Book Talks

The legacy of Frankenstein’s monster collides with the sociopolitical tensions of the present-day United States.

In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the creature beseeched his creator for love and companionship, but in 2017, the monster has long discarded any notions of peace or inclusion. He has become the Destroyer, his only goal to eliminate the scourge of humanity from the planet. In this goal, he initially finds a willing partner in Dr. Baker, a descendant of the Frankenstein family who has lost her teenage son after an encounter with the police. While two scientists, Percy and Byron, initially believe they’re brought to protect Dr. Baker from the monster, they soon realize they may have to protect the world from the monster and Dr. Baker’s wrath.

Written by lauded novelist Victor LaValle (The Devil In Silver, The Ballad of Black Tom), Destroyer is a harrowing tale exploring the legacies of love, loss, and vengeance placed firmly in the tense atmosphere and current events of the modern-day United States.

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Destroyer was the first graphic novel I have ever read, something I had never done until last year. This story a page-turner, relying on intense art and political commentary that melds the madness with the modern. From the first page, I found myself sprinting to the finish, only to be left pondering the monsters that walk among us.

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Fear of Needles

Instead of getting tested

You take a blade to your palm

Hold your ear to the wound

• Danez Smith (Don’t Call Us Dead)

Don’t Call Us Dead is a collection of poems by the author Danez Smith. The poem's pay tribute to individuals and groups who refuse to be silenced no matter how much they are oppressed, incarcerated or killed. Smith speaks powerfully about their experiences being a part of the LGBTQ+ community. Throughout this text the reader will encounter multiple structures that they use to engage the reader’s thinking.

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I truly enjoyed this text and the different topics they introduce. I was especially intrigued by the format of the poems and how each one reflects what the poem is trying to portray. This book gripped me with the intensity of voice and acknowledgements to topics I‘ve only researched.

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I lost an arm on my last trip home.

Home is a new house with a loving husband in 1970s California that is suddenly transformed into the frightening world of the antebellum South.

Dana, a young black writer, can't expalin how she is transported across time and space to a plantation in Maryland. But she does uquickly understand why: to deal with the troubles of Rufus, a conflicted white slaveholder - and her progenitor.

Her survival. her existence, depends on it.

This searing graphic-novel adaptation of Octavia E. Butler's science fiction classic is a pwerfully moving, unflinching look at the violent, distrubing effects of slavery on the people it chained together, both black and white - and made kindred in the deepest sense of the word.

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I enjoyed reading Butler's Kindred in novel format last year, and when I learned that it exists as a graphic novel, I had to get my hands on it. If you like science fiction, action-packed, fast-paced stories, this is for you. The artwork grabs your attention, and before you know it, you're turning the last page.

Slavery in the United States was one of the most well-known and gruesome instances of millions of people living the experience of Seen but Not Heard. When Dana must understand for herself what this looks like then, her story offers commentary on how it appears now.

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