Diversity – Page 3 – Peaceful Reader

One Crazy Summer-Teaser Tuesday

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by Miz B of Should Be Reading, highlighting a random passage from your current read. It’s easy to play along.

My teaser is from One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia. There are two other books I’m trying to finish up before I fully immerse myself in this one~I am intrigued from the few pages I’ve read.

I did as Big Ma had told me in our many talks on how to act around white people. I said, “Thank you,” but I didn’t add the “ma’am,” for the whole “Thank you, ma’am.” I’ve never heard anyone else say it in Brooklyn. Only in old movies on TV. And when we drove down to Alabama. People say “Yes, ma’am,” and “No, ma’am” in Alabama all the time. That old word was perfectly fine for Big Ma. It just wasn’t perfectly fine for me. (16)

She has such spunk and I love how this quote highlights the changing of an era over the word “Ma’am.” I’m excited to keep reading!

What’s teasing you today??

Habibi

by Naomi Shihab Nye
1997
259 pages

Read this book…It’s crazy when a gem like this has escaped my attention. This is a book that I will recommend to many students, parents and teachers this year. Really everyone should read it because it says so much about conflict, resolution, peace and religion-all hot button topics and dealt with so well by Ms.. Nye.

Indiebound Synopsis:

The day after Liyana got her first real kiss, her life changed forever. Not because of the kiss, but because it was the day her father announced that the family was moving from St. Louis all the way to Palestine. Though her father grew up there, Liyana knows very little about her family’s Arab heritage. Her grandmother and the rest of her relatives who live in the West Bank are strangers, and speak a language she can’t understand. It isn’t until she meets Omer that her homesickness fades. But Omer is Jewish, and their friendship is silently forbidden in this land. How can they make their families understand? And how can Liyana ever learn to call this place home?

My thoughts:

Arrrrgggghhhh!! *%%$##@!! Not very peaceful like at all but I had several well-thought out paragraphs written out with 4 interesting quotes highlighting Naomi Shihab Nye’s poetic writing and it all disappeared when I pushed “publish post.” Just disappeared-everything that I’d written in the last hour. Arrrgghhh, again!!
I have to prepare a dish for a women’s party I’m going to tonight and clean my step-daughter’s room for her evening arrival so I Don’t Have Time to Go Back and Rewrite it all! I leave you with this…many should read this book about an area of the world that is still in crisis. Naomi Shihab Nye is obviously very talented and I plan to purchase this book for my school library and I plan to bring it to the attention of my 5th grade book club. It will make for great discussion. Now I feel a little like crying. Has a post ever disappeared for you?? I guess the greater question is “where did my words just go, floating out there in cyberspace…???”

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The Girl Who Fell From the Sky

Heidi W. Durrow

(2010)

262 pages

Oh, what a relaxing break I’ve had! My two sisters came to visit this weekend and we had a wonderful time together. I am so happy my father, in his “mid-life” crisis, married a beautiful woman with 5 interesting children-two of which are women. I grew up with three brothers so I have loved getting to know these sisters over the years. They are both smart and caring women so it was just a great weekend.

Now though it is time to catch up. I finished this amazing book two weeks (yikes!) ago and it is time I finish my post about it. This book was suggested by my friend, V for our reading long-distance book club.

Synopsis (from Barnes and Noble):

Rachel, the daughter of a Danish mother and a black G.I., is the sole survivor of a tragic family incident. With her strict African American grandmother as her new guardian, Rachel moves to a mostly black community, where her light brown skin, blue eyes, and beauty bring a constant stream of mixed attention her way. As she attempts to come to terms with an unfathomable past, she confronts her own identity as a biracial young woman in a world that wants to see her as either black or white.

My thoughts:

Told in alternating chapters it is Rachel’s story as she comes to terms with her family history, which includes the heavy themes of depression, alcoholism, identity and racial issues, which keep Rachel from feeling comfortable with her looks. Rachel tells her story with the help of Jamie, a Chicago neighbor, Laronne, her mother’s kind employer, her father, Roger and Nella, her mother. They interchangeably recreate Rachel’s life first, with her mother, trying to understand late 1970’s America and second, her life with her African-American grandmother, living in Portland, Oregon.

I enjoyed Durrow’s creation of Rachel as she incorporated every woman’s struggle of rebellion against family and the search for love in order to define oneself. I appreciated Rachel’s flaws as much as her triumphs. She wants so much, but mostly simply the need to feel love. Durrow did a great job of intertwining Jamie’s (Brick) story with Rachel and loved the outcome.

A quote:

“And look at your hair. All this pretty long hair looking all wild from outside.”
“We’re gonna wash that tonight,” she continues. “Your Aunt Loretta will help you. Bet she know how to do something better with that mess of hair than what you had done before. You’re gonna go to school Monday and be the prettiest girl there.”
She doesn’t say better than your mama. She doesn’t say anything about my mother, because we both know that the new girl has no mother. The new girl can’t be new and still remember. I am not the new girl. But I will pretend. (5-6)

Rachel is a realist but so in need of love and acceptance and Grandma is hard-to-please. Struggle. It’s this struggle added to the vivid cast of characters that make this worth reading. Aunt Loretta, Drew and Brick were positive characters in this tragic tale. I felt healed just a bit from reading Rachel’s story…as if I was able to forgive myself my own struggle as a teen through Rachel’s journey. 5/5 stars-Highly recommended

**Winner of the Belliwether Prize for Fiction**

Other reviews:

Booksploring
Jennifer at The Literate Housewife
The Bluestocking Guide

Marc Aronson's Race; A History beyond Black and White

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading.

Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

Grab your current read
Open to a random page
Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)

Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Here’s my three teasers:

From Race; A History beyond Black and White by Marc Aronson:

“And to many Black Americans, saying that racism is fading or that race is no longer important is either silly or blind. Anyone can see, whether in images of blacks driven out of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 or the troubling statistics of the persistent “achievement gap” in our schools, that the deep racial divisions in America remain real, and present. Even as I write these words, racial thinking looms behind the latest headlines, whether they are debates over legal and illegal immigration or analyses of wars that seem to pit Muslims against Christians and Jews”. p. 4-5

I do not read very much nonfiction but this book has captured my attention and I would read more by this author. I don’t know if I will read the whole thing as it is 269 pages long but I’m going to keep going for now. I love in the bio information I looked up it says that Dr. Aronson is a committed internationalist…wouldn’t it be great if we all thought on those terms!

What’s teasing you this week??

Journey of Dreams/Picnic_Basket Request

Journey of Dreams by Marge Pellegrino is set in Guatemala during the 1980’s political upheaval . It is the story of Tomasa and her family’s decision to leave their tiny village and head north, walking toward first the border of Mexico and then to the U.S. border. Tomasa’s mother leaves with the oldest son, Carlos because young boys have been captured in the village and forced to serve as soldiers. It becomes obvious within a short time that it is time for the rest of the family to go as soldiers take over their village during a festival.

Their entire journey is filled with risk and mishaps, especially trying to cross the river between Guatemala and Mexico. Once in Mexico, Tomasa, her brother Manuel and the baby Maria live temporarily in a park while the father goes off to work everyday. Eventually they are lead to a “safe convent” where they can stay in one room. A visitor from the U.S. brings news of Mother and Carlos and within a few monthes the family is together again in Phoenix. While they endure many hardships there is hope along the way. Because the author has such a close connection to Central American refuges I felt a real sense of loss for Tomasa’s character. She loved her life, as “poor” as they were, they were rich in culture, the beauty of the land and their own family strength. While still in their village Tomasa describes her home:

“Through the open door, the late afternoon sun deepens the blue of the sky. At this moment of the day, the green of the field and pine trees beyond glow. The blue and green next to each other look magical. The green crops grow from the gifts of the sky and earth. And we, the people of the corn, grew from those crops. Maybe that is why I often weave blue and green next to each other.” p. 23

I also greatly appreciated the father’s story-telling abilities and that they had these rituals every night when together. If you enjoy reading about other cultures or refuge experiences this book is well-worth it. It is a hope-filled and satisfying journey.

Marge Pellegrino’s blog
Click here for a map of Guatemala-it would have been a very long journey from Guatemala City!
Politics and Prose provides a synopsis here.

Teaser Tuesday

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

Grab your current read
Open to a random page
Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Here is my teaser:

“We walk amongst the trees as we continue along the outskirts of this village. The burnt smell is not fresh, but days old. Some of the buildings have no roofs.” p. 95, of Marge Pellegrino’s Journey of Dreams

Okay, I couldn’t resist that third sentence-it was so descriptive and matches up with teaser #1 And teaser #2. Politics and Prose synopsis.

Diversity Rocks!!

Not that I need more to do but I really liked the idea of Diversity rocks! challenge and it is something I am already working at my school with a 5th grade book club. I joining the challenge as a freethinker so I can “do my own thang”, which is just an easy way for me to not feel the strains of a number looming over my head. Our book club right now is reading Joseph Bruchac’s The heart of a chief. I will have to seek out some YA and adult books by diverse authors as well to complete this challenge. I have to finish Three cups of tea by Greg Mortenson (for my adult book club) and The friday night knitting club first but then I will be seeking new literature to read. What a joy!!! Are you up for it, V??