Livre d'Or

I read and enjoyed Hopkinson's Brown girl in the ring (though it is very creepy!), so would be happy to try something else of hers.

I read your mindful reading essay with great interest. To fit in with that theme, I think you might well like Keri Hulme's The bone people. No, not like, I would have to say appreciate, because it's a very disturbing book with some child abuse themes. But anyway, it's a really beautiful book about indigenous people in New Zealand, and it's like pretty much nothing else I've ever read. It certainly avoids most of the obvious clichés you often find in writing about the intersection between dominant European-origin cultures and indigenous cultures. The protagonist is also asexual, as I believe the author is. Hulme herself I believe is ethnically mixed, but to at least some degree is an insider to indigenous New Zealander culture, just not in a totally uncomplicated way.