meganbmoore (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
meganbmoore) wrote2013-09-01 12:53 pm
meganbmoore) wrote2013-09-01 12:53 pm
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"Dust Girl" and "Golden Girl" by Sarah Zettel
The first two parts of a trilogy about Calliope "Callie" LeRoux, a teenager who lives with her mother in the Dust Bowl during America's Great Depression. Callie's father was a black musician who promised to come back for them, but never did (Note: due to spoilers, the plotline is not the failboat the early details may lead you to expect.), and Callie has spent her life "passing" as white, with she and her mother claiming her father was an Irishman. When the biggest dust storm anyone remembers hits town, her mother disappears, along with everyone else in town who hasn't already evacuated, and Callie sets off to find her, encountering strange people and creatures along the way, many of whom want to capture and use her for their own ends.
While I'm not sure about some parts of it, it's a very different take on the Fae, and one that actively rejects the common interpretation of "all or most fae are white." It also seeks to tie the mythology to Americana, and features one of the few "chosen ones" in Western literature who is a WoC.
In this mythology, the "seelie" are white, and the "unseelie" are black, and Callie's father was the prince of the unseelie court who's been imprisoned since Callie was a baby, which is why he never returned. I'd say the unseelie court was portrayed the more sympathetically of the two in general, but both courts are generally nasty business.
While I'm not sure about some parts of it, it's a very different take on the Fae, and one that actively rejects the common interpretation of "all or most fae are white." It also seeks to tie the mythology to Americana, and features one of the few "chosen ones" in Western literature who is a WoC.
In this mythology, the "seelie" are white, and the "unseelie" are black, and Callie's father was the prince of the unseelie court who's been imprisoned since Callie was a baby, which is why he never returned. I'd say the unseelie court was portrayed the more sympathetically of the two in general, but both courts are generally nasty business.