Probably Voting For Nnedi Okorafor for Best Novel

 I had a "and one more thing!" kind of experience regarding Death Of The Author -- there's a scene where Zelu is accused of being "verbally violent" after she castigates a student she feels is writing in a self-indulgent way, and he is too fragile to deal with it. Later, Zelu is socializing with her own people and everyone tends to be direct like that. It gave me lots of insights as to how personalities can either fit or clash with different crowds. 

Later, I heard a speaker give a talk about diversity and her attempts to figure out whether a place was "for her" or "not for people like her" depending on things like whether her mobility device could enter, or whether the other people might consider her food to be unusual. And it made me think about the challenges of balancing tolerance that we can fix, like adding ramps, with tolerances that might not be as readily remedied, as in "I come from a culture of direct people while your people are customarily fragile." 

And on that basis I'm currently leaning toward voting for it for Best Novel even though I felt uncomfortable myself while trying to soak into this world of complex interactions, where I just wanted Zelu to ignore everyone and go do her own thing, which is how I respond to complex interactions. And in the end, she kinda does. Which places it in the category of "books that make me think" and I want to acknowledge that.