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Oct. 14th, 2009 10:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsSherri L. Smith's Flygirl is definitely making my list of top YA novels read this year. The book's narrator is Ida Mae Jones, a light-skinned black woman in the 1940's whose father taught her to fly (and love) airplanes, but who was denied her pilot's license because she's a woman. When war breaks out, she loses her brother to the army, but she gets her chance to fly - the US Army has started supporting a division of Women's Airforce Service Pilots (or WASP) to transport and test-fly army planes and free up male pilots for combat duty. Of course, in the segregated US Army, the WASP isn't going to accept a black woman, but Ida Mae is just light enough that she thinks maybe she can get away with passing in order to get up in the air.
You guys know I have a weakness for books about women passing as men in all-male disciplines, and in one way this felt very familiar to me - Ida Mae's constant fear and awareness that she has to perform at all times, the small subterfuges and the genuine friendships that nevertheless might dissolve at any time if the truth came out, all resonate with that genre. But there are ways in which the stakes in this game are much higher, and Sherri Smith doesn't flinch away from any of that. As a white woman, doors do open to Ida Mae, but she can't acknowledge any of the people who are most important to her (there's a scene where her mother comes to visit her at her training that is pretty heartbreaking), sometimes she's completely boggled by the disconnect between her experience and the privilege her new white friends express, and she's well aware that the longer she decides to continue as "Jonesy" the flygirl the more she'll lose her connection to her family. At the same time, the WASP themselves are fighting for legitimacy and recognition in an army that won't guarantee them jobs after the war or even pay for their funerals in the line of duty, because they're not officially commissioned officers. The choices are never easy, and Smith does a really good job balancing all the different forces at work in the story - racism, sexism, privilege conscious and unconscious, family history, ties and responsibility to friends and family and country and Ida Mae's own need to be in the air.
It's also just a really good story. Smith has done a ton of research (the book started as her master's thesis) and portrays the time period and the training that Ida Mae goes through and her eventual army service incredibly well. Ida Mae is also a fantastic narrator, and the characters that surround her (especially her fellow WASP trainees, upper-class Jewish girl Lily Lowenstein and carny wing-walker Patsy) are also really strong. (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
newredshoes, I was thinking about you especially - brassy 40's dames! WWII pilots! Brassy 40's dames who are WWII pilots!)
You guys know I have a weakness for books about women passing as men in all-male disciplines, and in one way this felt very familiar to me - Ida Mae's constant fear and awareness that she has to perform at all times, the small subterfuges and the genuine friendships that nevertheless might dissolve at any time if the truth came out, all resonate with that genre. But there are ways in which the stakes in this game are much higher, and Sherri Smith doesn't flinch away from any of that. As a white woman, doors do open to Ida Mae, but she can't acknowledge any of the people who are most important to her (there's a scene where her mother comes to visit her at her training that is pretty heartbreaking), sometimes she's completely boggled by the disconnect between her experience and the privilege her new white friends express, and she's well aware that the longer she decides to continue as "Jonesy" the flygirl the more she'll lose her connection to her family. At the same time, the WASP themselves are fighting for legitimacy and recognition in an army that won't guarantee them jobs after the war or even pay for their funerals in the line of duty, because they're not officially commissioned officers. The choices are never easy, and Smith does a really good job balancing all the different forces at work in the story - racism, sexism, privilege conscious and unconscious, family history, ties and responsibility to friends and family and country and Ida Mae's own need to be in the air.
It's also just a really good story. Smith has done a ton of research (the book started as her master's thesis) and portrays the time period and the training that Ida Mae goes through and her eventual army service incredibly well. Ida Mae is also a fantastic narrator, and the characters that surround her (especially her fellow WASP trainees, upper-class Jewish girl Lily Lowenstein and carny wing-walker Patsy) are also really strong. (
newredshoes, I was thinking about you especially - brassy 40's dames! WWII pilots! Brassy 40's dames who are WWII pilots!)
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Date: 2009-10-14 04:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-14 04:08 pm (UTC)Also, I now feel an overwhelming need to read everything I can find on the WASP, because MAN.
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Date: 2009-10-14 04:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-14 04:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-14 04:41 pm (UTC)So, yeah, go watch BoB! I mean, what was that?
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Date: 2009-10-14 05:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-14 05:24 pm (UTC)*sidles off to Amazon*
EDIT: Awesome, it has already been nominated for Yuletide, too!
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Date: 2009-10-14 05:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-14 05:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-14 05:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-14 06:03 pm (UTC)Just when I am trying to focus on schoolwork and not novels, I discover your journal and all these awesome recs. Good-bye, free time! *waves handkerchief sadly*
At least this one kind of counts as some kind of history reading, even if it's not the kind I'm supposed to be doing.
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Date: 2009-10-14 06:11 pm (UTC)It totally counts as history reading! It contains much valid learning! Um.
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Date: 2009-10-14 06:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-14 06:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-14 06:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-14 06:28 pm (UTC)OH YULETIDE. *LAUGHING*
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Date: 2009-10-14 06:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-14 06:34 pm (UTC). . .
<33333333 NEVER CHANGE, YULETIDE
(Someone else nominated 20th-century literature academics. I SINCERELY HOPE that what they mean by that is 20th-century literature academics RPF! *dying*)
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Date: 2009-10-14 06:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-14 06:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-14 06:51 pm (UTC)Damn it. *makes wishlist note for end of month*
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Date: 2009-10-14 06:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-14 07:12 pm (UTC)BTW, have you read Bill Bryson's books? He's like "Here, have this history of all the interesting things about English! And here, let me make it EVEN MORE AWESOME by throwing in something funny every paragraph! Oh, and did you know there weren't really roads in America until the twentieth century? :D" They're my favourite history books.
I wish I didn't have to wait until Tuesday to go to the library. :[ Oh well, it gives me a chance to sit down and figure out which of your recs they have.
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Date: 2009-10-14 07:21 pm (UTC)I have only read Bill Bryson's book about science so far, but I have the one about touring England on my shelf waiting to read soon! I have heard many excellent things about him. :D
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Date: 2009-10-14 10:48 pm (UTC)Oh, I read that one! A Short History of Nearly Everything, right? All the science stuff was awesome and informative, but the bit I remember best was that Vesto Slipher is the most sci-fi-awesome-y name for an astronomer EVER, and I'm going to steal it when I get the chance. (The Mother Tongue is still my favourite Bryson book, though.)
*I'm not sure why I'm using 'hang' here. I blame it on reading Made in America this morning.
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Date: 2009-10-15 12:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-15 02:09 am (UTC)(Also, I checked the Books of Wonder site, and - tragically! - Julie Andrews was there on Saturday. We just missed her!)
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Date: 2009-10-15 02:12 am (UTC)That's the one! What I remember most about it is all the academic scientist bitchfights, because they are hilarious.
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Date: 2009-10-15 02:54 am (UTC)Especially the bits about the moss scientists fighting about some of the re-classifications. That was absolutely glorious.
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Date: 2009-10-15 12:17 pm (UTC)