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Color outside the Lines: Stories about Love by [Sangu Mandanna, Samira Ahmed, Adam Silvera, Eric Smith, Anna-Marie McLemore]

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Eric Smith

Lydia Kang

Color outside the Lines: Stories about Love Kindle Edition

by Sangu Mandanna (Editor), Samira Ahmed (Contributor), Adam Silvera (Contributor), Format: Kindle Edition

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This modern, groundbreaking YA anthology explores the complexity and beauty of interracial and LGBTQ+ relationships where differences are front and center.

When people ask me what this anthology is about, I’m often tempted to give them the complicated answer: it’s about race, and about how being different from the person you love can matter but how it can also not matter, and it’s about Chinese pirate ghosts, black girl vigilantes, colonial India, a flower festival, a garden of poisons, and so, so much else. Honestly, though? I think the answer’s much simpler than that. Color outside the Lines is a collection of stories about young, fierce, brilliantly hopeful people in love.—Sangu Mandanna, editor of Color outside the Lines

With stories by:
Samira Ahmed | Elsie Chapman | Lauren Gibaldi | Lydia Kang | Michelle Ruiz Keil | Lori M. Lee | Sangu Mandanna | L.L. McKinney | Anna-Marie McLemore | Danielle Paige | Karuna Riazi | Caroline Tung Richmond | Adam Silvera | Tara Sim | Eric Smith | Kelly Zekas & Tarun Shanker

Print length

289 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Soho Teen
Publication date

November 12, 2019
Reading age

14 years and up
Grade level

9 - 12
File size

953 KB
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Editorial Reviews

Review

A Nerd Daily Best YA Book of 2019

Praise for Color outside the Lines

“You know that feeling of maybe seeing yourself represented every now and again, but never quite seeing it done right? Imagine feeling that all the time . . . and then bam, you get a whole book of joyful and romantic stories by people who actually know what they’re talking about.”
—B&N Teen Blog

“A missing piece in the puzzle of YA lit.”
—Ms. Magazine

“A brilliantly compiled YA anthology about teens ‘of all colors’ in multicultural and LGBTQ+ relationships, standing up for their beliefs, for each other, and for themselves . . . These gloriously steadfast teens refuse to be voiceless, and their astounding ambition commands us to listen.”
—Shelf Awareness, Starred Review

“Each story is uniquely written and features characters from different ethnicities, religions, and sexual orientations . . . The diversity among the stories will ensure that every reader will be able to find something to enjoy.”
—Bungalower

“Filled to the brim with romantic, transcendent short fiction . . . Not only are the characters diverse, but the narratives they inhabit are, too, as the collection celebrates stories that fall within the sf and fantasy world as well as the contemporary fiction genre. These writers bring their rich talents to this book as they make it clear just how beautiful love is, regardless and because of race. By curating a collection filled with authentic characters of color and diverse storylines, Mandanna encourages writers and readers alike to take chances and truly color outside the lines in YA.”
—Booklist, Starred Review

“In her editing debut, Mandanna produces a stunning collection of refreshing stories about love and identity among diverse young people . . . Each well-crafted story feels like a pearl, and strung together, they create something beautiful and unique. Featuring couples who are queer, interracial, or both, this an anthology that beautifully reflects the multifaceted reality of our world.”
—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

“A YA anthology with a fabulous roster of contributors that will transport you out of your life for a little bit and also give you hope.”
—Book Riot

“Color Outside the Lines has my whole heart . . . It’s a kaleidoscope of voices that illuminate how much we need more diverse literature and just how important these voices are. These authors put so much soul into these stories and it transpires beautifully onto the page.”
—The Nerd Daily

“Multi-genre short stories filled with romance and diverse characters who cross boundaries. Representing interracial and cross-cultural relationships, this anthology takes readers to new worlds . . . The discussions of identity, and messages of cultural acceptance and recognition of inequality are well executed. Readers who enjoy romance and exploring questions of community and belonging will find much to savor in this collection.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“This anthology of short stories about love will attract readers from all walks of life . . . Different genres are explored, including historical, supernatural, fantasy, magical realism, and realistic fiction, which keeps the stories unique and the book easy to read. A first purchase for libraries supporting or in need of diverse books.”
—School Library Journal

“A beautifully diverse, inclusive, empowering collection of stories . . . Color outside the Lines has such an incredible, tremendously talented list of contributors.”
—Pop Goes the Reader

“There’s a dearth of young adult stories that explore the complexities of interracial relationships, and I am so thankful to have read this anthology and to feel pieces of my personal experiences represented in these stories.”
—The Quiet Pond

“Phenomenal . . . to have an anthology that covers a range of different types of interracial relationships—in age, genre, ethnicity, race, religion, gender, and sexuality—was so heartwarming.”
—Maple Wind Chimes

“I cannot sing the praises of this anthology enough . . . The concept of this anthology is not only moving, but also so well executed. As Mandanna writes in the introduction, “representation matters” and these stories of relationships that cross borders, families, prejudices, and more are tender and heartfelt. Within this anthology are stories about superheroes, ghosts, resistance, and poisons. They transform in front of your very eyes.”
—Utopia State of Mind

“Color outside the Lines discusses the often difficult, immensely rewarding and sometimes hilarious dynamics of interracial relationships . . . Richly telling.”
—The YA Sh3lf

About the Author

Sangu Mandanna, the editor of Color outside the Lines, is the author of The Lost Girl and the forthcoming trilogy A Spark of White Fire. Born and raised in Bangalore, India, she now lives in the UK with her husband and three kids, and she has an alarming Netflix addiction. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

An excerpt from “Turn the Sky to Petals” by Anna-Marie McLemore, the first story in the anthology

I guess I could start with the flowers, the hundreds of thousands of red dahlia petals gathered into baskets at the behest of a rich man. But that would make what happened more about the rich man than about you and me.
     This is the way I would tell it, what happened between us. This is how I would piece it together from what I saw and the things you told me:
     We did not grow up far apart. My school played yours in a handful of sports, so we might have met. You had that season on the soccer team before deciding that the practices took too much time away from the cimbalom.
     Me, I never played school sports. I never even tried. There was never one I loved enough to spend my tendons on it.
     You know what I’m talking about. You knew the first time I told you. Because the feeling I know in my ankles—the countless small tears, the sensation of muscle wringing itself out—is one you know in your wrists, your lower forearms, parts of you that you need for the instrument that has you by the heart.
     Your gringo teacher often told you what immense promise she saw in you. She said that you would elevate the cimbalom to the level of great orchestra. You winced every time, shrugging away the insult, because while she thought of it as a carnival instrument, you always knew it to be the collection of wood and metal strings that gives music all its colors.
     You learned to repair the steel and copper strings yourself, because there were so few who knew how to do it, and finding a repair shop in our constellation of rural towns was never easy. Or cheap. And there was no one you really wanted to trust with the instrument your grandfather had left you. Your grandfather, who performed in both city squares and grand halls, and who you thought of when your music teacher watched you, her stare so intense it burned into your back.
     She is beautiful, your music teacher, but I think her beauty dimmed to you every time she pushed you to play the Liszt again, even when you were past the time the lesson was meant to end, even when your tendons felt like they were tearing apart in your wrists. Even when your forearms felt like they were turning to flames.
     Your mother, you told me, worried as you iced your wrists at night. And you told her not to, that if musicians wanted to become great, sometimes it involved pain. She pressed her lips together and made you lay bags of frozen peppers under your forearms, because if you had to ice your wrists you might as well bring yourself a little luck at the same time. After a bag had half-thawed, she would throw it into a heated pan, add it to what she was cooking. You told me that, later, when your family ate together you couldn’t decide if you were eating your own pain or your own luck.
     Any bystander might not think the instrument you love so much would wear down the tendons in the wrists and forearms. They would simply marvel at how quickly your hands moved, how precisely you struck the beaters against the strings, the tips making the timbre sound different depending on whether the leather is hard or soft. But that is because your skill, your effort, the hours of practice on your grandfather’s cimbalom and the one at your music teacher’s house, made it look easy. Your hands flew, changing direction as quickly as hummingbirds, always finding the right place to land.
     But any bystander would not feel the collecting effect of all those impacts. They would not know the wearing down caused by, hundreds of thousands of times, striking the beaters just where they needed to hit. They would not guess at the tension in your wrists, the taut muscle in your forearms, the tiny friction every time you bring a beater down.
     Do that enough times, and the pain in your wrists will probably be enough to wake you up at night. Do that enough times, and it will startle you out of sleep, leaving you with the memory of dreams in which your arms are branches on fire.
     Still, you took the brush-lined road to your music teacher’s house, your feet as accustomed to the dampening pedal as to the long walk. You did as she told you, repeating the Stravinsky until she said yes, you were feeling the music, not just playing it. Running through the original score of Les Noces until you thought your veins were molten. Wincing as you held your wrists under cold water in her downstairs bathroom, because you did not want the pain showing on your face as you sounded each note of Bartók’s Rhapsody No. 1.
     But the pain did show on your face, and your music teacher said that such cringing, such hardening in your jaw, would never let you on the grandest stages. She said you could not take each wrist in the opposite hand between sections or movements, no more than a ballerina can stretch her calves onstage.
     Your hands, and your wrists, and your forearms—they spoke, even when you told them, asked them, begged them to be quiet. And the more that pain took hold of you, the more your music teacher cast you aside like a frayed bow.
     This is the part that took you the longest to tell me. This is the part that, when you did, made my heart feel like it was cracking open. Because I could feel it. The cold water as you tried to put out the flames in your muscles. The feeling of your teacher losing both patience and the sparkling faith she once had in you. I know the look. I got it from my own dance teachers, when they saw me falter on ankles that were giving out under me, when they caught the wince under my stage smile.
     I wish you hadn’t known it too.
     That look, I guess, is how you came to be in my great-grandmother’s village, even though you are unrelated to anyone there. Even though you are a different kind of brown-skinned boy than I am a brown-skinned girl.
     You came to be in my bisabuela’s village because there is an old man who lives there.
     El viejo moves so slowly that he seems to cross the street in rhythm with honey dripping from a spoon.
     All of him, that is, except his hands.
     He plays, knows, the cimbalom better than you, better than your music teacher. But he also knows what music takes from the body. So when a friend of a friend of my mother mentioned him to your mother, your mother and father thought this man might teach you to save both your hands and the part of your heart that has turned to wood and metal strings.
     You would not pay him for his lessons, the man said. Nor would you pay him for the bed at the back of his house where you would sleep, the bed his own son sleeps in whenever he visits. Your payment, he said, would be to help with the flower harvest. You would not do anything that would stress your wrists, he said. No picking plumeria or cosmos. No twisting poinsettias off their stems. But you would help carry the baskets of flowers, las canastas de palma that would be light with their cargo but awkward with their size.
     You wondered if this flower harvest happened every year. You wondered this out loud the first time you ever spoke to me. We were standing, waiting for the señoras to tell us what to do.
     I told you no, this does not happen every year. I told you what my bisabuela told me. That a man getting married a village away said his bride was so beautiful, he wanted the clouds to rain flowers in her honor. For their wedding day, he wanted to turn the sky to petals.
     Another man, one who had grown up here, who had gone to school and then to more school and become a lawyer, told the rich man that he could make this happen. The sky could rain flowers for his bride.
     But he would have to pay.
     The rich man had owned shares in the maquiladora, whose runoff had poisoned the creeks, whose trucks had torn up the roads. Then, having found a place they could operate for even less money, they left, taking the jobs and the youngest families, with them, leaving the shell of the factory crumbling by the side of the road.
     The village, the lawyer said, would only give his bride her sky full of petals in exchange for these things: Clean water (at the time everyone had to buy gallons from a far-off store, relying on the kindness of friends with trucks). Repaired roads. Replaced electrical lines. A building for the school so it did not have to meet in the back of Señora Delgado-Cruz’s house anymore.
     The village would sell him the color off its trees and vines and bushes, if he would pay for these things. And the man was so in love that he agreed.
     This is how you came to be in my great-grandmother’s village during the flower harvest, those feverish, bright-colored days of picking and carrying cream yucca petals, the pink satin ribbons of brush trees, the blue lilac of jacarandas.
     I came to be there because my parents were sick of me moping on their living room sofa during the hours each day I used to be in dance class.
     What was happening in your wrists and forearms had been happening in my ankles for months. Maybe longer. But it was in those past months that the wild rush of dancing was no longer enough to mask the pain lighting up my tendons.
     I did what you did. Well, almost. I smiled harder to keep myself from wincing, while you held your jaw to keep the stoic face of a concert musician. I lifted my body to pretend there was no weight on my ankles, while you bent lower to the cimbalom, trying to make any pain seem like a fierce intensity.
     It ended anyway.
     My parents tolerated me burying my face in the sofa for only the first two weeks of summer. Then they told me I would help with the flower harvest. A petal at a time, I would help bring the village my bisabuela loved closer to clean water, and electricity that flickered out less often, and roads that wouldn’t take out a transmission with their ruts and potholes.
     So they brought me to my bisabuela’s small but tidy house, with that aluminum roof. (You asked once what it sounds like when it rains, and you know when you used to play “Flight of the Bumblebee” on the cimbalom with hard leather beaters? Like that, only louder.)
     My bisabuela knew you and I had something in common, an echo of familiar pain in our bodies. She knew that each evening, you were working at the cimbalom in frustratingly slow movements, the old man teaching you to keep something you love without letting it take everything from you. She knew that every sunrise the curanderas rubbed chili powder and turmeric into your forearms; when we gathered for the harvest, I could see it tinting the brown of your wrists red and gold.
     And my great-grandmother knew I could not dance, not like I had been dancing, or in a few years I might not walk. I could dance for the joy of it, the doctors told me, and that was as little comfort as being told I could breathe, but only on weekends.
     It was into las canastas de palma you carried that I collected marigolds and cuetlaxochitl, petals the color of the fire we felt in our tendons. It was into those baskets that I set passion flowers, green-and-red and yellow-and-purple, that curled up from dry roadsides. You were chivalrous enough to look away when I cried while plucking morning glories, because as a child I learned that la campanilla morada was a symbol of unrequited love, and the only unrequited love I had known up to then was dancing. It took my heart. It told me I was beautiful.
     And then it ravaged the body it had so completely possessed.
     The sun beat down on our backs as we filled the baskets, fluffing the petals to let them air.
     We did not give the rich man and his bride all our flowers. There were mariposas and hummingbirds to think of. So we left the Mexican sage; the purple velvet of the petals was too heavy anyway, and they were a favorite of the violet sabrewings and fork-tailed emeralds. Same with the honeysuckle, and the pineapple and tangerine sage, which would not survive the flight anyway. We left the opuntia flowers; the weight of their closed buds would make them too difficult to send airborne. We gave him our yellow and rust-red and purple marigolds, but kept the orange and brown to ourselves, because no village should ever give up all they have of cempasúchil.

[This is not the complete short story] --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07NV1GGW2
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Soho Teen (November 12, 2019)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ November 12, 2019
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 953 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 289 pages
Lending ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled

Best Sellers Rank: #521,508 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #125 in Teen & Young Adult Short Stories
- #188 in Teen & Young Adult Diversity & Multicultural Fiction
- #340 in Short Stories in Teen & Young Adult Literature

Customer Reviews:
30 ratings

About the authors

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Eric Smith
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Eric Smith is an author and literary agent from Elizabeth, New Jersey.
His novels include the INKED duology (Bloomsbury), THE GIRL AND THE GROVE (Flux), DON'T READ THE COMMENTS (Inkyard Press). His debut non-fiction book, THE GEEK'S GUIDE TO DATING (Quirk), was an IndieBound bestseller. His books have been translated into eight languages.
When he's not busy writing books, he loves to work on (and talk about!) books by other people. He's represented New York Times bestselling and award-winning titles, and can be found talking about books on the popular HEY YA! podcast on Book Riot.
He lives in Philadelphia with his wife and son, and can be found on Twitter at @ericsmithrocks.
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Lydia Kang
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Lydia Kang is an author and internal medicine physician. She is a graduate of Columbia University and New York University School of Medicine, and completed her training at Bellevue Hospital in New York City. She lives with her family in the midwest. Follow her on Facebook (AuthorLydiaKang) and Instagram @LydiaKang.
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Danielle Paige
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Danielle Paige is the New York Times bestselling author of the Dorothy Must Die series, Stealing Snow, and the upcoming Mera book with DC Entertainment. In addition to writing young adult books, she works in the television industry, where she's received a Writers Guild of America Award and was nominated for several Daytime Emmys. She is a graduate of Columbia University and currently lives in New York City. You can find her on daniellepaigebooks.com
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Lori M. Lee
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Lori M. Lee is the author of SF/F novels and short stories. She's a unicorn admirer, part-time gamer, full-time dreamer, and loves writing about magic, manipulation, and family.
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Lauren Gibaldi
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Lauren Gibaldi is a public librarian who's been, among other things, a magazine editor, high school English teacher, bookseller, and circus aerialist (seriously). She has a BA in Literature and Master's in Library and Information Studies. She lives in Orlando, Florida with her husband and daughter. Her books include THE NIGHT WE SAID YES and AUTOFOCUS.
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Tarun Shanker
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Tarun Shanker is a mild-mannered assistant by day and a milder-mannered writer by night currently living in Boston. His idea of paradise is a place where kung-fu movies are projected on clouds, David Bowie’s music fills the air and chai flows freely from fountains.
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Samira Ahmed
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SAMIRA AHMED is the New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of young adult novels: Love, Hate & Other Filters, Internment, Mad, Bad & Dangerous to Know and Hollow Fires. As well as the middle grade fantasy adventure series: Amira & Hamza.. Her poetry and short stories have appeared in anthologies including: Take the Mic, Color Outside the Lines, Ink Knows No Borders, Vampires Never Get Old, and A Universe of Wishes.
She was born in Bombay, India, and grew up in Batavia, Illinois, in a house that smelled like fried onions, spices, and potpourri. A graduate of the University of Chicago, Samira has taught high school English in both the suburbs of Chicago and New York City, worked in education non-profits, and spent time on the road for political campaigns.
You can find her online at www.samiraahmed.com Twitter & Instagram: @ sam_aye_ahm
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Kelly Zekas
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Kelly is a writer living in the Hudson Valley with her husband and dog. She started reading YA and romance novels as a teenager and never looked back - though she does occasionally add the odd mystery and thriller to her bookshelves. Strong opinions on cupcakes.
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Michelle Ruiz Keil
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Michelle Ruiz Keil is a writer and tarot reader with an eye for the enchanted and a way with animals. Her critically acclaimed debut novel, All of Us With Wings, called "...a transcendent journey" by the New York Times and "...a fantastical ode the Golden City's post-punk era" by Entertainment Weekly, was released from Soho Teen in 2019. She is a 2020 Literary Lions honoree and the recipient of a 2020 Hedgebrook residen Her second novel is forthcoming from Soho Press in 2021. A San Francisco Bay Area native, Michelle has lived in Portland Oregon for many years. She curates the fairytale reading series All Kinds of Fur and lives with her family in a cottage where the forest meets the city.

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L.L. McKinney
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Leatrice "Elle" McKinney, writing as L.L. McKinney, is an advocate for equality and inclusion in publishing, and the creator of the hashtags #PublishingPaidMe and #WhatWoCWritersHear.
Elle's also a gamer, Blerd, and adamant Hei Hei stan, living in Kansas, spending her free time plagued by her cat--Sir Chester Fluffmire Boopsnoot Purrington Wigglebottom Flooferson III, esquire, Baron o'Butterscotch or #SirChester for short.
Her works include the Nightmare-Verse books, Nubia:Real One from DC, Marvel's Black Widow: Bad Blood, and more.
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Adam Silvera
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Adam Silvera is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of THEY BOTH DIE AT THE END, MORE HAPPY THAN NOT, HISTORY IS ALL YOU LEFT ME, INFINITY SON and INFINITY REAPER. He has also co-written WHAT IF IT'S US and HERE'S TO US with Becky Albertalli. He was born and raised in the Bronx and now lives in Los Angeles. He is tall for no reason.
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Sangu Mandanna
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Sangu Mandanna was four years old when an elephant chased her down a forest road and she decided to write her first story about it. Seventeen years and many, many manuscripts later, she signed her first book deal. Sangu now lives in Norwich, a city in the east of England, with her husband and kids. Her work includes Kiki Kallira Breaks a Kingdom, A Spark of White Fire, Color Outside the Lines, and more!
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Customer reviews

5 star		65%
4 star		15%
3 star		8%
2 star		12%
1 star 0% (0%)		0%

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Top reviews from the United States

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Diversity in love!

Reviewed in the United States on December 1, 2019

Vine Customer Review of Free Product( What's this? )

I loved the idea behind this anthology so much that I had to get it. COLOR OUTSIDE THE LINES is a collection of short stories that are all about diversity-- interracial relationships, LGBT+ relationships, and even a couple with both-- and some of the challenges and delights and obstacles that occur within these relationships, while also celebrating them wholeheartedly (well, mostly-- more on that to come).

Short story collections are always hard to rate because they tend to be uneven. It's inevitable that you'll like some of the stories more than other ones, which is why I tend to rate each story individually and then average my rating out over the whole collection. I think that's the fairest way to rate books like these since the editors are on the hook for the authors they chose to be included to represent them, and a bad fit is a bad experience.

Last note before I dive in is that this is an ARC, and two of the "marquee" authors in this collection-- Danielle Paige and Adam Silvera-- didn't have their stories included in this collection for some reason, so I won't be talking about or rating those stories at all and they won't be included in the average rating.

Turn the Sky to Petals: ☆☆☆☆
Anna-Marie McLemore

This is a really great story about two people in Mexico who end up bonding over the pain in their art against the backdrop of flower gathering for a rich man's wedding. The writing is poetic and brilliantly evocative and I loved this story so much. This is definitely an author whose work I would want to explore more, because I loved their writing so much!

-

Title to Come: NO RATING
Danielle Paige

-

What We Love: ☆☆½
Lauren Gibaldi

This story was okay but kind of heavy-handed. It's about a Jewish girl and an Indian boy who find romance when they unite together against a bullying classmate. I like the idea but the bully was such a laughable caricature of evil, and the premise so forced, that I just couldn't get into it.

-

Giving Up the Ghost: ☆☆
Tarun Shanker and Kelly Zekas

This one was just weird. First, it's kind of a paranormal/AU type story where everyone is haunted by ghosts only they can see. The main character is Indian and haunted by a Chinese ghost who plays matchmaker for him. This matchmaking is the focal role of the story. It's... weird.

-

Your Life Matters: ☆☆☆½
L.L. McKinney

This is a story (F/F) about a black/white interracial couple trying to navigate their brand new relationship while also dealing with the white character's racist dad (ugh). Also deals with activism and the BLM movement, and it has a nice ending (I was worried). I thought this one was cute.

-

Starlight and Moondust: ☆
Lori M. Lee

Story about a Hmong girl and a white guy with magic realism. I didn't get/understand/like this one.

-

Five Times Shiva Met Harry: ☆☆☆
Sangu Mandanna

This story is REALLY short which is a shame because it has an important topic at its heart (the lingering pain caused by the British occupation of India). Being so short made it seem superficial.

-

The Agony of a Heart's Wish: ☆½

Samira Ahmed

Set in India when it is being occupied by the British, and is a romance between an Indian girl and an Irish guy serving in the British army. SUPER DOWNER story with no HEA. Very preachy, too, and seemed rushed, like the emotionally manipulative ending was supposed to compensate. Bleh.

-

The Coward's Guide to Falling in Love: ☆☆☆½
Caroline Tung Richmond

This story also doesn't have an HEA but I actually really liked the theme of empowerment, so it didn't leave a bad taste in my mouth like the previous story did. The heroine in this one reminded me of me; it's always important to remind teens that they need to take risks to see change.

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Death and the Maiden: ☆☆☆☆☆
Tara Sim

A super erotic F/F fantasy romance between an Indian girl and a female personification of Hades, Greek god of the underworld. Hi, this is the gender-flipped Persephone retelling I didn't know I needed but loved to pieces anyway. The writing is gorgeous, the romance is so nicely fleshed out, and it has a fantastic sub-theme about justice, revenge, and also consent!! I really wish that this had been a full-length book instead of a short story because it was absolutely amazing.

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Faithfull: ☆☆☆½
Karuna Riazi

Meet-cute between (I think) an Indian Muslim girl and boy that focuses heavily on family, which I loved. It kind of reminded me a bit of LOVE FROM A TO Z. This is another story that I think would have worked really well as a full length novel, which the author hopefully considers doing!

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Gilman Street: ☆☆☆☆½
Michelle Ruiz Keil

Bisexuality rep, Mexican heritage, fun hookups, and rockabilly/punk culture in Berkeley, CA. Do I need to say anymore? I don't think so. This one was fantastic.

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"The Boy Is": ☆☆☆☆½
Elsie Chapman

I knew this author sounded familiar, and it turns out she wrote CASTER, which I loved. I really liked this story, too. Like her other book I read, "The Boy Is" features a strong Asian heroine. This one opens with her breaking up with her creepy white boyfriend who, it turns out, treats her like she's a fetish and not a person. The rest of the story is about her finding herself and what she wants. Love it!

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Sandwiched in Between: ☆
Eric Smith

I actually... low-key hated this one. So, if I'm rating off the technical elements, yeah it was written fine. It's about two Middle Eastern teens who are dating and the girl is raised with her culture in the home but the boy was adopted by white parents (and has adopted siblings of other various ethnicities). The execution was totally horrible. The boy's girlfriend does nothing but berate him about his privilege and how "white" he is throughout the whole book and when she meets his parents for the first time, and the mom serves hummus, she explodes with rage.

It ends on a "happy" note with the girl calling him a "jumbled mess" and they laugh and I'm just sitting here like, wait, she is gatekeeping his ethnicity and actually being really offensive and this is a toxic relationship, but it's being written like she's so woke and in the right and what even ???

Yeah, this one definitely made me the angriest and I kind of hated it.

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Yuna and the Wall: ☆☆☆☆
Lydia Kang

I love Lydia Kang! I've read three of her books and they were all amazing, and I'm happy to say that this short story didn't disappoint. It's a fantasy story with characters who seem to be coded as East Asian and South Asian, and there's beauty and the beast elements, but it's also about overcoming stereotypes and learning not to be prejudiced, and I really thought it was a nice close.

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TK: NO RATING
Adam Silvera

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Overall, this is a pretty decent collection. I think there's something for everyone in here, and even though the stories are uneven in quality, there are some pretty standout ones and Tara Sim totally needs to make Death and the Maiden into a full length book so I can throw my money at her.

Averaged rating: 3.1 rounded down to an evened-out 3 stars

Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review!

3 out of 5 stars

5 people found this helpful

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Paige

Cute and important

Reviewed in the United States on August 31, 2020

Vine Customer Review of Free Product( What's this? )

I grew up in the kind of white family that made it clear they would not approve if I dated a Black guy or really any guy of color. My older brother very seriously threatened to harm them if I did. It all backfired on them because I'm the kind of asexual that means they'll never get any precious grandchildren out of me, but that's not the point. Enough people--particularly white people--have such feelings about interracial relationships that we can't ignore it. The Loving v. Virginia case that eliminated bans on interracial marriages happened in my parents' lifetimes!

Color Outside the Lines is an anthology that seeks to show the world how these relationships are just like any other but are also different in ways we need to recognize.

The stories vary in genre, time period, and the makeup of the couples, but many of them remind readers that you can't simply play colorblind when your partner is from a different ethnic group than you. When you do, you also don't see the discrimination they face and don't see them as the whole person they are. Though this is best highlighted by the two embarrassing Thanksgiving celebrations in "Sandwiched in Between" by Eric Smith, it's an undercurrent throughout the book.

The strongest among the stories are as varied as can be. L.L. McKinney's "Your Life Matters" throws together a Black girl superhero, her girlfriend's racist cop dad, and a bank robbery that's taking advantage of a protest; "The Boy Is" by Elsie Chapman is comparatively light-hearted but still sees a Chinese girl burned by a racist ex-boyfriend who only dated her because she's Asian. Holly is struggling with the contradictory things her mother wants for her but is also a bit torn between a white boy and a cute Chinese boy. That romantic dilemma isn't lingered on, however.

Then Samira Ahmed's "The Agony of a Heart's Wish" and Tara Sim's "Death and the Maiden" just knock it out of the park. The former is a historical snapshot set in colonial India with the meeting between an Indian girl and a white Irish boy. Their one encounter has historical implications anyone familiar with Irish history in the 1910s may quickly see coming, but it's a gut punch nevertheless. Sim's brings together a vengeful Indian girl Parvani and the Greek god Hades, who Parvani gives herself up to as a bride in hopes of destroying the tyrant who ruined Parvani's life. Of course, Hades is a woman in Sim's story, and quite the ethereal one at that.

Even the weaker stories, like Lauren Gibaldi's "What We Love", balance out the good (copious references to Star Wars VIII: The Last Jedi) with the bad (a ridiculous, flat Christian mean girl). It's a surprise that just two or three of the anthology's sixteen stories feature queer leading couples, but perhaps I've been spoiled by particularly diverse books like Tess Sharpe and Jessica Spotswood's Toil & Trouble.

Though the subject matter can be heavy at times, Color Outside the Lines affirms that love is love and it's best found with eyes wide open, seeing one's partner in every shade they are.

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