Vinyl Moon

 

My Thoughts:

Snaps to black girl magic in this multi genre book about Angel, a teen sent to Brooklyn after an incident with her abusive boyfriend. In New York, she lives with a loving, hard working uncle. At her new school, she finds a teacher who guides her to reconnect with herself and reimagine her future through the books in her room as well as through the other girls in Ms. Gʻs H.E.R. advisory (Her Excellence is Resilience & Honoring Everyones Roots). The vignettes and poems are about Angel, her dreams, her awakening, her friends, her music. But it is also a song for Brooklyn in the same way that House on Mango Street is a song about Chicago. 

For English teachers, this is a mentor text for your writers, as well as a book list of what should be in the literary American canon. If as high school English teachers, we have not offered these books to our students, are we preparing them?: 

• James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time, Notes of a Native Son
• Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye, Sula
• Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

Ms. Browne, through Angel, brings these writers back into the consciousness of new readers in a format that will make them curious and perhaps pick it up on their own. As an educator and a former AP teacher, I appreciate that. I remember giving my public school students The Bluest Eye for summer reading, then spending the whole summer wondering if I was going to get called in by the principal or an irate parent. I had my intention and justification papers ready, and although I never got questioned, I knew it was a risk. I also enjoyed the little rant Angel has with the librarian about what is classic and should be read and what is not valued. Using this book as a pep talk for English teachers to pay attention to this kind of student who uses reading as a window, a mirror, a sliding glass door, as well as a healing stone is an important reminder as we start to think again about creating our own curriculum and our own resources for these times of upheaval. 

Bring Vinyl Moon into the classroom as a mentor text for writing workshop. Bring it in as a stepping stone for other books. Pair it with House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros or the Oceania vignettes of Girl in the Moon Circle by Sia Figiel. Let black and brown girl magic from the diaspora vibrate through your classroom. Wouldn't that be fabulous? I am already excited to create curriculum.

Finally, when authors bother to write letters in the beginning of the book, I like to read it. I like to hear others talk about their intentionality and their "why," so I also want to honor that.

This is a story about finding your way. This is one of so many of our stories. I hope it brings you closer to sharing your voice. I hope it lights a candle in the cavern where you hide yourself. I hope it feels safe to read these voices and know they are thinking about you being and breathing. Wherever you are.  --Mahogany L. Browne

From the. Publisher:

When Darius told Angel he loved her, she believed him. But five weeks after the incident, Angel finds herself in Brooklyn, far from her family, from him, and from the California life she has known.
 
Angel feels out of sync with her new neighborhood. At school, she can’t shake the feeling everyone knows what happened—and that it was her fault. The only place that makes sense is Ms. G’s class. There, Angel’s classmates share their own stories of pain, joy, and fortitude. And as Angel becomes immersed in her revolutionary literature course, the words from Black writers like Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, and Zora NEale Hurston speak to her and begin to heal the wounds of her past.

This stunning novel weaves together prose, poems, and vignettes to tell the story of Angel, a young woman whose past was shaped by domestic violence but whose love of language and music and the gift of community grant her the chance to find herself again.

 

Living Beyond Borders: Growing Up Mexican in America

 

My Thoughts:

Just in time for Hispanic heritage month, this beautiful book of essays, short stories, poems, and comics by contemporary YA authors celebrates the trauma and resistance of Mexican American youth. This mixed media anthology is more than just stories about being American. It is more than just stories about embracing the Mexican culture. This is about living beyond those made up borders and corners or checkboxes. 

With school starting up again, I find reading shorter pieces fits nicely into the smaller segments of time I have to read. It also introduces me to authors that I want to add to my TBR list, so I thought I would just share three bookmarked pieces. 

"Filiberto's Final Visit" by Francisco X. Stork 

Francisco X. Stork, author of Illegal and Disappeared knows how to infuse his work with mysterious characters like Filiberto. Filiberto comes into the main character's life for one Saturday night and teaches him the true meaning of "dignidad."

"Morning People" by Diana López

Family road trip, family drama, grandparents, camping, Yellowstone, fighting sisters, and a shifting dynamic between cousins. This is less a cultural story and more a story about a typical family that could happen anywhere in the world. It is the universality of this experience that makes it stand out. 

"La Princessa Mileidy Dominguez by Rubén Degollado

In my job as faculty in a teacher preparation program, this is just a feel good story about a principal, a whole school that takes care of marginalized students. This is definitely a feel good Cinderella story without the mean people. What happens when a school not only has an adult advocate for everyone, but a whole staff of advocates? This is a must read. It will make you feel hopeful about the potential of our schools. 

From the Publisher:

Twenty stand-alone short stories, essays, poems, and more from celebrated and award-winning authors make up this YA anthology that explores the Mexican American experience.
 
With works by Francisco X. Stork, Guadalupe Garcia McCall, David Bowles, Rubén Degollado, e.E. Charlton-Trujillo, Diana López, Xavier Garza, Trinidad Gonzales, Alex Temblador, Aida Salazar, Guadalupe Ruiz-Flores, Sylvia Sánchez Garza, Dominic Carrillo, Angela Cervantes, Carolyn Dee Flores, René Saldaña Jr., Justine Narro, Daniel García Ordáz, and Anna Meriano.

In this mixed-media collection of short stories, personal essays, poetry, and comics, this celebrated group of authors share the borders they have crossed, the struggles they have pushed through, and the two cultures they continue to navigate as Mexican Americans. Living Beyond Borders is at once an eye-opening, heart-wrenching, and hopeful love letter from the Mexican American community to today's young readers.
 
A powerful exploration of what it means to be Mexican American.

Citizen

My Thoughts:

Citizen, by Claudia Rankine is a multi-genre examination of racial aggressions towards African Americans. Some of these essays, poems, artwork, media have to do with being invisible, slips of the tongue that are taken differently based on one's positionality or marginality, public lynching, police brutality. 

Although I have not quite come up with an answer, as I was reading this I kept trying to figure out what the author is saying about citizenship in the United States. As an Indigenous reader who believes that our nation was illegally overthrown by the United States, this question of who is  a "citizen" from the lens of marginalized, oppressed, non-white citizens is profoundly important.

Beginnings:

When you are alone and too tired even to turn on any of your devices, you let yourself linger in a past stacked among your pillows. Usually you are nestled under blankets and the house is empty. Sometimes the moon is missing and beyond the windows the low, gray ceiling seems approachable. Its dark light dims in degrees depending on the density of clouds and you fall back into that which gets reconstructed as metaphor.

Description:

Claudia Rankine's bold new book recounts mounting racial aggressions in ongoing encounters in twenty-first-century daily life and in the media. Some of these encounters are slights, seeming slips of the tongue, and some are intentional offensives in the classroom, at the supermarket, at home, on the tennis court with Serena Williams and the soccer field with Zinedine Zidane, online, on TV-everywhere, all the time. The accumulative stresses come to bear on a person's ability to speak, perform, and stay alive. Our addressability is tied to the state of our belonging, Rankine argues, as are our assumptions and expectations of citizenship. In essay, image, and poetry, Citizen is a powerful testament to the individual and collective effects of racism in our contemporary, often named "post-race" society. 

Turning 15 On The Road to Freedom

From the publishers:
As the youngest marcher in the 1965 voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Albama, Lynda Blackmon Lowery proved that young adults can be heroes. Jailed nine times before her fifteenth birthday, Lowery fought alongside Martin Luther King, Jr. for the rights of African-Americans. In this memoir, she shows today's young readers what it means to fight nonviolently (even when the police are using violence, as in the Bloody Sunday protest) and how it felt to be part of changing American history.
Straightforward and inspiring, this beautifully illustrated memoir brings readers into the middle of the Civil Rights Movement, complementing Common Core classroom learning and bringing history alive for young readers.

My thoughts:

Like John Lewis' March graphic novels this is a first hand account of the civil rights movement. The author takes readers through a multi genre experience to paint an intimate picture of the fear and determination shared by these young protesters. Her use of photography, lyrics and illustrations help to set the tone for the reader friendly text. This truly is a coming of age memoir about Blackmon Lowery turning 15 in he midst of the march to Montgomery and how all of these young students put into action the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s call for "steady, loving confrontation." 

Other historical non-fiction works around civil rights using photography as the medium: Controversy of hope: The civil rights photographs of James Karales and This is the day: The march on Washington. 

Sachiko

Publication date: October 1, 2016

From the Publishers:

August 9, 1945, began like any other day for six-year-old Sachiko. Her country was at war, she didn't have enough to eat. At 11:01 a.m., she was playing outdoors with four other children. Moments later, those children were all dead. An atomic bomb had exploded just half a mile away.
In the days and months that followed, Sachiko lost family members, her hair fell out, she woke screaming in the night. When she was finally well enough to start school, other children bullied her. Through it all, she sought to understand what had happened, finding strength in the writings of Helen Keller, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr.
Based on extensive interviews with Sachiko Yasui, Caren Stelson shares the true story of a young girl who survived the atomic bomb and chronicles her long journey to find peace. Sachiko offers readers a remarkable new perspective on the final moments of World War II—and their aftermath.

My Thoughts:

With the mix of poignant storytelling and sidebars of historical facts, this multi-genre novel will be a wonderful resource for middle level students to learn about World War II from the perspective of a Japanese atomic bomb survivor. It chronicles the moment right before the Nagasaki bomb as well as the devastating after effects that continues to be felt in Japan today. Sachiko's loss is devastating and unfathomable, and yet through it all, she continues to speak out for peace. Like the late Elie Wiesel, a survivor of the Nazi concentration camps, Sachiko has found her voice and continues to push for a peaceful world, lest we forget the atrocities of history. 

This is a well researched book and a good model for student research.

This advanced copy provided by Net Galley (dot)com and the publisher for an honest review.