanye’s alter then end your careers.

Get ‘Em High

I’m not really into Talib Kwali. I know, as a fan of rap music, that I’m supposed to be into Talib, but he’s just never been my thing. In particular I don’t like this verse. I hate the reference to the birth control patch in such a sex shaming way. Like, this whole song is about men trying to go get sex and he’s shaming this woman for using birth control. It’s a big turnoff and puts a damper on the whole song for me.

Shoutout to Black Planet though. Does that website still exist?  I’m not sure it does.

New Workout Plan

The intro to this is funny, and that’s a problem, because it shouldn’t be. There’s a lot of social stuff going on and the intro sits right on the line. The entire song sits right on the line. It’s totally an issue of it’s making fun of something that’s infinitely make funable, he just goes about it from a direction that I wouldn’t.

One thing that’s undeniable is that the background beat to this forces dancing. The drums and violins work in perfect unison to create a danceable beat, which is cool, because that’s how workouts work best.

My name is elle may, I’m from mobile alabama and since listening  Kanye’s workout tape I’ve been able to date outside the family, I been able to date outside the family, I got me a double wide, and I rode a plane.” I’m sure that white rednecks are offended, but since I grew up around them I can’t possibly be concerned with their feelings.

The dance track that’s just randomly added on to the end of this great. I’ll never forget that time I went to the club and they played an extended cut of this that lasted for at least ten minutes and it was, indeed, one of the best workouts of my life.

Slow Jamz.

Seriosuly, I know it’s getting tired, but Kanye is really good at productions. As far as rap songs go about romantic encounters, this one is pretty right. The idea of people (specifically kanye) knocking boots to minnie ripperton makes me giggle quite a bit. The way Jamie Foxx says Al Green is good times.

Twista is wonderful in cameo’s. Outside of “I ain’t that nigga” I don’t really fuck with Twista. He kills cameos though. It’s just the nature of how he raps. The speed with which he can string together lines is beyond admirable. I’m endlessly impressed with his ability to fit into this song so well. I defintiely can get with the entire point of this song though. I’ve been to too many awful parties where people never slow shit down, and it gets tired after a while. (Yes, this was in my past life before I turned 23 and became the oldest person alive). It also works as the pefect down note after New Workout Plan. The bridgework here is phoenominal. I generally prefore subtle bridges, but this works.

Breathe In Breathe Out

But now I’m rapping about money hoes and benz again. Yup. But even this is set apart from all the 4092380 other songs released in 2004 about the same subject matter.

Hey! You guys remember when Ludacris went hard and was respectable and shit? I miss those days, even if they weren’t real. Whatever. Kanye’s Ego just doesn’t ever stop. The innuendo in this song does that awesome thing where it makes itself beyond obvious without

I got weed drink and a handy cam. That’s the kind of night you hope never leaks online, or people don’t stop talking about it. Ask Kanye’s current girlfriend, who no matter what she does can’t get away from the fact that people watched her have sex with ray-j on a shit camera.

School Spirit

My Dad’s an alpha, both my moms are Delta, a lot of my cousins are Qs. I didn’t do the frat thing. I am never letting someone hit me so we can be friends. No thanks. I  LOVE LOVE LOVE this song. I love all of kanye’s songs about how fucking stupid college is. As someone who’s been in college for eight years now going at one class at a time, I can’t get enough of it. He doesn’t dwell on it, but the line about the head of the class working at cheesecake says all that needs to be said. College has so much going on, and so little of it has anything to do with preparing kids for futures or even learning stuff. It’s a scam, but you have to do it in order to get some menial job that you could have done without the four year degree.

Two Words

A  couple of tracks on this album are definite precursors to what happens on Late Registration.

I love Mos Def. I feel like he handles the conceit of this song better than anyone else on the album. His cadence fits the two words thing so well.

Kanye kills it here too. I love the remembrance of source. I don’t think 5 mics means shit any more. I can’t remember the last time an album got 5 mics and anyone actually gave a shit. I basically know now we get racially profiled. Yup. The difficulty of the hustle is greatly increased when everyone already thinks you’re a criminal.

I miss freeways beard. Don’t say retarded though. There really isn’t a need for that. Be smarter.

back to the violin thing. It’s magic. This is really good, but it’s just setting the table for some nasty shit to be made out of a similar style on Late Registration.

Through the Wire

Yo. Kanye got his face broke. Listen to the version of this song that he records with his mouth wired shut. Fuck dude, that’s just amazing.

Chaka Kahn is amazing. Kanye’s decision to up the pitch works much better in real life than it does on paper. Because Chaka’s voice is just about perfect. That said, kanye is a genius.

My favorite part about this song, though is kanye talking through it. It’s a beautiful insight into

Family Business

This song makes me cry. I’m a big softy. This is for the family that can’t be with us. I miss this kanye. Like, I’m glad he’s where he is. I really am. I just wish this Kanye  was able to show up again, but he’s totally dead. At least we have this on record. It just brings up all these memories of my summer vacations with my families. (I got big family and it’s expanded and shit). The sort of gospel music feel of this song isn’t lost on me at all.

Let’s get stevie out of jail.

Last Call

Fuck you Kanye first and foremost for making me do this.

Fuck you for being this good and warranting all this time I’ve spent listening and contemplating your albums.

This song is fifty seven minutes long. I love every minute of it, and I love that it gives me time to examine this album as a whole. The oral history of Kanye’s rap career is great. I just love the way he has dudes come in and say the lines of the story that they would’ve said laid over him talking. I mean. It’s just fun story  telling. I can listen to stories this way. I wish there was more of it.

It’s been said, I’m not original in anyway. This is maybe the best Debut album of all time. I can’t think of a better one. Not just in rap  music, but in general.

Just Started Bioshock Infinite March 30, 2013

I’m literally half an hour into the game. That’s it. And it’s fucking shitshow. I can tell that this game was made by no one but white liberals. These people who think they are smart and doing something cool, but they’re disastrously wrong. There’s no way a single black person or native american person had even the slightest say in the way this game was made.

So, the game takes place in a sky city above america some number of years after the battle of wounded knee. This is important because they mention it over and over again. You see, this is a game made for white people to play and no one else. I already know that this is a failed idea of a utopia (because it’s the third game in the bioshock series and that’s what bioshock is about), but it doesn’t mean the white supremacy is any less disgusting. Parody isn’t parody and satire isn’t satire, when you’re literally just doing what you’re supposed to be lampooning.

So you play as a white man going to rescue a white girl from this place that literally worships Jefferson, Washington, and Franklin as gods. Some other white dude who killed a bunch of Indians at wounded knee founded this place and his wife probably died or something and you’re here to kidnap his daughter. But people are literally praying to the white dudes who founded the shitshow that is America.

Yeah, I know it’s supposed to be satire, but it doesn’t work. In fact, it fails not ten minutes into the city when you get to a shooting gallery game. It’s supposed to have an old timey late 1800s early 1900s feel to it with the generic ludicrous salesmen and the cheesy state fair. But when you get to the shooting gallery, there’s just racist imagery of a black dude with distorted features hanging from the banner. Mind you, this society is entirely white and entirely homogenous. They make sure you overhear conversations about looking out for evil and being ever vigilant that no one strays from the moral path. People think someone may have a hint of an accent or something. It’s overdone McCarthyism.

The thing is, there’s no need for the racist imagery. None whatsover. I know the society is racist. It’s all white people. This is just that shit white people can’t help themselves from doing. They love using racist imagery any chance they get and will find any rationalization for it they can.

So here we are half an hour into a video game that is getting praised for it’s amazing story by the video games press and I’ve not seen one mention of how disconcerting the beginning of this game is going to be if you’re not happy about racism. If you don’t find racism funny. You just get onslaughted with “thank the founders the prophet kick this shit out of those evil Indians.” and “come shoot the darkie and maybe an indian princess though it’s hard to see her through the trees.”

Yes, there are white characters in the shooting gallery. Caricatures of poor stupid white people from rural areas and such, but when the game is all white and made by white people those don’t matter. There are no black people in this game. There are no Indian people in this game. So the only time you see or hear about this is with racist shit it’s not a parody, it’s a reinforcement of white supremacy. It’s not challenging anyone’s racist ideas, it’s reinforcing them. There’s no agency for oppressed people, we’re just jokes, and the only way for this story to make this seem offensive is for a white guy to shoot everyone, and we are still left without agency.

yeah, the story could change, but there’s no way to chance the main characters. They’re white. They read as white they act as white they’re played off as white. Just saying later on that they’re not won’t change the tone or nature of the story at all. So that excuse can sit back down before you start to say it.

First impressios do matter, and this is just an awful first impression, and the reaction to this game lets you know everything you need to know about the video game industry. Everything. This isn’t a bold story. This is the story white people always tell about racism. Racists are cartoon characters and the people effected by racism have no place in the story except to be helped out and saved by a white person. Preferably they can do it without ever being seen or heard from.

The Prophet of Zongo Street: Stories March 1, 2013

So this is a book of short stories, the first one I’ve come across on the shelf. I hope it isn’t the last because I really like these. They’re a breeze to read. The backbone to this entire book is that someone in the stories is probably from Ghana. 

This book gets a point for actually being written by an Afican American, as opposed to an African African. Now. The author is from Ghana, but currently lives in Brooklyn. Which is closer to African American fiction than “Things Fall Apart” or “Half of a Yellow Sun.” This has nothing to do with where books are written or who writes them, but more to do with how fucking stupid America’s book categorizations system is. If a black person wrote it, it goes into the African American Fiction section, no matter if the person is African, or American, or what other genre the book might be. It was kind of a joke when I started doing this, but it’s amazing how many authors in the AA fiction section aren’t AA at all. They’re just black from somewhere. 

Anyway, this book is a mixed bag of goodies. Oh the whole, I enjoyed it. When the book is dealing with issues of race or colonialization or imperialism and religion, it’s pretty on point. When the book touches on gender issues it’s not as cohesive. That stuff clearly isn’t the authors bag, but problems are problems.

So most of these short stories are very conversational. People talking about life and stuff. Since almost all the protagonists are men, you come across a few male gazey scenes. Those are whatever, and then there’s the representation. We get the single moms and the mean women and the needy queen bee and the poor maid and the big fat ugly domineering wife.

Not all of these are ‘negative’ or intended to be that way, but there isn’t the scholar or shop owner or leader to balance anything out, and the ones that are negative definitely get their full time. 

The positives are that the stories are all generally well written, and the language is good. I feel that he’s at his personal best doing the thoughtful conversation stuff (even though one of those stories goes off rails in the worst way possible). It’s a quick read and if a story doesn’t hit you in a page or two you miss nothing by hopping to the next one.

I wouldn’t recommend this really, because one short story turned me off so thoroughly it made the parts of the book that were remotely enjoyable less so.The more I think about it the worse it gets too.

Below the cut TW: Rape Racism

Avoid the story “Rachmaninov” at all costs though.

 

Kraken: A sort of review January 22, 2013

This is a book that can seriously only be written by a white man.  The detached romanticism of awful people is totally this white guy thing that runs rampant all over literature. Especially in the realm of speculative fiction. This entire review centers around one paragraph of China Mieville’s Kraken. It’s about nazis. It’s specifically about new worse nazis than the real nazis who have more fervor, more hatred, and more zeal than the 1940s nazis. Only these guys are weird. Because everything in every China Mieville book is weird.

Here’s the thing. Why do we need this? Why does this sort of thing continue to show up? This need to make your nebulous group of ne’er do wells so bad by comparing them favorably to other real world bad groups is just stupid, and really works for people who haven’t been or never will be effected by those groups’ past or present. Nazis are bad. People who subscribe to nazi ideals are still around. They suck. I don’t like them. I’ve run into them. They’re not pleasant. Being black, they weren’t terribly fond of my breathing the same air as them.

The thing that gets me is the lavish detail used. Mieville’s new nazis admired the originals but felt like they weren’t good enough. Auschwitz wasn’t effective enough. Their scope and the horrors they were inflicting weren’t grand enough. Didn’t create enough chaos.

What’s most infuriating about what happens in this book is that the “chaos nazis” are completely unimportant. It just read like China was really excited to write a passage about how the nazis could have been worse. So he created some people for whom he could spout his ideas through. They’re minor minor characters. They’re in for a little more than one scene and aren’t really heard from again. I don’t get it.

I guess when you’re white and writing for a white audience this sort of thing is cool. I think he was sitting around with his editor like “hey, aren’t nazis fun? i’d love ot write nazis. I’m gonna write nazis and people are going to eat it up. They’ll think to themselves ‘hey, this China guy. He really is smart and found a way to bring some new creepiness into the nazi idea’.”

Or, we’ll read it and roll our eyes. We don’t need nazis to be weirder and scarier than they already are. Concentration camps were pretty bad and I don’t actually need to waste a single second thinking about how they could have possibly been worse, thank you.

I long for a world where white people stop trying to come up with better nazis and better klansmen. The ones we have are pretty solid enough, thanks. You’re not saying anything. You’re not being profound or even clever in any way. You’re just trying to traffic in some sort of weird exploitation game.

The other thing that’s always annoying is throw away lines to try and fill the world with “diversity” while the whole of the story is anything but. You’re not quirky for mentioning a character that isn’t a character at all might possibly be gay while keeping every other major and minor character strictly heterosexual. Throwing up that one asian girl in a scene doesn’t make your book less of a white people party time. Cause she’s in one scene, and the white people are in every scene and are the actual characters.

Outside of all that stuff though, Kraken is kind of fun? It’s traditional weird fiction. I’m not a huge fan of it, I feel like the entire genre is trying a little bit too hard. The story of a missing squid and a bunch of London colts has predictably funny moments and the book does an excellent job of not taking itself too seriously. It’s never depressing, which is a quality I admire more and more in books these days as the unyielding tide of dark gritty fiction washes over the landscape. I think part of the goal early on is to disorient you along with the main character, but it didn’t really hold with me. I could be reading that part wrong though. The most hateable thing about the plot is the ever stupid “there’s a world right under your nose that all these entities cover up with all these weird bad guys and boogey men and secret cults with magic powers that no one has ever heard of!” Get out of here. Second to that is the main character being a special chosen one brought into that world, even though thos one in particular doesn’t think or know he’s special but everyone else thinks or knows he’s special so then he magically becomes special. It’s dumb.

Deep South Racism January 12, 2013

My homegirl over at Racism School wrote a little post about Deep South racism, and how that’s the only racism that gets acknowledged and how there’s some bit of safety in that. It’s real good, go read it. Then come back here where I add to it with a little bit of life and a bit of historical context.

 

I’ve been saying this for years and years and years. I have felt safer in the eight years I’ve been back in North Carolina than the twelve years I spent in Pennsylvania. It’s so bad up there. You cannot get away from the racism up north. It permeates everything in the culture up north. Stats say I’m much more likely to be killed by cops up north or out west than I am in the deep south.

There was a petition signed to prevent my family from moving into the neighborhood I lived in for the final seven years of my life up there. These neighbors of ours conveniently only let their dog out of their yard whenever I or my sister would be getting off of the bus from school. Of course it would chase us and bit her once (and it only ever chased or bit us) and everyone else in the neighborhood just made jokes and there as nothing we could do about it until I accidently killed the dog (by kicking it real hard and causing it to run into the street where it proceeded to get hit by a car. I don’t feel bad about it at all). No one knew I did it, and if they had I would’ve probably been killed for it. Because that’s how white justice works. (Note: the only reason we weren’t bitten more is because after the first time we started carrying sticks to and from the bus stop to beat the dog off us).

I had do deal with northern white liberals who told me EVERY DAY how nothing up north was racist and how I should be glad I didn’t live in the south anymore. I had to deal with all the bullshit of being told I spoke well. True story, when I was in elementary school I should’ve gone to speech classes where they teach kids who can’t talk how to talk good. Because I had a bad stammer. I still have a stammer, but it’s more under control now, no thanks to them. Even though I often t imes sounded worse than the kids they picked to go to the speech class they looked at me and said “you speak so well.. . .You don’t need this class.” So I just didn’t talk in school.

My parents caught teachers grading my homework incorrectly, teachers would lose my test because there’s no way a black kid could’ve done that well.

That’s just my personal life. We’re not talking about all the racially motivated zoning laws up north. (Look up zoning laws post reconstruction sometime and educate yourself). While the south had the national guard brought in on some integration shit, the north was busy enacting laws that prevented black people from moving into certain neighborhoods. The north invented and perfected gentrification.

Has anyone ever stopped to examine why black people have started moving back down south if the south is THE WORST place ever? No, because middle class white people have created a narrative of the stupid uneducated red necks down south being the only ones to perpetrate racism. Your Bill Mahers of the world continuously preach about how only stupid people are conservative. We act as if the republican party is only made up of people who never got out of middle school as if the catholic church doesn’t run the north eastern US, as if the Lutherans and Catholics haven’t been strangling each other for control of the midwest. We act like the new home of the KKK isn’t up in Montanna. We pretend the mormons aren’t holding sway out west. We just sit here talking about those stupid southern baptists, who, coincidentally, aren’t the ones who’ve had the cultural power to stop birth control and shit (that’s been the domain of the catholic church like forever. Cause money).

Here, people fly rebel flags. And I know exactly what that means. It means we don’t talk, we don’t look at each other, and we get out of the same space. There’s no great lie going on here. No one who’s born and bread in the south believes racism is dead. That’s only people from up north who have been force fed that lie since the 1830s. They may concoct some like in public about how that flag is honoring their ancestors, but they all know it’s a lie. They hold onto that shit.

Thing is, people don’t remember that in order to win the civil war (which the union was not fighting on behalf of slaves you stupid mother fuckers) the union burned most of the south’s crops to the ground immediately impoverishing a whole bunch of people. So all those white folks who had farms and shit for years and years with families and kids who had all been killed in this war were suddenly out of land, out of a job, out of food, and out of their families. Yeah, they be holdin a grudge, cause it took a long ass time to bring that shit back. Of course they blamed black people as much as the north, because they lost a portion of their work force (for a while, because slavery stopped for about seven or eight days before being reinacted, and a lot of people never became free after the civil war. I’m not talking about convict leasing and debt slavery. I’m talking people still  held legal receipts and shit owning people and were selling them years afterwards up into the 1890s and shit).

The south has its problems with lying about shit, too (I see you texas and virginia up in here making text books talking about how cool slavery was) but the first instance of  that came from northern abolitionists. Their motivations were all over the place. Most of them were white supremacists though, and some of them felt slavery made them look bad. Others felt the narrative around American slavery was getting away from them and their standing globally with their other white folks across the water was being lowered by it, so they wanted it to seem not as bad.

The real crux of abolitionism is that slavery was gonna put those folks out of work. Why you think Irish Catholics and the Italians went so fucking hard at black people? Cause they had someone to look down on and they were about to get put out of work by them. White people up north didn’t want to end slavery for the sake of black people, they wanted to end it for their own sake. They didn’t want black folks anywhere near them. Thus, zoning laws. Ohio’s are real bad and some of that shit is still on the books. Look at Cincinatti’s laws. The language has changed some, but the outcomes are the still the same. Why you think they riot up there so much?

The entire Pacific North West is a FUCKING PROBLEM. They straight up banned us from going out there. No slaves no negroes. Those were the signs and those were the laws. I don’t even know if Oregon ever officially took no negroes out of the law book, because I think it is intertwined in the no slavery law. That area of the country is the microagression capital of the world! Holy fuck do those guys suck at race relations. Not to mention how it’s essentially just a pit for native appropriators.

Basically, the United states is a country founded upon and built on racism. That’s what it’s always been, that’s what it’ll always be. It’s racist. Straight up. And EVERY PART of the country is racist. That includes where you live. It’s just that white folks all over have chosen to make the south the scapegoat for all that shit.

It’s not just assault rifles December 22, 2012

It’s all guns. Period. End Of Story.

The overwhelming majority of gun violence commited in this country are carried out with hand guns. I understand that y’all get all tore up over some pretty white kids getting taken out in bunches by someone with an assault rifle. I know. But peep game for a second, way more black and brown kids get killed with hand guns on the regular. A lot of those deaths come by way of white dudes who either have an actual position of power (say the police), some trumped up position of power (say the neighborhood watch), or just feel like black people make them uncomfortable (say Michael Dunn, who murdered one child and attempted to murder three other children because he felt they were playing music too loudly in their car).

This isn’t new.  This has been happening for years. Every 40 hours a black male is killed by either the police or someone with similar authority like security gurads and what not. Sometimes plain clothes officers will just attack and brutally beat someone to the verge of death just for being a black kid like in the case of Jordan Miles, or they’ll just shoot the kid for nothing and make up reasons later. There are actually dozens of cases of shootings similar to the Trayvon Martin and Jordan Russell Davis where a white man with a hand gun kills a black person (often black boys) and the reason is nothing more than the black kid looked threatening. That’s always the excuse of the police.

And it flies, because in America only white kids are innocent. Only white kids are allowed to be mourned after being killed. When the Sikhs were murdered in their temple there was no mourning, no flying of American flags at half staff. That was some brown people killed by another white terrorist and it didn’t matter to anyone in the slightest. No calls for gun control laws after that. But let white kids be affected and now people care. We get it. Our lives mean nothing to white people. My entire life I have been deemed a threat not for any actions I’ve taken, but because black kids are threats. We are terrors and need to be controlled, and if murder is the means of that control then it is justified. So white people can use their hand guns to kill as many of us as they see fit, and no one will lift a finger to do anything about it.  You’ll fight for your right to keep your hand guns so that you can continue to kill us. It’s your right.

The founding fathers would actually be pleased to know that white people were out here wanton killing black folks with guns. God knows it’s what they were about.

And stop trying to blame shootings on mentally ill people. That’s straight garbage. That’s just another scapegoat for the actual problem of no one needs to actually have guns. “just don’t let those CRAZY people have guns.” That’s stupid. That’s so stupid. I’ll go along with not letting people with mental illness have guns if we classify racism as a mental illness. Then we can get all these cops off the street. Then people like Zimmerman and Dunn wouldn’t be out here shooting black kids for shits and giggles.  What mental illness are we blaming on all the people who get angry during a fight and reach for the most devastating weapon they can get their hands on? None. Know why? Because murder isn’t a product of mental  illness. It’s just not. Mentally ill people are much more likely to be victims of violence. It happens every single day.

Go check your schools and nursing homes. No one cares, because we treat anyone with a mental illness like they’re stupid or a child. When they say someone has been abusing them we just ignore it or laugh it off.  Clearly they don’t know what they’re talking about. They can’t get someone to investigate beatings and rapes on their behalfs, because we as a society don’t view them as people. The number of people with mental  illness who have been the victims of physical abuse and murder outstrips the number of people who have been killed by a mentally ill person by A LOT. It’s a huge number. So take your ableism and stick it in your craw.

Back to guns. The fact remains that we have a severe problem with GUNS. Not with assault rifles, with guns. You don’t need to have them. I don’t need to have them. The cops don’t need to have guns. All over the world cops don’t have guns and somehow manage to solve crimes without shooting people. Don’t give me the second amendment. The constitution said I wasn’t a person. It said it was okay for me to be owned by another human. That document is junk. The 13th amendment actually didn’t stop that. Look it up, kids. People owned slaves legally in America long after that. Not just convict leasing and debt slavery. Just straight up slavery. Because American law actually is kind of toothless with regards to protecting the personhood of black people.

What about my right to not be killed because I look like a threat? What about my right to not get shot for being in an argument with someone. That’s where a lot of gun violence comes from. Two or more people get angry. They have a fight. Most people don’t want to be in a fight. They don’t. So they look for the quickest way to end that fight. They’ll grab a chair or a bottle or a knife. People survive those things with much greater frequency than they survive gun shots. That football player who killed his girlfriend? No gun in that house there’s a good chance no one dies in that situation. Could he have used a knife? Yup, but it’s a slower process. He would have to really want her dead. Shooting someone takes no effort. You don’t have to think about it. That’s the danger of guns. That’s the power of guns. Murder comes in a second. Not just that, but accidental murder comes in a second. You try to shoot one person and miss. Bullet travels and kills someone else. White dude ended up killing two black people just shooting his gun off in his back yard. The parents asked him to stop, and he just kept shooting and woah, what you know? They’re dead.  A man killed his son by accident because he shot without figuring out what was going on. A woman killed her husband on a hunting trip by accident. Gun just went off. Knives don’t go off.

I’m sick of hearing white people tell me how they need guns to protect themselves. It’s a bit disgusting. Really it comes down to them not being seen as a threat worthy of death for owning a gun. If they own a gun it’s seen as protection. If I own a gun I’m a criminal. Weather I have the gun legally or not. I’m seen as a criminal. The cops will shoot me without question if they even suspect I might have anything that could even be slightly misconstrued as a gun. White folks don’t have that problem. So they cry about needing guns. They go to rallies talking about violently killing the president and his family if he tries to take their guns. This is seen as okay. Our whole society shrugs at it. Because the murder of black people is cool.

But let some white kids get shot.

Now y’all care about guns.

Imaro: A More Diverse Sword and Sorcery Adventure September 28, 2012

So I’m doing this thing and it was hard to figure out what book I wanted to review for this. I put all this phantom pressure on myself find something new and interesting or a lesser known author or novel to do, but that felt like trying to hard  and being too cute. Then I thought more carefully about why I wanted to be a part of this More Diverse Universe tour to begin with and it became clear.

Due to a variety of factors of my childhood I feel  in love with action books. I liked the idea of a mostly singular hero who kind of obliterated everything in their path. I didn’t really do fantasy books for most of my youth. They were dumb, wizards are stupid, all the different races were dumb, and all the humans were white. That wasn’t a real conscious decision I made at the time (though it is now), but there was always something to having someone specifically described to look like you (or how you would hope to grow up in your power fantasy) that was full on badass. So it wasn’t that I said out loud “I’m not reading those books because no one looks like me” it was more that with action/thriller/suspense/crime/mystery books people did look and talk and act like me to some degree and I would keep going back for more.

The one exception was anything Robert E. Howard had his hand in. Thematically, I found Conan and Kull’s adventures to fit in with my favorite video games which consisted of running right and hitting stuff. It was simple and effective. There was not fluff to it.  No time for overly complicated plots or massive worlds. Just hero – enemy – adventure to  enemy – kill enemy. It’s pretty good.

Then one fateful day I am just blobbing along the library and was cover hunting until I ran into this:

There was no way I wasn’t going to read this. Look at it! There’s a big Black dude about to be stabbing a lizard monster thing. I’m in. (Note: This book was in the African-American fiction section, which I’m grateful for because that’s the only thing that probably saved it from the Library tossing it years earlier. But seriously Greensburg library. Go jump in a hole.

Then I open the book and instantly am struck with how different it was from Conan and Kull and the world of Robert E. Howard. I didn’t realize how old Howard’s stories were because how would I know? But the world that Charles Saunders created wasn’t just different because there were black people and it was in a fictionalized fantasy Africa, it was different because it was written with a style and authority that Howard never reached for.

Where Howard’s books sought to exotify everything (seriously, everything was written to be exotic to his all white 1930s readers) these stories by Saunders were written to make this fantasy Africa full of verisimilitude. (I wish there was a less academic word for that). The world was  bright and vibrant and whole. The magic used by the Wizards felt wholly real to the world. Since it wasn’t trying to push how weird it was, it allowed  you to absorb this setting more thoroughly.

The book itself is exquisitely written. It holds up spectacularly. It’s been a joy to go back through this past week. The story follows Imaro, a lone warrior who is ostracized by his tribe. The result of this life makes him stronger and tougher through his childhood until he has his coming of age. From there the story rockets off in spectacular fashion as he runs into a variety of different groups of peoples and spirits. Imaro as a character is someone you can easily follow. He doesn’t always make the right decisions, but the decisions he makes (which are appropriately quick and well reasoned) leave you satisfied. There’s no point in the first novel where you have to put the book down to figure out why he did something.

That isn’t to say that the story is shallow, but there’s a clarity of focus with both the character and the story that keeps the pace moving and motivations clear. It’s a very good example of what I like most about fantasy (and stories in general). I’m not a fan of convoluted for the sake of convolutions. I don’t feel like everything needs to be epic. I don’t feel like everything needs to be so dark and I don’t need to feel like my main character can die at any time for me to feel tension.

Charles Saunders does a stand up job at creating tension, mystery, and other buzz wordy emotional responses without getting too dour or going for that forced emotional manipulation stuff. Imaro is constantly challenged by a variety of foes clearly intended to bring out different aspects of his personality and teach him new lessons as he moves on in his adventure, and without fail he meets all of these challenges and succeeds in a remarkable way.  There is something truly awesome about knowing your hero is going to manage to get out of this incredible perilous situation but not knowing either what it will cost or how he will do it.

That’s just part of it. The setting is magnificent. The first time I read this book I had never been exposed to anything like it. Any other books that mention Africa or a clearly Africa inspired section was mummery (usually done up in literary black face). In Imaro we are able to explore a ficionalized Africa that is as diverse as real Africa. The books makes excellent use of the fact that the continent is large and that sort of difference creates space for people to lead wildly different lives. There are the typically nomadic tribes as well as stationary cities. There are plains and grass lands and mountains and deserts and none of them feel stagnant. Saunders fully explores the different life styles of all of these people in these short bursts, and each person or group of people we meet fills the world out a little more. They’re not just set pieces either, you run into the different tribes or members from them here and there without it feeling too coincidental. The Sorcerers of all these different places are geologically appropriate as well. It’s just a nice touch.

Charles Saunders’ Imaro is a book I can’t recommend highly enough. It still holds up to this day and the sequals he’s done more recently are good as well, and expand the universe in fun ways. He also has written a series of Sword and Sorcery books with a female protagonist, Dossouye, that I would highly recommend.

Imaro got railroaded by stupid publishing mistakes and a moderate dose of good old fashioned America racism for 20+ years (Imaro was initially published in 1981 and didn’t make a return until 2006) and it’s good to see Saunders in the Fantasy writing game again. Not just that, but there’s a whole group of black writers doing Sword and Sorcery titles (they’re calling the genre Sword and Soul) and it really excites my little heart that they’re alive and that it seems to be working for them financially  enough to keep doing it.

If you made it this far you deserve a cookie. Or just how about this badass cover