non-white characters

Works where at least one main or supporting character is non-white or a person of colour. Minor characters and references are not included.

Ada Twist, Scientist – Andrea Beaty (author), David Roberts (illustrator)

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Ada Twist CoverFirst Published: 6th September, 2016
Genre: Children’s Contemporary Fiction / Picture Book
Available: Amazon.com | Amazon UK

Ada Marie Twist loves to explore things and ask questions. It might just be that she’s a scientist.

The story is in rhyming verse and broadly splits into two parts. The opening has Ada as a baby growing up. Her family notice that she loves to explore things, along with the chaos this causes. Once she starts talking, she has endless questions about the world. This introduces the general idea of the things that make a good scientist.

I liked that Ada doesn’t speak until she’s a toddler. Children don’t follow an exact timeline of development, and it’s treated as something to not worry about. However, the text does assume she will speak eventually. This could hit the wrong way for children who are non-verbal, in presenting speech as something that will happen for everyone.

This thread wouldn’t have sustained the whole book, but it then switches to the second part. Ada notices a really terrible smell, and decides to investigate what’s causing it. She doesn’t find the solution, but the evidence is there in the pictures and the answer can be guessed. This shows science doesn’t have all the answers and encourages readers to come up with the answer. However, it does mean the plot trails off rather than having a firm resolution. This may not work for some readers.

The artwork is done with watercolour, pen and ink. Graph paper and pencil elements are used for the backgrounds. The characters have great expressions. I especially like Ada’s sibling, who is often shown pointing at Ada when she’s made a mess.

This book is in a series of similar books about children with science and technology interests. There’s some reference to that, as they all go to the same school, but it isn’t needed to read the others before this one. It is very clear that it’s an American school, as Ada’s class is referred to by grade, so it could cause some confusion for children in other countries.

My biggest reservation happens outside the story, because there is an author’s note at the end. Ada’s namesakes are introduced: Ada Lovelace and Marie Curie. There’s also a comment that women have always been involved in science. This is true, but the book shows Ada as a black girl. The two named examples are not. I’d have liked to see at least one black woman named, even if she wasn’t Ada’s namesake. The obstacles Ada (and readers like her) will face are not only going to be about gender.

In general, I thought it was a cute book with a positive message about young girls interested in science. The way the plot ends is likely to work for some readers and not for others, so that’s worth keeping in mind. The family cat does face some peril at points in the story, but it’s stopped before the cat comes to any harm.

Spelling the Hours – Rose Lemberg (editor)

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Spelling the Hours CoverFull Title: Spelling the Hours: Poetry Celebrating the Forgotten Others of Science and Technology
First Published: 18th July, 2016
Genre: Science Poetry / Poetry Collection
Poets: Nelly Geraldine García-Rosas; Mary Alexandra Agner; Michele Bannister; Lisa M. Bradley; Sofia Samatar; Sonya Taaffe; Bogi Takács; A.J. Odasso; Lev Mirov; Mari Ness; na’amen
Available: Amazon.com | Amazon UK

This poetry collection contains twelve poems about marginalised people in science and technology. Each poem also has notes about the scientists featured in the poem, to provide some context.

“noble, nobel” (na’amen) and “Augur Effect” (A.J. Odasso) are an interesting contrast, as they cover the same three women (Lise Meiter, Chien-Shiung Wu and Jocelyn Bell Burnell). The former poem is longer and considers the specific work of each involved. I liked the shifting rhythms as it goes from areas with short lines to longer passages. The latter poem takes a more personal approach, linking the poet’s overlooked contributions to those of others, and how the poet was also part of erasing the names (however unknowingly) when writing about science. I do like that both poems were included, rather than trying to stick to one poem per scientist, as they provide very different approaches.

My favourite poem was “Madrepore” (Mari Ness). Aquarium ecology interests me as a fishkeeper, but I also liked the connections back and forth between Anna Thynne’s work and her family. Science doesn’t happen in isolation from the rest of life.

Another strong poem was “Never Cease” (Bogi Takács), which focuses on Rózsa Péter. This also handles how science interacts with life, but on a wider political scale. Rózsa was barred from her profession due to being Jewish. This is a bilingual poem in English and Hungarian.

One of the most interesting structures was “Girl Hours” (Sofia Samatar), as it’s like a scientific report in reverse. This one doesn’t have addition notes at the end, as the notes come first as part of the poem. It wasn’t my favourite in the collection, but I did like the choice of arrangement.

Some of the poems focus on named individuals. Other poems focus on anonymous contributions, such as the women employed as computers and the Nahua artists who illustrated the Florentine Codex. People included as central figures in the poems are Alan Turing, Christopher Morcom, Priscilla Fairfield Bok, Bart Bok, Anna Thynne, Agnes Pockels, Paris Pişmiş, Lise Meiter, Chien-Shiung Wu, Jocelyn Bell Burnell, James Barry, Axiothea of Phlios, Rózsa Péter and Henrietta Swan Leavitt. The cover features Mary Alice McWhinnie.

The introduction by editor Rose Lemberg comments that the poets tended to write about people they already knew about, and had some meaning for them, rather than finding out about the people they didn’t know. This did produce a range of responses, though I’d also be interested in who we might find by wandering in search of stories we didn’t know existed. An area that didn’t surface in the poems, despite some set during older history, were the accomplishments outside Europe before the impact of colonialism.

It’s a strong collection which will appeal to those who enjoy poetry with scientific themes. It delivered on its promise of highlighting marginalised people in science and technology, including a few who were new to me.

[A copy of this book was received from the publisher for review purposes]

When Dimple Met Rishi – Sandhya Menon

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Dimple CoverFirst Published: 1st June, 2017
Genre: Young Adult Contemporary Romance / Novel
Available: Amazon.com | Amazon UK

Dimple is heading to Insomnia Con, a summer course with a contest to design an app. What she doesn’t know is Rishi, the boy her parents have arranged for her to marry, will also be there.

I liked Dimple’s relationship with her family. There’s tension between her dream of a career in computing and their dream of her marrying a nice Indian man. Dimple faces not being seen as Indian enough by Indians due to growing up in the USA, or American enough by white Americans because she’s Indian. This is also contrasted by Rishi, who has a different approach to the conflicting cultural expectations.

Unfortunately, the edition I read had all Hindi words in italics. This included direct speech and words like salwar kameez. I’m not fond of this formatting choice at the best of times, because it serves to emphasise and other anything that isn’t in English. But in this case, it made the first section a nightmare to read, due to the volume of italics sprinkled throughout. This is a publisher choice rather than an author choice, but I’d hope they’d consider revoking italicising privileges for the book formatter when it comes to the next edition.

There are things I liked about the romance. Dimple and Rishi genuinely like each other and get along, rather than hating each other and only dating because they think the other is hot. The issues they’re navigating are mainly about figuring how things will fit with their lives.

However, there were some things I didn’t like. Dimple hits Rishi frequently. Not realising that playful punches are too hard is something I had issues with as a teen, so I could relate to that (though it wasn’t cute or funny, which is how the book portrays it). But when Dimple wanted to punch him because she was angry, that was something else. I don’t find it cute when someone wants to hit their partner to hurt them, whether they manage to pull back from striking them or not. There are also other instances of ignoring boundaries, such as pressuring Rishi into eating something he doesn’t want to eat. There’s some pushback when she invades Rishi’s privacy, but overall, it’s shown as a good thing to ignore people’s boundaries because it’s for their own good.

The romance also means everything else stops. The plot is gone, the family relationships move to the background, and Dimple’s friendship with Celia isn’t particularly explored. I’d hoped for more of a balance between the elements.

This wasn’t the book I expected when it came to the overall theme. Coding is Dimple’s passion, yet it’s minimised throughout the book. There’s a discussion about Dimple’s app idea, and after that, a few token references here and then. In contrast, Rishi’s passion for art does have development. He’s shown drawing and going to art events. The art aspects of the course are the ones that get the most time, such as the photography icebreaker and the talent show. It’s much more of a book about art than one about computer science, which wasn’t what I was hoping to read.

The lack of time spent on the app development had another issue due to Dimple’s idea. She wants to make a reminder app for people who have medication to take, which will work as a game with rewards. This is based on her dad finding it difficult to remember to take his medicine as a diabetic. She doesn’t discuss this with her dad, and no disabled people are involved at any point in the process, which means it’s based on what she’s assuming people need. Non-disabled people having control of resources for disabled people is an issue, so it doesn’t sit well here.

Being marginalised can mean facing microaggressions and bullying constantly, particularly in spaces dominated by more privileged people. The book tries to tackle this, but I have mixed feelings about how this turned out. Dimple is on high alert for signs of such behaviour, often assuming the worst before it happens. This is a realistic reaction to being in an unsafe space. But the narrative is arranged so that Dimple is never wrong. She never lashes out at someone based on an assumption that doesn’t turn out to be true. When she assumes a group of people are obnoxious based on their appearance, it turns out they’re really terrible. When she assumes someone is going to cause issues about her name, that person does indeed end up causing issues. I’d have liked to see some nuance here, in that assuming the worst and reacting aggressively will mean sometimes getting it wrong and having to smooth it over. I don’t count her initial reaction to Rishi here, as that was a case of reacting to behaviour that appeared threatening, rather than assuming he would do something like that in the future based on his clothing.

The strength in representation is that Dimple and Rishi are Indian and Hindu. The other areas are mainly on the side, as they’re supporting characters rather than the main characters. Dimple’s dad is diabetic and her auntie uses a wheelchair. Dimple’s friend Celia is bisexual and half Dominican. Celia does stray into some bisexual tropes, such as being the one with the active sex life and her relationships with boys being shown as much more serious (in other words, it’s just a phase for a girl to be interested in girls). I would also have liked to see other girls (including other Indian girls) who were at the convention to code. As it stands, it had a not-like-other-girls vibe, as the two other girls shown don’t appear to be heading into computing professions.

There was also the issue of small jarring references which could easily have been cut and kept the story exactly the same. For example, the evil rivals are compared to intersex people at one point as an insult, by stating they have micro penises. Also, Dimple criticises the use of “Aight” by saying no one she knows uses it unironically. There are things to be said about a rich white boy using AAVE to sound cool, but criticising him for not sufficiently making fun of AAVE is not one of those. And for my last example, the line where Dimple notes Rishi is “dressed pretty sanely for a psychotic attacker”, because obviously creepy people are all psychotic and insane. There were enough small things like this to bother me. I’d have liked it better if no marginalised group appeared only as a punchline or an insult.

This was a light read with a few funny moments. Though there were some things I didn’t like, I thought it was okay in general. I’m not really the audience for romances that only focus on the romance, so the lack of development of the contest plot and the non-romantic relationships were big downsides for me. This will appeal to fans of contemporary romance, but will likely be a disappointment for those interested in the STEM angle.

[A copy of this book was received from the publisher for review purposes]

Chameleon Moon – RoAnna Sylver

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Series: Chameleon Moon, #1
First Published: 1st October, 2014
Genre: Superhero / Novel
Available: Amazon.com | Amazon UK | Smashwords

People with superpowers are kept in quarantine in the city of Parole. When an assassination goes wrong, Regan is left with amnesia, and it might have something to do with the larger issues of the city.

It’s debatable in an ensemble cast whether anyone is a main character. I’m loosely saying they’re Regan and Evelyn, as a lot of the plot and scenes revolve around their stories, even if they’re from someone else’s perspective. But other characters also have large roles, so it’s open to interpretation. This is the second edition of the book.

Regan ends up with amnesia early in the story. It’s a good handling of amnesia in general, such as Regan processing how he feels about not remembering anything, and the way the memories trickle back. If he did have his memories, the plot wouldn’t be solved in five seconds, so it’s not used in that way. The personal impact of not remembering things like his family is the primary focus.

What I wasn’t fond of was the reason for the amnesia, because it’s caused by Hans. I disliked the scenes he was in and hoped they’d be over quickly, which unfortunately, they never were. One issue is that Hans has mind powers which mean he can give people amnesia, control their minds, and is generally unstoppable. Which makes it hard for other characters to stand up to him. Hence when he’s in a scene, it’s all about him, and it’s not going to end quickly.

Part of Regan’s struggle to remember his past reveals he may be asexual, as he realises he doesn’t find others sexually attractive. He’s also a lizard person with PTSD and anxiety.

Evelyn is a superhero with singing powers. She’s a trans woman and is in a poly relationship with two other women. I’m assuming she’s non-white as her skin is described as brown. One of the things she has to face is her past. She left her birth family behind, but ends up having to return. Evelyn is misgendered by one of her family, though these scenes are brief.

There’s a lot of diversity in the cast, including a non-binary person with they pronouns, someone with a double leg amputation, and multiple non-white people (though I was uncertain of exact races). PTSD is common, along with anxiety and depression. There are some references to suicide as part of this. It’s not clear whether the characters in relationships view themselves as gay, lesbian, bi, pan and so forth. Regan’s sexuality is the only one explicitly discussed. However, the relationships tend towards same gender or binary gender with non-binary.

Some of the books I’ve had recommended to me as lighter queer reads have turned out to have a constant threat of sexual violence. This one was noted to be somewhat darker, but it managed to avoid that particular issue. It has general violence, but that violence doesn’t focus around sexual violence.

On the issue of darkness, the characters may be living in a disaster zone, but the end tends towards the hopeful rather than the tragic. Named characters have a very good chance of survival. Unnamed characters may not be so lucky.

I enjoyed a lot of things about the book. Parole is an interesting setting and it was good to find out more about the mysteries surrounding it. There’s a lot of character time, as the characters talk and figure things out. I did feel it got confusing towards the end, in terms of exactly what was happening, and everyone’s locations. I also really didn’t like Hans, particularly because his powers made it hard for anyone to resist him. But my criticisms are minor, and for the most part, I’d be interested in seeing where it goes next.

Every Heart a Doorway – Seanan McGuire

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Series: Wayward Children, #1
First Published: 5th April, 2016
Genre: Urban Fantasy / Novella
Available: Amazon.com | Amazon UK

Nancy has spent the last few years in the Halls of the Dead, an underworld where stillness is valued. When she returns, she ends up at a boarding school for other teenagers like her, who are longing to return to their worlds.

Contrary to the book’s official description, it’s not about children who are spat out by their portal worlds when their potential is used up. Some can return to their worlds if they find another door. Some will go back and forth many times. Which is a pity, because I liked the idea of draining children of their miracle powers like some sort of portal world vampire, but there you go.

There’s obviously a deeper system going on here, with the worlds mapped out in directions like Nonsense and Logic, but this never really gets developed. Most of the interesting setup is dropped once the murder mystery begins. Speculative murder mysteries are my thing, but this one really didn’t work for me. I figured they’d go around finding out about everyone’s worlds, in the hopes of finding clues to the killer. What actually happens is they don’t do a lot of investigating, ignore the very obvious clues, then have the answer fall into their laps at the end. Note that this is a darker mystery, so the deaths are gory and the bodies are described in detail.

Nancy is a romantic asexual person. The book attempts to explain asexuality in basic terms, but in a way that is impersonal to Nancy. It’s like a definition for someone who hasn’t heard of asexuality. Which makes it a problem when asexuality is being defined as not having a desire for sex, rather than not feeling sexual attraction. This is true for Nancy, but not for all asexual people, so it would have been better if she’d made the description personal.

The discussion of romance is rather more confused. She makes it clear she did enjoy dating when she was young enough that there wasn’t pressure for sex. She directly states she’s not aromantic. Then she goes on to describe people as being like paintings, so she doesn’t want to date because she wouldn’t date a painting. In other words, she doesn’t get into romantic relationships with people she’s not sexually attracted to, which is no one, so therefore she doesn’t date. I’m not really sure what all that was about. Maybe Nancy was confused. Maybe the author was confused. I couldn’t tell which.

However, my biggest issue with her asexuality is that it’s portrayed as a bigger problem than having returned from the Halls of the Dead. Her parents push her to date and she thinks it’s inevitable in relationships that she’ll be pressured into sex. Nancy was put into sexually awkward situations just to show her being uncomfortable, like her roommate wanting to know if Nancy wanted sex with someone, and if she could masturbate whilst Nancy was in the room. The overall feel is that it would be impossible for Nancy to exist in society as an asexual person, and so she turns her back on society.

There’s an attempt to distance Nancy’s death and stillness from asexuality, by saying a lot of people in the Halls of the Dead were sexual. Which would work better if being asexual wasn’t a reason for her to want to return there and retreat from society forever.

Nancy states she doesn’t have an eating disorder, but that’s not how it looks. She’s attempting to survive on the food that sustained her in the Halls of the Dead. That means mostly fruit juice. It’s a fantastical eating disorder for an unusual reason, but she’s still restricting her portion sizes, and this is still going to kill her. However, as it isn’t addressed as an eating disorder, there aren’t any downsides. It’s shown as rather ethereal and mysterious, which was getting a little too close to glamourising eating disorders for my liking.

One of Nancy’s new friends is Kade, who is a trans boy. He was kicked out of his world when they realised he wasn’t a girl, his parents rejected him for it, and he also faces bigoted comments at the school. The anti-trans themes weren’t unrealistic, but were rather a downer, especially considering he’s the only one who couldn’t have the happily-ever-after of going back to his perfect world.

Jack and Jill are identical twins. It avoids some tropes (they’re not telepathic linked or treated as being identical people), but does fall into others (when one twin is good the other must be bad).

There are a few non-white characters. Sumi is Japanese. Christopher is Latino. The former doesn’t get much development time, it grated that she constantly called people stupid, and I didn’t like how her story ended. The latter has some development, though I noted his world was rather Day of the Dead, linking the world to his roots in a way that doesn’t happen for the white characters. These characters exist, but it’s the white characters who are centred.

There’s an attempt to make the school mostly being girls sound less binary by blaming it on imposed gender roles, but this didn’t work for me. Nothing about “boys will be boys” would stop them disappearing through a door in an instant. It’s possible this was intended to sound ridiculous, and Kade’s experiences would suggest the portal worlds prefer girls because they’re bigots rather than there being a real gender difference. But no character challenges this at all.

Also, I never did like the trope that adults are so vastly different from children, except for old people who are just like children. This is used to justify why adults (except for old adults) can’t cope with nonsense.

I liked the concept for this a lot more than the actual story. It’s a great idea. There’s some lovely writing in places and some of the worlds were very imaginative. But it doesn’t really come together as a whole. The inclusion reads too much like it’s there to explain terms for people who don’t know them, and has some implications I don’t like very much. This is tied up in a murder mystery that isn’t very mysterious.