Any Day With You is a sweet story about a Filipina-American girl and her relationship with her great grandfather. It’s a slow burn for a middle grade novel, but it is definitely one I will save in my own personal library in hopes my son and I can read it together someday. I loved learning the bits about Filipino folklore and mythology, and I craved to be able to speak with my Lola about it all. It also included an important part of Filipino and American History that often gets erased when we discuss WW2. CW: War Atrocities

“I was part of a catastrophic event called the Bataan Death March. This was when 75,000 captured allied soldiers – Filipinos and Americans – were forced to march from sunrise to sunset, nearly sixty-five miles across the Bataan Peninsula along Manila Bay in April of 1942. We were not given any food or water. We suffered from heatstroke and starvation. We were physically beaten along the way. Many of my friends died, some of them left to rot when we could not carry them. It could easily have been me, and there has not been a single day since that I’ve taken my life for granted. It’s why I try to stroll each evening and watch the sunset. It’s my personal marker of what I’ve lived through and what I still have to achieve. At the end of the March we were crammed into trains and brought to an internment camp. Somehow I had survived to that point, but the camp was torture, so many soldiers died from disease and malnutrition, some beheaded… The Philippines was a former colony of the United States, so those of us who fought were nationals; we should have received the same benefits as all American soldiers, including citizenship. But a law was passed that stripped us of these rights. We were left unrecognized, our role erased, and we’re still fighting for that recognition to this day. Sadly, it’s too late for some. There are not many of us survivors left.”

So often BIPOC narratives get erased from the white settler history books. I love seeing #MGLit tackle these topics head on, unafraid of the horrible truths in American colonial history.
#WeLoveMGLit #AnyDayWithYou #MaeRespicio

I don’t know why I don’t read more novels in verse, or just more poetry in general, honestly. I know I am sorely missing out, and I’m looking to remedy that, especially after reading Chlorine Sky.

At the center of the story is Sky and her relationship with her best friend, Lay Li. But it’s also about self discovery and society’s expectations of what you should and shouldn’t be. This is especially challenging for young Black girls, who have to fight against racist AND sexist stereotypes at every corner. But this book is a celebration of Sky, and her journey to being authentic to who she is, whether that means taking no mercy when exhibiting her amazing basketball skills, or standing up to those that bully her. The exploration of how there is no such thing as binary good or bad also added so much depth to this amazing story. After reading, I looked up some interviews with the author Mahogany L. Browne, and it just made me fall more in love with this captivating story.

“This book was informed by the kind of people I met while figuring out who I was in the world as a young Black girl growing up in California, specifically the people I let stay around me. And I started thinking, when did that happen? Because it was a little weird — I went from loving everything to middle school where I started second-guessing everything, including my friend circle and who I was in that friend circle. I showed up for people emotionally, but also found myself being bullied. This was a pivotal moment for how I saw myself and loved myself. And if I could rewrite that history, that’s how Chlorine Sky was born.” (Shondaland.com)

She goes on to say part of her creative process was immersing herself in Sula, because it asks, “What does it mean to look at friendship with your eyes, what does it mean to look at friendship with your hands? Toni Morrison does that beautifully in Sula.” Sula is the next book we are reading in the #Toni21readathon, so I’m even more excited to make those text connections.

I read this because of @thatgoodgoodbook review. Thanks for the rec, I loved it.

(Slight spoiler warning)

“Chika’s jaw clenched, but he knew she was right. If Vivek had been alive, he would never have conceded her point, but when you’ve stood on the ground and known your child’s bones are rotting beneath you, rage and ego fade like dust in a strong wind.”

The Death of Vivek Oji is beautifully written and entirely engrossing. It was an uncomfortable read and I can see why it may not be for everyone, but I deeply appreciated this story about being true to who you are, found family, and parental grief. It is nothing short of incredible how much story exists in this otherwise short book. All of the characters are so well drawn with their different complexities and I was completely absorbed.

But the character that had me clutching my heart the most was Vivek’s mother, Kavita. The way Emezi describes her grief was just so utterly heartbreaking. It’s hard being a parent, because you hope that you will give your child the complete safety and space to be who they are. They are their own person and your relationship with them will probably shift and change as they grow older and they start to discover who they are, and you have to see them for who they choose to be, with you and without you. For so many parents (myself included) I’m sure sometimes this is a hard pill to swallow. In the book, Kavita has difficulty when she is confronted with other people’s grief over the death of her child. But she did not own Vivek, and she is not the only one allowed to grieve him. To see your child, truly, for who they are only after they die is a curse I don’t wish upon anyone. So I hug my child close, and I will see him in all his glorious humanity and hope he will forgive me if sometimes I stumble, as I’m sure I will.

#TheDeathofVivekOji #BIPOCBookstagram #AlwaysReading #Bookstagram #akwaekeemezi