A Scatter of Light and Happy PRIDE!
Sundays in June with this book.
We read Malinda Lo‘s Last Night at the Telegraph Club last June and loved it!
🏳️🌈National Book Award-winning author Malinda Lo returns to the Bay Area with another masterful coming-of-queer-age story, this time set against the backdrop of the first major Supreme Court decisions legalizing gay marriage.
And almost sixty years after the end of Last Night at the Telegraph Club, Lo’s new novel also offers a glimpse into Lily and Kath’s lives since 1955.
Aria Tang West was looking forward to a summer on Martha’s Vineyard with her best friends—one last round of sand and sun before college. But after a graduation party goes wrong, Aria’s parents exile her to California to stay with her grandmother, artist Joan West. Aria expects boredom, but what she finds is Steph Nichols, her grandmother’s gardener.
Soon, Aria is second-guessing who she is and what she wants to be, and a summer that once seemed lost becomes unforgettable—for Aria, her family, and the working-class queer community Steph introduces her to. It’s the kind of summer that changes a life forever.
Adrienne Rich
American poet and essayist
I feel in love with Adrienne’s writing last year after reading her biography and multiple books of hers. This particular poetry book is listed as a companion book to read along with my Sunday Bookclub book. It’s very good and it’s nice to read what the main character is reading to enhance the story.
Adrienne Cecile Rich was an American poet, essayist and feminist. She was called “one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century”, and was credited with bringing “the oppression of women and lesbians to the forefront of poetic discourse”.
The Dream of a Common Language is a work of poetry. The book is divided into three sections: first “Power”; second “Twenty One Love Poems”; third “Not Somewhere Else, But Here”.
The collection of poems was the first book Rich published after she came out as a lesbian in 1976. In it, she explores the concept of a common language, to be achieved through poetry, art, and feminist ideas. The book is an integration of the author’s personal life and social and political beliefs.
The section, “Power,” contains poems about noted accomplishments of individual women, that she relates to all women. The poem, “Power,” discusses Marie Curie’s discovery of two elements, polonium and radium, which made her powerful but eventually led to her death. The eight poems in this section comment on the need for the nature of power to be redefined, in order to include women in a way that does not destroy them. The poems show a necessary change in ideologies to achieve the common language.
The section, “Twenty-one Love Poems,” is a group of lesbian love poems that aim to present the power of love between two women and the need to change the cultural values that do not recognize this as a kind of love. The love poems comment on how women involved in lesbian relationships are alienated because their love is not recognized by the world.
The section, “Not Somewhere Else, But Here,” to discuss female relationships, now in relation to nature. The poem, “Natural Resources,” presents common elements in the lives of women, compared to the elements in nature.
Last June we read Last Night at the Telegraph Club and LOVED IT. We were thrilled that A Scatter of Light was published so we could read it this June. Both for PRIDE intentionally, however these books could/should be read any month. These books are written so well in two different ways it’s just amazing. All the art and poetry and science and food and history… California (!) it’s all just wonderful.
This June read included Adrienne Rich and Shakespeare’s The Tempest… I mean.. ♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️
A little intertwining of characters from both books is a sweet nod. I hope this author writes more books!!
✍🏼 Malinda Lo is the New York Times bestselling author of seven novels, including most recently A Scatter of Light.
Her novel Last Night at the Telegraph Club won the National Book Award, the Stonewall Book Award, the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, a Michael L. Printz Honor, and was an LA Times Book Prize finalist.
Her books have received 15 starred reviews and have been finalists for multiple awards, including the Andre Norton Award and the Lambda Literary Award. She has been honored by the Carnegie Corporation as a Great Immigrant. Malinda’s short fiction and nonfiction has been published by The New York Times, NPR, Autostraddle, The Horn Book, and multiple anthologies. She lives in Massachusetts with her wife and their dog.
Happy Pride ALL!! This is worth the read.
