Tootfinder

Day 4: Adiba Jaigirdar
Thought I'd mix things up a bit in terms of intensity & genre. Jaigirdar has written several lovely sapphic teen romances that grapple with parental acceptance in Muslim Bengali immigrant culture, along with racism and other aspects of second generation immigrant life in Dublin.
I've discovered a few other Southeast Asian authors at my local library who will appear on this list, but I'm putting Jaigirdar first because of just how enjoyable her books are, and because I generally find queer romance to be more engaging than non-queer romance. Jaigirdar's characters are sympathetic and convincing, and their problems are both dramatic and a little funny. "Hani & Ishu's Guide to Fake Dating" is probably my favorite by Jaigirdar, but I also enjoyed "The Henna Wars" and "Rani Choudhury Must Die." "A Million to One" is a bit of a departure from her other books, as historical fiction with a heist plot, but it still engages with Irish culture, immigrants, and queer romance.
#20WomenAuthors

Day 3: Octavia Butler.
Incredibly dark, graphic, and disturbing near-future science fiction, which has proved absolutely prophetic. In the 1990's she was writing about a charismatic Conservative Christian and white nationalist president elected in 2024, and the horrors his paramilitary followers would unleash, including forced labor & indoctrination camps. Did I mention those books include ebikes & pseudo-cellphones too? Characters fleeing north from a disastrous social collapse in Loss Angeles? This is "The Parable of the Sower" and "The Parable of the Talents" and the later was tragically rushed to an end because of Butler's declining health.
Her work deals unflinchingly with racism and the darker parts of society, and to those who might say "her depiction of social collapse is overblown," I'd say that while it's not literally the world we live in, it's *effectively* the world that the poorest of us live in. If you're a homeless undocumented latinx person in LA right now, I'm not sure how meaningfully different your world is from the one she depicts.
Her work comes with a strong content warning for lots of things, including racial violence, sexual abuse and slavery, including of children, animal harm, etc., so it's not for everyone. Reading it in 2023 was certainly an incredible trip. Her politics are really cool though; with explicit pro-LGBTQ themes and tinges of what might today be considered #SolarPunk.
#20WomenAuthors