Tag Archives: Historical
Zahra’s Paradise by Amir & Khalid
“The authors have chosen anonymity for obvious political reasons.” When you know something like that about a book – that lives were willing to be risked to get a story out – how could you possibly not read it? In the case of Zahra’s Paradise, I promise you won’t be disappointed.
Written by Persian activist/journalist/documentary maker Amir and illustrated by Arab artist Khalil making his graphic novel debut, Zahra’s Paradise began as an online serial webcomic. In the name of worldwide access, the series was released simultaneously in English, Farsi, Arabic, French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Korean, Hebrew, Portuguese, German, Swedish, and Finnish. The story – set in the aftermath of Iran’s contested June 2009 presidential elections that declared incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad victor – was considered that important. Now with Iran back in near-daily headlines, the urgency to read Zahra’s Paradise grows ever stronger.
The book opens with a gruesome prologue that will be alluded to again and again throughout the coming pages: a brutal father forces his young son to witness the monstrous destruction of a litter of newborn puppies. In the prologue’s ending panels, the butchered, bagged remains sink down in a watery burial: “Now you too are in the stream touched by all that’s still and waiting. A lost generation buried inside the eye of this blog. Zahra’s Paradise.”
“[T]his blog” is the work of a young man named Hassan desperately searching for his younger brother, Mehdi Alavi, who disappeared from Freedom Square (the irony!) while protesting the outcome of the Iran’s elections. From June 16 to August 19, 2009, Hassan records his family’s desperate search via the technological tools remarkably still available to him – his phone camera, his computer, the internet – first for Mehdi himself, and then, as time passes, any news of Mehdi at all. Hassan and his mother beg, demand, even call in dangerous favors to work through a labyrinthine system of hospitals, prisons, government offices, the morgue, and even the cemetery just outside Iran’s capital city of Tehran known as Zahra’s Paradise, named after the prophet Mohammad’s daughter. What Hassan is able to unveil is worse than any nightmare …
That the resulting panes make for an unforgettable story might be enough, but that so much of this graphic fiction is indeed fact is a sobering, outrageous slap of reality. The creators use a “composite of real people and events,” supported by an appendix-like 40+ pages at volume’s end they label “Glossary” that serves as historical record. Most haunting are those final 13 pages of names – real, true, once-living brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents – that make up the “citizens of a silent city named Omid (‘hope’ in Persian).” Printed in near-blinding tiny type, these names are an ultimate reminder to “[l]et them challenge our conscience so that in the future we will prevent this kind of tragedy from happening again.”
Readers: Young Adult, Adult
Published: 2011 Continue reading
Heart and Soul: The Story of America and African Americans by Kadir Nelson
Happy 280th birthday to George Washington today, even if his official federal holiday (since 1879 by an Act of Congress!) always falls on a non-birthdate: by the Julian calendar, GW was born February 11, on the Gregorian February 22 [those colonials changed calendars in 1752], but the official holiday is designated to recur annually on the third Monday of the month, which means the holiday will never actually fall on GW’s natal day! Since the 1980s, a nod to Lincoln (birthday February 12) was added, to make it Presidents’ Day – although for families with children, this nebulously named holiday has become an excuse for mid-winter break. Hope the long holiday was good for all. Oh, but I have digressed …!!
In the splendiferous Heart and Soul, the original George W. appears on page 12: he’s looking straight ahead, mounted on the back of a sleek horse on the banks of what is presumably the Potomac River … and standing beside him is a slave, with hat in hand, head slightly bowed, his profile filled with grave consternation.
Kadir Nelson, this year’s author award winner and illustrator honoree of the Coretta Scott King Book Award, is not rewriting history: George Washington’s life clearly would have not been George Washington’s life without slaves, either at home or on the battlefield. “Through the fruits of our labor and our volunteer soldiers, we had helped free America from England, and yet we were stuck in a country that kept most of us as slaves.”
Taking the welcoming, storytelling tone of an aging grandmother who has seen too much, Nelson has history to share: “No parent wants to tell a child that he was once a slave and made to do anther man’s bidding. Or that she had to swallow her pride and take what she was given, even though she knew it wasn’t fair. Our story is chock-full of things like this. Things that might you cringe, or feel angry,” the knowing elder explains. “But there are also parts that will make you proud, or even laugh a little. You gotta take the good with the bad, I guess. You have to know where you come from so you can move forward.”
From the early 1600s to the founding of a new country, from the horrors of plantation life to Lincoln’s War, from the failure of Reconstruction to the hopes for building freer lives in the Wild West, our storyteller recounts African American struggles and contributions to the founding, building, and growing of a country in flux. She wanders north with the Great Migration and to Harlem for jazz, glamour, and the vote for women. She survives the Great Depression and World War II, celebrates equal rights and the death of Jim Crow, and listens on the National Mall to “”I have a dream …’”
As thorough and personal as the story is, Kadir Nelson’s extraordinary pictures are what will linger and enlighten. Every page holds wonder and admiration: the tiny little boy in his tattered shirt standing in front of the slave quarters against a sky so impossibly blue; the searing portrait of Harriet Tubman, tired but determined against the rich hues of the falling dusk; a young woman standing behind her father in near-darkness, her encouraging hands on his shoulders as if gently willing him to read; the portrait of a southern family migrating north, dressed in their Sunday best with all their worldly possessions piled into and onto a dilapidated jalopy, the sheer joy of making magical music of a Harlem big band; and perhaps the most touching of all – the gnarled, wizened hands cradling a stars-and-stripes “I voted” button offered up as proof of survival and celebration.
“We have come a mighty long way, honey, and we still have a good ways to go, but that promise and the right to fight for it is worth every ounce of its weight in gold. It is our nation’s heart and soul.” AMEN to that …
Readers: Children, Middle Grade
Published: 2011 Continue reading
Filed under ..Children/Picture Books, .Nonfiction, African American
Words Set Me Free: The Story of Young Frederick Douglass by Lesa Cline-Ransome, illustrated by James E. Ransome
The award-winning wife-and-husband children’s book team of Lesa Cline-Ransome and James Ransome capture Frederick Douglass’ early years from his slave birth to his first escape attempt as a teenager. Using Douglass’ autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, American Slave and pulling quotes directly from Douglass’ own memories, author Cline-Ransome presents the book in first person, immediately drawing in young readers to intimately share this story.
Illustrator Ransome deftly balances the tragedy (little boy Frederick in an oversized shirt grasping his grandmother’s hand, the youngest slave children eating at the trough “just like the animals in the barn,” Frederick cowering under the master’s looming angry shadow) with Frederick’s resilient hope (his straight-backed wonder as he looks out onto big city Baltimore even with his small hands bound behind his back, his attention at the Missus’ instruction sitting side-by-side in the library, his dirt-scratched letters in the secret “school among the trees”).
Before he became the legendary Frederick Douglass, young Frederick was a slave, the son of a slave woman named Harriet Bailey. “They say my master, Captain Aaron Anthony, was my daddy.” Raised by his grandmother, he only saw his mother in the middle of night when she managed to visit. Harriet Bailey’s arduous 12-mile trek to see her son is lovingly, achingly captured in last year’s Love Twelve Miles Long by Glenda Armand, which makes a fine companion title to Words.
Frederick spends his childhood being shuffled from master to master. At 6, he’s separated from his grandmother. At 8, he’s “rented out” to the mistress’ brother-in-law in Baltimore. His new Missus greets him with “the first friendly white face I had ever seen.” She teaches Frederick to read – illegal at the time – but her pride in his learning soon turns to shame when the master finds out: “‘If you teach him to read, there would be no keeping him. It would forever unfit him to be a slave.’”
When Frederick is sent back to his birthplace plantation, he “was not the same [boy] who had left years earlier. That young boy was replaced with a fifteen-year-old who was free on the inside but not yet free on the outside.” With new knowledge and new friends, Frederick daringly attempts his escape: “I always knew that somehow words would set me free.”
Although the “Author’s Note” on the final page reveals the failure of Frederick’s first escape plan, Cline-Ransome also provides an achievement-filled overview of Frederick’s later life. As tragic as the circumstances were of his youth, Cline-Ransome highlights Frederick’s tenacious determination throughout her narrative, an inspiring reminder to her readers of his future accomplishments to come.
Readers: Children
Published: 2012 Continue reading
Filed under ..Children/Picture Books, .Biography, .Nonfiction, African American
The Gemma Doyle Trilogy: A Great and Terrible Beauty, Rebel Angels, and The Sweet Far Thing by Libba Bray
Here’s a dilemma: If you knew how much a book series might deteriorate by its final title, would you read all the way through to the bitter end? As contrary as I am, I probably would … but I have to admit that in the case of this Gemma Doyle three-parter by mega-bestselling author Libba Bray, had I known that the first installment’s title ironically proves to be a fitting warning – A Great and Terrible Beauty, as in the series goes from great to downright terrible – I would definitely have moved on to better pages. And yet, almost 2000 pages (or 46 hours if you’ve gone audible), here I am …
Let’s start with ‘great.’ On her 16th birthday, Gemma Doyle, the daughter of an English family based in India, has a fight with her mother. She runs off into a Bombay market, then has a violent vision of her mother’s death – by her own hand – which proves to be true. The family abandons India, and Gemma is shipped off to Spence Academy outside London, where Gemma will learn “the necessary skills to become [one of] England’s future wives and mothers, hostesses and bearers of the Empire’s feminine traditions.” This is 1895 Victorian England, after all …
Initially an outcast, Gemma bonds soon enough with her mousy roommate Ann, alpha girl Felicity, and the ever-gorgeous Pippa. She discovers a quarter-century old diary of a former Spence girl which eventually lead the girls into other-world adventures in “the realms,” where they learn about the ancient Order and feel the looming threat of the evil – but missing – Circe. More often than not, Gemma finds herself fantasizing about handsome Kartik, who somehow shadowed her all the way from India, who’s part of a venerable all-male secret society charged with protecting the Order. Beauty turns out to be a big mystery, with lots of fantasy adventure, a bit of romance, enough literary allusions to make English teachers pat themselves on the back, and, of course, plenty of coming-of-age angst in a rather corseted society – think Victorian mean girls with a vengeance.
Then comes Rebel Angels, and the excitement of the new begins to tarnish. The girls’ otherworld adventures continue as they struggle with the responsibility of their new knowledge, although their biggest challenge seems to be curb their own shallow demands: Gemma wavers between strength and stupidity with an alarming regularity, Ann really needs to get a backbone, Felicity’s obsession with power fuels too many tantrums, and Pippa – who got stuck in the realms in Book 1 trying to escape a bad marriage – worries even more about her beauty now that she’s dead. Right. In between their catty fights, their family dysfunctions, and too many forays into self-indulgence, they do eventually manage to come face-to-face with Circe and finish her off. They hope.
Now brace yourself for ‘terrible’: Far Thing is over 800 pages of convoluted plotting – think insane asylum patients and debutantes, caped marauders, factory girls burnt to death, American Jews on and off the stage, talking trees, too many undead to count (including a certain Circe all washed up!), and so much more, whooo hoooo! The self-absorbed whining hits a fervent droning pitch; Ann’s self-pity, Felicity’s powerlust, Pippa’s histrionics are cringe-inducing enough, but Gemma’s sudden talent for making one moronic mistake after another renders her utterly unbelievable.
How such a memorable start can devolve to such simpering dribble is disappointment indeed. Most appalling throughout is realizing that these girls are either too stupid – or worse, that unfeeling– to bestow a moment of their selfish magic to save a little girl who is being incestuously abused by the monster guardian who did the same to his now teenage daughter.
Dwindling entertainment value aside, Bray wastes countless opportunities to explore issues of gender, sexuality, and rigid social class with any semblance of depth. She introduces such subjects as if showing off, but neglects responsible follow-through: quoting an abusive father’s dismissal of Oscar Wilde, for example, is a clever way to comment on the social mores of the time on homosexuality, but hardly enough when she finally reveals a tortured lesbian relationship.
Final word of advice: If you feel you must read the full series (sometimes we need to know what’s being peddled to our children), choose at least the audible version, expertly read by British ex-pat Josephine Bailey with just enough control and dignity to reign in her over-excitable Victorian charges … even as they turn into caricatures on the page, Bailey’s nuanced voice imbues them with a semblance of saving grace. Great and terrible indeed!
Readers: Young Adult
Published: 2003, 2006, 2007 Continue reading
Filed under ..Young Adult Readers, .Audio, .Fiction, British, Nonethnic-specific
Little Rock Girl 1957: How a Photograph Changed the Fight for Integration by Shelley Tougas
Take a careful look at this book cover … no exaggeration that “a picture is worth a thousand words”!
The day is September 4, 1957 and 15-year-old Elizabeth Eckford is on her way to her first day at Little Rock Central High School. “Nine African-American teenagers, who would forever be known as the Little Rock Nine, were supposed to arrive at the all-white high school … and make history together.” Meanwhile, Hazel Bryan, a white teenager, walks behind Elizabeth, “… her face twisted with rage. ‘Go home, n****r!’ she screamed. ‘Go back to Africa!’” At that moment, Will Counts, a newspaper photographer for the Arkansas Democrat, clicked the photo and made American history.
Little Rock Girl is one of six titles thus far in the Captured History series from Compass Point Books, which “explores how a single moment captured on film can influence society and change the course of history.” Indeed, author Shelley Tougas uses the powerful photograph to tell the story of the brave Little Rock Nine students and their pivotal participation in the long fight for integration. Tougas devotes the first chapter to Eckford whose first-day experience was even more frightful because she did not get the message the night before about the fateful morning’s plans.
Four decades later in 1997, President Bill Clinton held open the front doors of Central High for the Little Rock Nine. Photographer Will Counts was also there. And so was Hazel Bryan Massery. Counts was able to take a very different photograph this time … one that would be used for a poster titled Reconciliation, now sold at the Visitor’s Center near the school. For the full story – inspiring and disturbing both! – and its aftermath, you’ll have to read the book.
Author Tougas effectively pulls together history, memories, and, of course, many photographs to present a mesmerizing, multi-layered mosaic of our challenging past. The title photo “told the story of segregation in an instant. But it did more than tell the facts – it provoked a reaction.” Change is still in motion … “and the state of America’s inner-city schools can be seen as evidence of racism in disguise.” Little Rock Girl, however, ends with the greatest hope, with a visit to Central High by one of the Little Rock Nine, Melba Pattillo Beals, who remembers being welcomed by a young African American boy: “‘Welcome to Central High School. I’m the president of the student body.’” Beals’ reaction is understandably tearful: “‘… I was expecting something other than this black child. This had been my dream, my vision. This was why I had endured all the pain and physical punishment – so this boy could stand there and say that. It was amazing.”
Readers: Middle Grade, Young Adult, Adult
Published: 2011 Continue reading
The Silence of Our Friends by Mark Long and Jim Demonakos, illustrated by Nate Powell
Houston, 1968 is a tough place to be different. The Long family has just moved from San Antonio to a Houston suburb where Jack Long has taken a new job as “the race reporter” for a local television station. At home, his wife watches the horrific broadcasts from Vietnam while his children aren’t quite sure about the neighborhood kids who pass the time going “n****r-knockin’.” Jack’s attempts at fair representation and reporting get him threatened with “Stick with your own kind or you’ll get fired.”
Civil rights protests have reached local Texas Southern University, a historically African American institution, making it a hot spot for news coverage. There Jack Long meets Larry Thomas, an African American activist and professor, who comes to Jack’s aid during a potential volatile situation. A friendship is tentatively forged, then reinforced to include both families … but hard-won trust can be too-easily broken and color lines prove difficult and dangerous to cross.
Based on co-creator Mark Long’s childhood experiences, Silence is a chilling reminder of the not-so-distant race wars that nearly imploded the country. Capturing a little-known event – a peaceful campus protest turned violent which ended with false accusations of murder – Silence provides stark testimony from multiple viewpoints. Small moments so memorably depicted here by illustrator Nate Powell – a blind child unknowingly bringing in a KKK rally flyer attached to the front doorknob, an angry father slapping his own son in uncontrollable frustration after being humiliated by a store clerk, a mother desperately wailing for her hit-and-runover young child, an old friendship irrevocably broken – give this graphic memoir unflinching strength.
The final quote at book’s end returns to the title, and belongs to Martin Luther King, “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies … but the silence of our friends.” The implied question can’t be ignored: what would you do?
Readers: Young Adult, Adult
Published: 2012 Continue reading
Forgotten Country by Catherine Chung
As Janie weeps over her first-ever separation from her mother, who is about to give birth, her grandmother admonishes her with the grave responsibility Janie must bear for her new sibling. “In our family … a sister always dies,” her grandmother warns, sharing the horrific tale of her own infant sister’s death during the Japanese occupation of Korea.
Two decades later, living Stateside, Janie’s family is in crisis: sister Hannah has severed family ties, while their father faces terminal cancer. Seeking the latest treatments, her parents return to Korea, charging Janie with bringing Hannah back. The sisters’ devastating confrontation sends Janie alone to rejoin her parents and extended family, each scarred by the terrifying legacy of colonial occupation, war, dangerous politics, and a fractured country.
Verdict: No argument that the prize-winning Chung writes elegiac, exquisite, multilayered prose, yet her debut ultimately falters between too much (self-absorption overload, cousin Gabe’s death, sleazy adviser) and not enough (Hannah’s disappearance, her uncle’s silence). For greater satisfaction, readers might try Sonya Chung‘s Long for This World or Chang-rae Lee‘s The Surrendered.
Review: “Fiction,” Library Journal, February 1, 2012
Readers: Adult
Published: 2012 Continue reading
Filed under ..Adult Readers, .Fiction, Korean American
River of Smoke by Amitav Ghosh
Allow me to start with two immediate thoughts about content and delivery. Content: Today’s Mexican narcos, the Colombian cartels, the Afghan/Pakistani smuggling rings utterly pale in comparison to the British and American opium runners demanding access to 19th-century China. You might have studied the distant Opium Wars via textbook facts and figures, but you probably didn’t have the sort of visceral, being-there experience as Amitav Ghosh provides here.
Delivery: Read, do not bother listening to either of the two Ibis Trilogy titles (hope springs eternal for #3). Phil Gigante who voices Sea of Poppies gives the strangest accents to the characters, including an inexcusable ‘ching-chong’ for Baboo Nob Kissin. Thankfully, the man gets to speak fluently as narrated by Sanjiv Jhaveri in River of Smoke. BUT Jhaveri’s recitation of Robert Chinnery, the illegitimate mixed-race son of George Chinnery (the English painter, a historical figure, although Robert is seemingly Ghosh’s creation), is SOOOO riddled WITH (!!!) non-existent OVERpunctuaTION and flamBOYant OVERemphasis in his cadence as to make the young man sound like a grating stereotype on some failing teen drama. So really, get the books only and let your own voice give breath to Ghosh’s brilliant characters, unaided!
River begins “in a far corner of Mauritius,” where a now-elderly Deeti resides over her sprawling clan, telling stories from her adventurous life. Backtrack to 1938, when Sea of Poppies ended with a daring five-man escape from the Ibis. Of the Sea cast, Ah Fatt reunites briefly with his father, Bahram Modi, the shrewd merchant son-in-law of a powerful Bombay Parsi family; Ah Fatt manages to get the former Raja Neel Rattan Halder hired as Modi’s munshi (writing secretary) aboard his ship Anahita headed to Canton. Meanwhile, on Mauritius, Paulette finds both an employer and mentor in botanist Fitcher Penrose who was an admirer of her late father. She joins Penrose on his ship Redruth as he sets course for China to collect rare plant specimens.
Convergence happens in Canton’s foreign quarter, Fanqui-town, a lively cosmopolitan enclave (although no foreign women allowed). River‘s narrative follows Bahram Modi’s journey with a loaded cargo that should be enough to buy his freedom from his greedy in-laws, and the lively experiences of Paulette’s childhood friend Robert Chinnery who is sent to Fanqui-town in Penrose’s employ to track down the mythical “Golden Camellia.” The foreign traders are most anxious about their overstocked opium, awaiting permission to unload. What’s illegal in their own countries demands to be dumped in China in the name of free trade … but the Chinese government has had enough and are finally ready to reclaim their addicted country. Let the war begin … literally.
Ghosh combines history and fiction here with seamless grace as he meticulously weaves actual documents, people, and events with his own unforgettable characters. The result is entertaining and astonishing … and will surely leave you impatient for more. Yes, book 3 is coming … although it can’t here soon enough for some!
Readers: Adult
Published: 2011 Continue reading
Filed under ..Adult Readers, .Audio, .Fiction, Chinese, Indian, South Asian
Freedom’s a-Callin Me by Ntozake Shange, illustrated by Rod Brown
From the power duo who created We Troubled the Waters comes another memorable volume detailing the African American experience – this time, re-imagining the death-defying, life-saving journey from slavery to freedom along the Underground Railroad.
Combining powerful verse and richly textured paintings, Ntozake Shange and Rod Brown begin in the fields, where the horror of “that whip bouncing off somebody’s back” means a momentary “chance to get / right out of here” while the brutal overseer is otherwise engaged. In spite of attack dogs, hunger, and exhaustion ahead, the mere possibility of “ah may may be free” drives the dangerous journey onward.
Season after season, brave souls attempted freedom by “followin the north star,” relying on “this one good white man [who] got a clue for me,” choosing “death or freedom,” outrunning the slave trackers, mourning the “one of us [who] didn’t make it north,” and doing anything and everything possible to get to “freedom’s land” … until “finally ah am ridin through free air.”
From the legendary Sojourner Truth to “treacherous” slave hunters, to a wealthy abolitionist who may “look jus’ like mastah / oh but he aint,” to all the brave heroes – black and white – who never gave up on the promise of freedom regardless of personal cost: “Lawdy Lawdy we been blessed / Glory Hallelujah”!
As we celebrate the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. today, we must also remember the heroes whose names did not survive history, but whose selfless deeds helped ensure a better future. Freedom’s a-callin’ us all: listen carefully and ensure that the courageous, all-too-often anonymous struggle for equity and justice continues throughout the world …
Readers: Children
Published: 2012 Continue reading
Filed under ..Children/Picture Books, .Poetry, African American
Beneath the Lion’s Gaze by Maaza Mengiste + Author Interview
Maaza Mengiste‘s voice, delivered by telephone many thousands of miles away, sounds impossibly young and happy. She’s easy to talk to, easy to laugh with. She’s in Rome for another few months, enjoying the spring sun, sipping another cup of tea in a nearby café, and watching the many American tourists wandering by.
Her idyllic life for the moment seems at odds with her own early past — filled with uncertainty, inexplicable violence, and constant fear. Born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Maaza was just 3 years old when the 1974 Ethiopian revolution broke out, ousting a 3,000-year-old monarchy and replacing it with the brutal Derg regime that destroyed hundreds of thousands of lives before its collapse in 1991. Maaza was too young to understand what was happening, but perceptive enough to retain shattering images of that horrific time that have stayed with her through the years. Decades later, Maaza pieced together those memories to write her award-winning, critically acclaimed debut novel, Beneath the Lion’s Gaze, published in early 2010.
At the core of Maaza’s searing work are one family’s hellish experiences during the 1974 revolution. The family’s patriarch — the good doctor Hailu — is a prominent, proud man highly trained to alleviate pain, cure illness, and save the dying. And yet he can do nothing for his beloved wife who lies in a hospital bed, shriveled, exhausted, and ready to pass on. Hailu’s elder son Yonas gravely tries to hold his family together, but is himself helpless when his young daughter becomes seriously ill and his wife Sara is crushed by the fear of potential loss.
Unlike the controlled, watchful Yonas, Hailu’s younger son Dawit is still idealistic, still fueled by a rash temper that once put a fellow student in the hospital when Dawit, too young to understand rape, witnessed that student committing a vicious crime against a family servant. Dawit is devoted to his dying mother, emotionally dependent on his sister-in-law Sara, and in love with a headstrong young woman. He looks on in anguish and disgust as the new regime claims his childhood best friend, who uses complicity as a way to escape his deprived past spent in a mud shack adjacent to the luxury of Hailu’s two-story home.
The revolution shatters the family’s lives: Hailu’s humanity, Yonas’ responsibility, Dawit’s ideals will all be tested. As if working pieces of an intricate puzzle, Maaza presents an epic historical moment too few of us know of, laying the most atrocious acts next to radiantly tender moments and juxtaposing utter cowardice with utmost bravery. The result proves unforgettable.
Based on the strength of that single novel, Maaza was chosen by the 10×10 team to write the Ethiopian chapter of the 10×10 documentary film. Her enthusiasm about the project is palpable, and she admits she is most excited about connecting to the Ethiopian girls. Almost shyly, she reveals her own experiences when, at age 7, she left the comfort of her family to escape the growing danger of remaining in Ethiopia and traveled alone to the United States as a tiny refugee. For over a decade, she grew up in a group home run by a Christian couple in a small town in Colorado: “No one has ever heard of it; it’s on the border with Kansas,” she says. She remained there, living with a revolving group of other refugees, until she graduated high school and left for college.
Maaza softly admits to her isolated youth as “difficult, and I wouldn’t want to wish it on anyone.” She adds, “maybe that’s why I feel so connected to the plight of children.” [... click here for more: author interview appears on pages 5-11]
Author interview: 10×10: Educate Girls, Change the World Book Club Kit, April 2011, pages 5-11
Readers: Adult
Published: 2010 Continue reading
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