The Stars and the Blackness Between Them by Junauda Petrus

The Stars and the Blackness Between Them by Junauda Petrus (Dutton Books for Young Readers, 2019)

★★★★★

Two queer black girls, one from Trinidad and the other from Minneapolis, find radical love and magic despite tragic circumstances.

I had to process my feelings about this book through a review because it was the most healing reading experience I’d had all year. Junauda Petrus has so much love for these characters, and I felt connected to that love in a way that made me cry buckets. While the story depicts Black realities and complexities that are not my own, Petrus’s tender offering to her grief-stricken characters—to recall their own light and their ancestors who are still present with them—felt like an invitation to me as well.

Remember that you are from the stars and that you can return to them.

Remember you are a sacred being of love, no matter the darkness of an earthly life.

Remember you come from light and return to freedom.

Remember you are the healing of your ancestors, that you are Chiron the wounded healer.

You heal through the compassion you give to yourself.

Remember you are an astronaut of the soul.

May you find solace in your travel to another star.

This poem/affirmation/prayer, recited by an incarcerated character to other men on death row as they go to their executions, surprised me: they felt like words my mom would have said if she were still alive. I felt the pain of her absence all over again—realized I’m still holding grief about her death 10 years ago—even as I understood the release of this pain and grief to be a healing the book encourages.

“As you lie in the dirt, imagine that the land can hold all of the feelings. All of the sickness and hurt. Confusion. The earth can take it all. Don’t feel like you is too much. You are okay and loved by creation.”

I shared these feelings with my partner and of course ended up ugly crying. He held me and told me I was beloved and man did it feel hard to completely receive those words. At the same time that I felt appreciation for both of my partners’ love and all the other love that I do have in my life, there was a part of me that felt blocked from love, and blocked from fully embracing what the author assures her characters is accessible to them.

So I’m probably going to need to work that out in therapy, but in the meantime I feel grateful to Junauda Petrus for this gift of a book. Though it was not written for me, it attuned me to emotions I didn’t realize I was carrying, and offered me a balm in dark times.

Sweetness is here. Kissing at all things. Broken or confused.

Wilder Girls by Rory Power

Wilder Girls by Rory Power (Delacorte Press, 2019)

★★☆☆☆

Sapphic horror continues, but this one missed me.

Things I thought were scary or good:

• Not being able to trust an authority figure(s).

• I appreciated that Hetty, Byatt, and Reese’s relationships were messy, and somewhere between friends-sisters-lovers.

• The girls’ (and particularly Byatt’s) relationship with the Tox: that despite the Tox being horrifying, it might be something you want, or something that makes you truer to yourself. The metaphor for queerness.

Things I was bored by:

• Infected animals.

• Body horror so unrealistic as to feel random.

• Sentences missing punctuation for effect

• I never cared about any of the other students or the nameless Headmistress, so emotional moments that hinged on those characters’ motivations didn’t connect.

• And honestly, I didn’t really care about the main characters either.

I think I need a break from YA.

Proxy by Alex London

Proxy by Alex London (Philomel Books, 2013)

★★☆☆☆

YA dystopian sci-fi thriller about a rich one-percenter and the Proxy who, by virtue of being a debt slave, is his whipping boy.

Interesting premise, with some dark moments, a queer MC, and fair character arcs, but the technical issues in this one killed me. Once the two main characters meet up, POV switches between them (and a third character) at will, sometimes in the same paragraph or sentence. Could not get over the tell-y writing. And, as previously mentioned, I’m not fond of Long Camping Trips.

Cuckoo Song by Frances Hardinge

Cuckoo Song by Frances Hardinge (Pan MacMillan, 2014)

★★★☆☆

In mid-1920s England, a young girl, Triss, wakes up from a near-drowning. She barely recognizes her mom and dad, she’s infernally hungry, and her little sister keeps screaming at their parents: “Can’t you see she’s a fake?”

Another “hard to believe this is a YA book,” because it’s awfully creepy, in a way that leaves even adult me wrecked. But the kernel of that is something glorious. As Triss discovers all the ways that things are wrong and she is not normal, her parents try to fix her problems with strained smiles and bed rest. It was easy to see how Triss’s situation might mirror that of any real-world child whose authentic character did not align with their parents’ expectations.

The story veers into many unexpected places, sometimes feeling like an excuse for Hardinge to play with the details of the historical era in which the book is set. Though I never minded those explorations, they also didn’t grab me. I did appreciate the complexity of the sisters’ relationship, and their moments of alternating tenderness and animosity, but on the whole, I didn’t enjoy this as much as Fly by Night.