Synopsis
A race of women have lived in relative peace for centuries. But strange forces have come through the ages to finish what was started.

Review
"She was a memory. She was a warning. She was everything they never wanted to remember, everything they worked hard to forget. Yet, she was their sister, and a part of their world."

The synopsis of this short but thoughtful piece of speculative fiction is simple but doesn't quite do it justice. I came across When We Were One after RAWSISTAZ tweeted that they were having a live chat with the author, Zaji.

I thought the book had a unique premise. I just had to know how such a place could exist that only women inhabited. It's through a scientific phenomenon known as parthenogenesis (a type of asexual reproduction found in females) and a derivative of the term, Parthos, is the name of the land they inhabit. The most fascinating part of this story was the dynamics of how these women related to each other and their environment. They had managed to harness a beautiful balance between themselves and nature through characteristics like "mind-talk" and being almost completely uninhibited by time. They maintain a Hall of Words which houses remaining books mostly of laws that the "sisters" find ridiculous and exemplify how humans of centuries past were intellectually bereft. An inevitable change ushered in by the late gestation of an elder is one that will put the sisters to an unimaginable test. A test that reveals the essence of their existence.

Zaji's writing is very poetic and accessible. When We Were One has definitely kept my interest piqued in speculative fiction as this genre often offers up some interesting social and political commentary. While I found its social criticism lacking in a certain cleverness, it still makes for an insightful read.

When We Were One is available as a download or paperback from LuLu.

Review
Imagine it's New York City in the roaring twenties and you teach English in a night school for immigrants. Sounds pretty normal, but add in the fact that vampires and all sorts of "Others" are integrated into society alongside humans. Not sounding so typical anymore,  unless you're Zephyr Hollis. Zephyr, reformed "Defender", is a "blessed" blade wielding, social activist extraordinaire, feminist, and closet Jazz singer. The vampire suffragette, as she's affectionately and mockingly known, is sent into a tail spin when a series of events beginning with a half dead little boy she finds in an alley on her way to teach one evening. Zephyr's comings and goings include a charming cast of characters including her hypocritically prudish landlady Mrs. Brodsky, roommate with a sixth sense Aileen, socialite and journalist Lily, and the ever mysterious Amir. Amir is not only an "Other" unlike any Zephyr's ever encountered, but also he's flirtatious, sarcastic, and dangerous- a winning combination for an intense budding romance.

Alaya Johnson has written a fast-paced, engaging novel. Her no nonsense, sharp tongued characterizations of Zephyr and Amir make this an enchanting read. The notion of Moonshine being merely another vampire or paranormal fiction novel is taking it a bit too lightly. Though a quirky and supernatural tale, it's also a guise for a more grounded critique on race. Zephyr struggles daily to get humans to see that the "Others", who openly live, work, and play in mainstream society, are still deserving of humanity even if not human.


Giveaway
Now that you totally wanna read Moonshine, here's your chance to win a copy!
Please leave a comment for each entry completed and be sure to leave a valid email address so I can notify you if you win.

Main entry (this must be done to enter): If we lived in a society with sometimes dangerous, but often harmless "Others", would you be a Defender or Suffragette and why? You don't have to write more than a sentence.

Bonus entries:
RT this review and giveaway on Twitter +1 (include permalink in your comment by clicking the time stamp to that particular tweet)
Fan me on Facebook +1
Follow me on Twitter +1
Subscribe to my feed +1

Giveaway will close on Thursday, June 3 and winner will be announce on Friday, June 4.

About the Author
ALAYA JOHNSON is a recent Columbia graduate, and denizen of New York City.

Book Synopsis
Imagining vampires at the heart of the social struggles of 1920s, Moonshine blends a tempestuous romance with dramatic historical fiction, populated by a lively mythology inhabiting the gritty New York City streets Zephyr Hollis is an underfed, overzealous social activist who teaches night school to the underprivileged of the Lower East Side. Strapped for cash, Zephyr agrees to help a student, the mysterious Amir, who proposes she use her charity worker cover to bring down a notorious vampire mob boss. What he doesn’t tell her is why. Soon enough she’s tutoring a child criminal with an angelic voice, dodging vampires high on a new blood-based street drug, and trying to determine the real reason behind Amir’s request—not to mention attempting to resist his dark, inhuman charm.

www.alayadawnjohnson.com

Moonshine Tour Stops

Monday, May 24       Books And... live chat
Tuesday, May 25      Parajunkee
Wednesday, May 26 Fang-tastic Books
Thursday, May 27     BrownGirl BookSpeak
Friday, May 28          Not Really Southern Vamp Chick

I received this book from the publisher via Books And... virtual book tours.

Challenges:
African Diaspora
Women Unbound
POC Reading

A Wish After Midnight is one of the first selections for the Amazon Encore program that re-introduces previously self published books to hopefully reach a wider audience.  This is a worthy selection. It's very rare to find a self published, debut novel with such depth, wisdom, and maturity and A Wish After Midnight is definitely a gem.

This YA fiction novel is a first person narrative of Genna, a 20th century teen just trying to survive and make it out of her impoverished Brooklyn life and into a better one as a psychiatrist.  She's the youngest of three and seems to be the only one with her head on straight while her mother struggles to support them. She's like any other teenage girl who's not one of the "pretty girls" but very smart and often teased because she chooses to focus on her studies and not the streets and boys. Genna spends a great deal of time at a local botanical garden which houses a fountain filled with numerous penny wishes including many of her own. One day, a wish goes awry and she finds herself in 1863 Brooklyn in the midst of the Civil War and an infamous New York draft riot. She quickly adapts to her new life in a time where the ink is barely dry on the Emancipation Proclamation taking care of the child of a doctor and his wife who support the abolitionist cause. Genna also finds herself in a bit of a love triangle when she finds herself the affection of a mixed race dockworker and realizes the guy of her blossoming romance from her own time has somehow been sent back in time as well.

Zetta Elliott is a great storyteller. She really captured the hardships of being a teen in modern times with all of the nonsense they deal with and those who instigate it. She also sheds light on the history of race relations with regard to the disparaging treatment the Irish suffered that was just as bad if not often worse than blacks. I loved her portrayal of Genna as it is so realistic. Her life is rough but it didn't come across as sensationalized like the media and other novels often portray.  Genna also possesses a wisdom that's very admirable for a teenager in her situation which is why she doesn't flounder under the weight of her odd teleportation to over a century back in time. 

The ending left my brow furled, but in a good way. Elliott has left the door wide open for Genna's story to continue and I'm cheering her on. I heartily await the sequel to A Wish After Midnight.

Challenges:
POC Reading
African Diaspora

The title to this work of nonfiction is from the famous words spoken by Sojourner Truth at the 1851 Women's Rights Convention in Akron, OH. Those words, "And arn't I a woman?", were a direct attack on the very ideas that men used to support their discrimination of women. She challenges the mere notion of fragility by stating that even though she bore thirteen children and cried a mother's grief when most of them were sold into slavery, that no one cared that she was woman. Why not? It mattered just as much that she was also Black.

"Black in a white society, slave in a free society, woman in a society ruled by men, female slaves had the least formal power and were perhaps the most vulnerable group of antebellum America."

White's book explores the state of the female slave in the American south. Again, slave women disproved the reasons-weakness, vulnerability, aptitude- to marginalize women as there was no chance for survival possessing any of those characteristics. This short work is broken down into six chapters that include topics like the female slave network and their life cycle. What I found to be the most prolific chapter is the first on the "Jezebel" and "Mammy" images. I came into this book already quite familiar with those stereotypes, but not well versed on their exact origins. White's research felt thorough and left me feeling more knowledgeable.

Besides those into nonfiction and scholarly works, it seems that it would also work well as a companion piece for those reading historical fiction from the same period and wanting to gain more insight into how black female slaves are depicted. Even though the focus is on southern slave women, many of the negative images and problems discussed have followed black women to all parts of the country and well into the twenty-first century.

Challenges:
POC Reading
African Diaspora

Me Dying Trial was the first novel published by Jamaican-born author, Patricia Powell. Powell presents the life of rural Jamaican schoolteacher, Gwennie Glaspole. She's married to an often abusive man and has six children, one of whom is the product of an affair with her parents' boarder. Gwennie simply wants a stable, peaceful life for her and her children. She takes an opportunity to get her teacher's certificate as a means to also leave her husband. Gwennie finds more trials in her life as she immigrates to the U.S. without her children in order to work and save money for a home.

The story is told in an omniscient voice which fully reveals the colorful setting and dialect of Jamaica. This voice also helps create a number of layers to the novel like the plight of women being juxtaposed against that of gay men. You have a few strong women like Gwennie who was often silenced by her husband and physically abused, she was never completely submissive and afraid of him.  And her Aunt Cora is a woman who had a rare relationship with her deceased husband as he treated her as his equal as they worked side by side in a store she continued to run on her own after his death. Though being a gay man in Jamaica is extremely taboo, it's very interesting that most of the women  took no issue with homosexuality because there was an apparent empathy with this other oppressed group. As for Gwennie's children, most of the focus was on her son Rudi and daughter Peppy. As they were the two most disconnected from the other siblings, it's natural that they form a bond. These two characters along with Aunt Cora and the abusive husband Walter are where Powell's writing shines. It's where she explores the complexities of family life, how women survive, and every other type of human experience. Peppy's story is one that I think a follow up novel would be appropriate. I enjoyed how invested I felt mostly in her and Gwennie as they have stayed with me after turning the final page.

Challenges:
Women Unbound
POC Reading
African Diaspora

First published in 1924, There Is Confusion was the first novel for poet and The Crisis editor Jessie Redmon Fauset. The novel examines the lives of some Black middle class (Fauset's specialty) residents of New York and Philadelphia trying to navigate the inevitable confusion present in their lives due to race and/ or gender. Fauset is not known for very colorful writing, which hasn't stopped me from being a fan of her work, but her stories are presented in a realistic fashion. Her characters are believable as they are flawed in various degrees. For example, Joanna Marshall is an average looking Black woman of some means thanks to her father's hardcore desire for success. The same tenacity was inherent in Joanna and somewhat to a fault. Joanna believes that not only should she be aiming for mega-success but also all Black people should be just as driven. Her life is consumed by it so much so that she believes success is more important than love and finds out the hard way that she may have been wrong. However, it's very important that Fauset wrote this female character as outside the box when it comes to goals and self reliance unlike her counterpart Maggie. Maggie's goal in life is typical for a woman of any color during the time: marriage. The real flaw with Maggie, though, is that she only partially realizes her abilities to be successful without depending on a man for financial security. Meanwhile, the major male character, Peter, struggles the most with simply wanting to be ambitious or just accepting the confusion that color brings and settling for mediocrity. He comes from a long line of "old Philadelphians" but now only their name survives their socioeconomic status as his father lost the sense of ambition held by his forefathers becoming shiftless and losing most of the family's material possessions. I found this novel very enjoyable and a good piece of social commentary on the state of the Northern middle class Black American of the 1920's.

Challenges:
African Diaspora
POC Reading

Thanks to the Classics Circuit for hosting this tour featuring the prolific works of the Harlem Renaissance.

Schuyler's 1931 satirical novel, Black No More, tells the story of Black insurance man Max Disher who undergoes a procedure that makes him the permanently white Matthew Fisher. This novel explores how race is a social construct that can be altered and manipulated by those with power to suit their needs.

From the commentary on the often caricatured features of Black folks being inaccurate and how dialect is regional not racial to the scathing criticism of such Black luminaries as W.E.B. DuBois and the NAACP, George Schuyler wrote a brilliant and poignant piece that is unflinching in its attack on the idea of race. I found myself laughing out loud through most of the book especially at his satirization of Dr. DuBois as Dr. Shakespeare Agamemnon Beard and completely ripped his intentions as a "Race Man". The name alone is golden! Max, now Matthew, goes on to infiltrate a white supremacist group and marry a white woman he fell for while still a Black man. Everything about American society is turned upside-down as droves of Blacks flock to Dr. Crookman's sanitariums to experience "chromatic emancipation". It doesn't take long for the true whites to become frantic about issues such as Black babies born to seemingly all white pairings and for the Blacks who've "crossed over" to realize that white might not be right.

George Schuyler was a conservative Black author and journalist. He was also a big proponent of miscegenation as a means to eradicate the race problem in the U.S. He and his white wife were the parents of child prodigy and pianist Phillipa Schuyler.

Challenges:
African Diaspora
POC Reading

A few weeks ago, I stumbled across a book signing taking place at one of my local bookstores and the author was a native of the city. When I read the description of her debut novel, I knew I'd attend and have to read the book.

Wench is a story of historical fiction set in the mid-1800's mostly in Ohio at Tawawa House, a summer resort popular among Southern white men for getaways with their enslaved Black mistresses. First, to learn the existence of such a place caught me by surprise. This is one piece of slavery's history I don't think I expected to ever learn about. The four women who inhabit Perkins-Valdez's debut novel are all very different and pretty well developed. Sweet's name is befitting her mostly soft disposition. Reenie is deemed the wise elder among the ladies, yet she's terrified of water. Lizzie seems to be the most complacent and comfortable with her relationship with her master, Drayle. Mawu is the newest mistress and comes in as intriguing with her African name and non-Christian beliefs. It doesn't take long for Mawu to instigate the idea of the ladies escaping to freedom.

At about a quarter into the book, we get some back story on the development of the relationship between Lizzie and Drayle on their Tennessee plantation. This is an important section as it reveals the complexities of Lizzie's feelings towards her master and how those feelings cause a tug-of-war for her when it comes to the idea of her being a free woman. Perkins-Valdez does a very nice job of incorporating this portion without it disrupting the story's flow and seeming unnecessary. The dynamics of Lizzie relationship with her children and Drayle's wife, Fran, are also revealed. It's Lizzie's role as a mother/ child-bearer, and that of the other women, that is almost paramount to their feelings toward seeking freedom. The last summer that all of the women are together at Tawawa House brings a number of tragedies that catapult them into various directions away from each other, but not in spirit.

Dolen Perkins-Valdez writes very clean and, sometimes, lyrical prose. Her characterizations are not as fully realized as I would have liked for other characters besides Lizzie, but ultimately this is Lizzie's story. I did, however, feel invested in these four women.  Though, I've not done any research on Tawawa House, I'm confident the essence of the setting have captured beautifully. Wench is an exciting debut as it's filled a widely unknown void in the history of American slavery and I'm looking forward to Dolen Perkins-Valdez's future writings.

Challenges:
African Diaspora
POC Reading

Up From Slavery is Washington's autobiography chronicling his life from his childhood spent in slavery in Virginia to his being the famed orator and driving force of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. Unsure of the year of his birth, Washington always had a strong desire to improve his life through education. He struggled to put himself through Hampton Institute where he cultivated a stern belief in hygiene, agriculture, and trade skills.   Booker T. Washington's brilliance is easily displayed in his idea that the institution of slavery harmed both slaves and slave owners' families. Labor was forced upon one group while the other had little to no training in trades altogether and that lack of self sufficiency became most evident during Reconstruction. This also fueled his desire to have the students of Tuskegee educated in agriculture and trades like brick making with as much emphasis as traditional school subjects. This was so much a focus that the first students, literally, helped to build the school brick by brick. This was also due to very little funding which eventually changed once much wealthier admirers took notice of Washington's work with southern Blacks. He was an unshaken, organized, and disciplined man who wholeheartedly believed in each person's need to be competent in some trade and be the best one could possibly at it. Today, as we try to climb out of this economic depression and see our fellow man and woman in dire need in Haiti, we can still take heed to his words of wisdom delivered in his famous Atlanta Exposition Address: Cast down your buckets where you are. Do what you can- with full effort - with what and who you have around you.

Challenges:
African Diaspora
Black Classics
POC Reading