moonytoast's reviews
262 reviews

Morningside: The 1979 Greensboro Massacre and the Struggle for an American City’s Soul is a deeply salient account of the Greensboro Massacre, where a protest led by a local chapter of the Communist Workers’ Party (CWP) against the Klan culminated in an armed ambush by the KKK and Neonazis and ended with the deaths of five people on November 3, 1979.

As a Greensboro native who rarely ever heard of the 1979 Massacre growing up, I found this book to be devastatingly eye-opening and extremely detailed in its account of the event. Shetterly paints a colorful picture of a critical and overlooked point of American history through the lens of the Greensboro Massacre, when tensions between ideologies were on the verge of boiling over—post-McCarthy communist organizing, the blossoming white power militia movement in the wake of the Vietnam War, and the storied fight of multiracial coalitions in the South to create a better future in America. He also delves into the deep, conflicted history of the city of Greensboro, a city precariously balancing on a knife’s edge.

The violence committed on November 3, 1979 is unfortunately all too familiar to us now in an era where gun violence has become a startlingly regular occurrence. It has been almost a decade since a white supremacist killed nine people at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. It has been seven years since the 2017 Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where a neo-Nazi drove his car into a crowd of counter protestors and killed Heather Heyer. Within the last several years, we have seen an increasingly violent response from police and right-wing agitators towards peaceful protests all across the United States. This is a story about America’s past and present—and a plea for our future.

While the individuals whose lives were abruptly cut short that morning never received justice, their deaths did not snuff out their work. Their families, friends and loved ones continued their fight for justice and push for equality, only deepened by that loss. Despite efforts to paper over the event with corporate amiability and deliberate obfuscation by the Greensboro Police Department, the FBI, and other prominent Greensboro institutions, their loss and their memories continue to persist.

A searing look at an overlooked act of racial and political violence, Aran Shetterly’s Morningside unravels the tensions between the multiracial fight for justice and the nation’s dark underbelly of white supremacy which still continue today. It is a call to reckon with the devastation of America’s racial past in order to move forward with clear eyes towards a brighter future.

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Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

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medium-paced

2.5

I really liked pieces of this story: snippets of prose, overarching concepts, and certain themes. However, the overall book itself felt too meandering in its plot and tone. Casiopeia has the foundation of a great, compelling character, but at moments she just feels like an empty vessel. I still really loved the Mayan mythology here and I will very much be reading other works by Silvia Moreno-Garcia in the future, but this was a tough read.

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A Dark and Drowning Tide by Allison Saft

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adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

alexa play "what is this feeling?" from wicked: the musical soundtrack

Thank you to Netgalley and Random House Publishing Group for providing me with a digital ARC of this book!

An alluring blend of folklore and magical intrigue, A Dark and Drowning Tide is a sapphic fantasy romance perfect for fans of Ava Reid and Freya Marske.

We are drawn into a world of fantasy, fairytale, and politics inspired by nineteenth-century Germany as Brunnestaad is still in its infancy after its king, Wilhelm, completed the campaign for unification his late father had started, unifying the different provinces under one kingdom. With unification tenuous and threats still beyond their borders, Wilhelm orders an expedition to find the Ursprung, a mythical spring that can grant unbridled magical power in order to secure his reign.

Enter Lorelai Kaskel: a folklorist tormented by guilt and grief at the murder of her younger brother, turned cynical by the path she chose that led her to be named co-leader of the expedition alongside her mentor, Professor Ziegler. Succeeding in finding the spring is her one chance at freedom. Lorelai is a Yevani, a ethnoreligious minority in the world of Brunnestaad who have been persecuted for centuries and whose movements are heavily restricted. She’s determined to see this through and be granted authority by the king to travel the world and fulfill her dream of becoming a naturalist.

This dream is ruptured when her mentor and the leader of the expedition is found murdered in the dead of night, all of her notes and journals vanished without a trace. Each member of the expedition is a suspect with their own hidden motives. Lorelai must work with her academic rival, Sylvia von Wolff, to solve the murder while assuming leadership of the expedition as more dangers lay ahead—mythical monsters, forests that rearrange themselves at night, and tensions simmering among the remaining members of the expedition.

I cannot reiterate enough that fantasy with unapologetically Jewish elements has become one of my favorite subgenres. I think part of it is that antisemitic tropes have been so deeply ingrained into the fabric of fantasy and fairytales, which is a key element of A Dark and Drowning Tide. As a folklorist, Lorelai is deeply familiar with the ways in which the Yevani have been portrayed through fables and fairytales. We are told many of them that echo our own—most notably The Jew Among Thorns, a fairytale collected by the Brothers Grimm, becomes The Yeva in the Thorns. Saft and many other Jewish fantasy writers are intimately aware of this and use fantasy as a way to engage in a conversation about that history, which makes their writing all the more refreshing.

Allison Saft is a master in the craft of yearning and a well-built slow burn. Her writing style is exquisite, always deeply evocative and heart-wrenching as she unfurls the layers of her main characters until their bloody, still-beating hearts are exposed on paper. I fell in love with Lorelai and Sylvia von Wolff and found myself letting out guttural, inhuman noises at their frustrated yearning. (A tried and true sign of a masterful romance, if I may say so.) If you’re a fan of rivals to lovers and unabashed sapphic desire, this book will pull you under its current like a riptide and leave you gasping for air.

At its core, A Dark and Drowning Tide is a bruising love letter to folklore, an unabashed confrontation of the prejudices that lie at the center of many fairy tales, and a burning but tender love story.

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Let's Roll: A Guide to Setting Up Tabletop Role-Playing Games in Your School Or Public Library by Lucas Maxwell

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informative

3.0

This is a great starting resource for anyone who feels a bit out of their depth getting a TTRPG group or program established at your local school or public library. A great blend of scholarly information, program examples, and beginner guides to setting up a TTRPG program.

The Library of the Dead by T.L. Huchu

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adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

3.5

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American Refuge: True Stories of the Refugee Experience by Diya Abdo

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emotional informative reflective medium-paced

4.0

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moonytoast's reviews 262 reviews

moonytoast's reviews
262 reviews