Why is my face twitching with happiness? Because DOVE ALIGHT is coming out TOMORROW! link in bio! #dovechronicles #authorsofinstagram #yabooks #centralpark #scifi #dovealight #dovearising #doveexiled #karenbao #nyc #author #bookbirthday (at Central Park)
YA Modern Classics
Young adult books you’ll be reading for years to come - for readers of all ages!
- A Torch Against the Night by @sabaatahir
- The Sun is Also a Star by @nicolayoon
- Salt to the Sea by @rutasepetysauthor
- Rebel of the Sands by @alwynhamilton
- Wink Poppy Midnight by April Genevieve Tucholke
- Traveler by Arwen Elys Dayton
- The Glittering Court by Richelle Mead
- Scarlett Epstein Hates It Here by @annabreslaw
- The Radiant Road by @kcatmull
- Dove Exiled by @karenjbao
- Girl in Pieces by Kathleen Glasgow
- The Rose & the Dagger by @rahdieh
- And I Darken by @kierstenwhite
- The Reader by @tracichee
- Anna and the Swallow Man by @gavrielsavit
Dear Manhattan
You made me
Tougher than the nails holding together your bridges
Sleepless as the lights that line your streets
You dressed me in black
You made me wear it to my old self’s funeral
You tore down my heart till its foundations were laid bare
and built it back up:
Took away the construction cranes
But left it surrounded by metal girders.
You made me
Smart, like the bearded guys cracking jokes and boundaries
in your blue-lit basements
Mysterious, like the girl on 5th in red lipstick and dark glasses
Wise, like the immigrant grandmother
who smiles in the sun and dances in the rain.
With you, I chanted:
“Love Is Love
Black Lives Matter
No Means No
Catcall Me Never”
Not because you forced me --
But because I loved every part of you.
Yes, I loved you
and I left you
Now I tread waters murkier than the Hudson
colder than wind howling through concrete caves
emptier than your subways after a flood
You made me
You loved and hated me.
(You loved and hated everybody else.)
You don’t care if I come back –
And I wouldn’t have you any other way.
My time in the UK: eating food out of boxes
Needed this today
May the 4th be with you.
Hehe YES REY
@nosetriangle for your project if you want
I LOVE THIS SO MUCH
PSA
Obviously the Columbia chemistry department knows how to party
Necessary, Powerful, and True: Diversity in Science Fiction
By Karen Bao
Imagine this: a hundred years from now, New York and Shanghai are underwater. Climate change and sea level rise have utterly swamped them and other lowland cities. Governments across the world beg their brightest scientists to save humanity from the mistakes they and their ancestors made. But instead, the scientists pool their funding, decide that the rest of the world is beyond saving, and jet off to the Moon and form their own country.
Fast-forward another hundred years: Lunar citizens live in fear of their government, which spies on them and restricts their freedoms – all in the name of “protecting” them from both Mother Nature and bitter Earth dwellers. One girl, Phaet, is an aspiring bioengineer with an introverted demeanor and awesome silver-streaked hair. But when her mother gets arrested, she has to uproot her whole life and join the Lunar Militia to keep her little brother and sister from starving.
With so much going on in Dove Arising’s plot and world-building, it would’ve been so easy to skimp on other very, very important things, like including a variety of different people. But I never forgot that the people on the Moon had to reflect the diversity of those on Earth. After all, scientists from all over banded together to colonize the Moon, right? And brilliant minds are attached to people of all different colors, creeds, sexual orientations, abilities, and gender identities. They would have to be in my story for it to make sense.
However, including different identities wasn’t just a matter of consistency. To me, and to a vast majority of readers, it’s personal.
I drafted Dove Arising as a seventeen-year-old waiting to hear back from colleges. “You Must Have a Tiger Mom” syndrome was afflicting young Asian-Americans across the country, and I was tired of being stereotyped. At least it was better than what I’d faced when I was younger: racist bullying and threats. I’d once worn Chinese silk clothes to elementary school and gotten pushed in the mud for my efforts. Reading helped me escape, and the books with people who looked like me filled me with a special kind of strength. (Shoutout to An Na here – Wait For Me was one of my favorites.)
When I wrote Phaet, my Chinese-Lunar protagonist, I gave her a full personality that pegs her as shy, brave, and brilliant first – and Asian second. But I also tied her to her roots. In the Lunar Bases, where the government erases people’s earthen cultural identities in the name of “national unity,” Phaet and her family fight to hold onto things like Chinese myth and stir-fry. And they’re not alone: Phaet’s Militia friends also express their roots by having Sanskrit names or wearing curly hair in a natural style despite being told to “keep it neat.”
In a repressive world where difference is feared, diversity is not only beautiful – it is a rebellion on its own. And when readers see themselves in characters, they start believing that they can change their world. Here’s to the hero/ine in all of us.
Karen Bao’s childhood in New Jersey was full of music, books, stargazing, and buggy science “experiments” on the playground. At age seventeen, she wrote Dove Arising when she should have been doing her homework. She now studies environmental biology at college in New York City, soaking up inspiration for future books. Her second book, Dove Exiled, came out earlier this year.
Dove Arising and its sequel Dove Exiled are available for purchase.
I wrote this thing!
and we are finally home.
- anna & the french kiss // stephanie perkins
Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean you’re wrong.
MUAHAHA. Dove Arising: Disrupting your trust in EVERYTHING since 2347
On the care and keeping of your scientist
The Krapcho decarboxylation, in which you heat the Krap out of a malonate ester
I was stressed out before midterms and tour so I had bae roll me into a sushi