Our Stories, Our Voices: 21 YA Authors Get Real About Injustice, Empowerment, an

Description: Our Stories, Our Voices by Amy Reed, Julie Murphy, Sandhya Menon, Ellen Hopkins, Amber Smith, Nina LaCour, Stephanie Kuehnert, Sona Charaipotra, Anna-Marie McLemore "Truthful and empowering." —Booklist From Amy Reed, Ellen Hopkins, Amber Smith, Nina LaCour, Sandhya Menon, and more of your favorite YA authors comes an "outstanding anthology" (School Library Connection) of essays that explore the diverse experiences of injustice, empowerment, and growing up female in America.This collection of twenty-one essays from major YA authors—including award-winning and bestselling writers—touches on a powerful range of topics related to growing up female in todays America, and the intersection with race, religion, and ethnicity. Sure to inspire hope and solidarity to anyone who reads it, Our Stories, Our Voices belongs on every young womans shelf. This anthology features essays from Martha Brockenbrough, Jaye Robin Brown, Sona Charaipotra, Brandy Colbert, Somaiya Daud, Christine Day, Alexandra Duncan, Ilene Wong (I.W.) Gregorio, Maurene Goo. Ellen Hopkins, Stephanie Kuehnert, Nina LaCour, Anna-Marie LcLemore, Sandhya Menon, Hannah Moskowitz, Julie Murphy, Aisha Saeed, Jenny Torres Sanchez, Amber Smith, and Tracy Deonn. FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Author Biography Amy Reed (editor of Our Stories, Our Voices) is the author of the contemporary young adult novels Beautiful, Clean, Crazy, Over You, Damaged, Invincible, Unforgivable, and The Nowhere Girls. She is a feminist, mother, and quadruple Virgo who enjoys running, making lists, and wandering around the mountains of western North Carolina where she lives. You can find her online at AmyReedFiction.com. Other contributors include: Julie Murphy, Sandhya Menon, Ellen Hopkins, Amber Smith, Nina LaCour, Stephanie Kuehnert, Sona Charaipotra, Anna-Marie McLemore, Brandy Colbert, Martha Brockenbrough, Jaye Robin Brown, Maurene Goo, Aisha Saeed, Jenny Torres Sanchez, Hannah Moskowitz, Ilene (I.W.) Gregoria, Tracy Deonn, Somaiya Daud, Christine Day, and Alexandra Duncan. Review *REED, Amy, ed. Our Stories, Our Voices: 21 YA Authors Get Real About Injustice, Empowerment, and Growing Up Female in America. 320p. S. & S./Simon Pulse. Aug. 2018. Tr $18.99. ISBN 9781534408999. Gr 9 Up–Twenty-one YA authors—including such well-known figures as Ellen Hopkins, Maurene Goo, and Printz award-winner Nina LaCour, as well as two unpublished authors selected from a call for submissions—reflect on their early lives and what it means to be a woman in the United States. Many of these writers experienced marginalization as younger girls based on race, immigration status, sexuality, or simply not fitting in. Each turned to writing as solace, an outlet, or a way of speaking out against injustice. The stories are all unique, some focusing on the subjects childhood, others on their lives as adults. Many discuss their anger at the recent presidential election and put out an inspiring call to action. The authors speak directly to readers in an informal tone; the essays are written in the first person with some casual profanity. A content warning in the editors note mentions that the entries discuss race-based and sexual violence. A resource list includes websites of activist organizations, in addition to information on how to participate in the political system. VERDICT Many readers will see themselves reflected in the pages of this collection and be inspired by the first-hand accounts of overcoming adversity. A great pick for budding writers and activists.–Clara Hendricks, Cambridge Public Library, MA -- School Library Journal STARRED REVIEW * July 2018 *"Threaded through these essays is the power of art and creativity in tackling the task that lies ahead: forging a better, more just world for future generations. Truthful and empowering." * Booklist *"Oustanding anthology . . . A clarion call to activism, the book empowers girls growing up with injustice in America by reflecting authentic and original voices from across the spectrums of race, gender, and religion and encourages them to speak their truths and become warriors for social justice." * School Library Connection * Review Quote "Threaded through these essays is the power of art and creativity in tackling the task that lies ahead: forging a better, more just world for future generations. Truthful and empowering." Excerpt from Book My Immigrant American Dream MY IMMIGRANT AMERICAN DREAM Sandhya Menon My first night in America was a sleepless one spent wide-eyed in the dark, listening to the crushing silence. This is going to be great, I promised my fifteen-year-old self. Youre going to love it here. My family and I had just moved to Charleston, South Carolina, from Mumbai (Bombay), India. Wed moved periodically between India and the United Arab Emirates before, but Id always lived an insulated life in the Middle East, studying at Indian schools and engaging mainly with the very large Indian community there. This, being plunged into a brand-new culture in a brand-new country where the population of Indians wasnt nearly as numerous, was completely novel. The lack of noisy, bustling rickshaws and street vendors hawking glass bangles and multicolored saris would take some getting used to. But the thing I had to get used to the most was being an outsider in a country of outsiders. Id heard from excited friends and relatives that America was the land of immigrants. "Even the white people who are the majority there are actually immigrants, if you look at their ancestors!" people told me. "Plus, Americans love people who are different. Just look at San Francisco." We knew many friends who had immigrated to America, whose children were born there, and the stories that trickled home were dotted with details that made me salivate: convertible cars and spotless beaches, people who dressed like Westerners in short-shorts and tank tops. Besides, America was famous for its equal treatment of women. India still had huge strides to make in that arena when I lived there, and I was eager for a change. I was so ready to be welcomed with open arms, to make exotic American friends who might grow to love Bollywood movies and Hindi songs like I did. What happened was a little less idyllic. I had a thick Indian accent when I first moved to the States, and people--including some teachers at my small magnet school--immediately thought that meant I couldnt speak English, period. By then Id already had short stories (written in English) published in international magazines, so that wasnt the case at all. There were also other micro- and macroaggressions to get used to, ones I wasnt expecting from the land of immigrants. I distinctly remember my father speaking to store clerks who would sigh and roll their eyes because they couldnt understand him. They spoke slowly and loudly, as if he --a highly educated engineer whod lived all over the world--were having trouble understanding them . Occasionally I was stopped in my neighborhood by the police and asked what I was doing there, whether I was in the country legally, and where I lived. As far as I could tell, the only reason I was stopped was because of the color of my skin. My friend whod emigrated from Russia the same year as me reported never having experienced that particular form of harassment. One boy insisted on sneeringly calling me Ganesh in class because of the religion my parents practiced, and the teacher never stepped in. At the post office someone yelled at me and my mom to go back to our country because, apparently, we were standing in line wrong. I got used to the question, asked seemingly casually but with a gimlet eye: "Are you here legally ?" whenever I said I didnt have a social security number, since I was here as a dependent on my dads work visa. It made my cheeks burn at first. My parents had paid a lot of money to come to the States; wed gone through all the proper channels and jumped through all the hoops (and of those there were many). What right did they have to ask me that when they didnt even know how visas worked, when many of them had never even been out of this country? And anyway, what did they think? That I swam all the way from India? Not all experiences were negative, however. I did enjoy greater gender equality in the United States than I had in India. Egalitarian messages pervaded my high school: we were told we could do anything a boy could do, be anything a boy could be. Still, these messages were implicitly and explicitly targeted at white girls and women. The role models and those they spoke to looked nothing like me. For the longest time I thought there must be something wrong with me for people--even people I respected or considered my friends--to say the things I was hearing. Once I realized I was accepted as a woman, just not as an immigrant, I figured I needed to acculturate better. The other Indian kids around me, the ones who seemed to be accepted, at least to my eye, seemed indistinguishable in accent and dress from the American kids. (At the time I didnt get the concept of Indian-Americanness.) So I began to speak with an American accent. I tried to blend in so much that I would actively decry Indian things. When people asked me about arranged marriage I would announce that I didnt believe in it. When people asked if I spoke Hindi, I automatically said, "Yes, but I speak English better and it was my first language." I began to shop at Old Navy whenever my parents would let me, and I relegated all my Indian clothes to the back of my closet. One of the biggest losses, though, was my art. Although I still wrote in a private journal, my stories and drawings began to go by the wayside. I refused to let people peek into my imagination. I didnt know what was "acceptable" anymore, so I simply stopped creating. I was, without thinking, trying to obliterate those parts of myself that I thought werent American enough (and to me, in those days, "American" meant "white" because thats the message I was getting). I wanted to be lighter skinned, taller. I wanted to blend in and become someone else. I was trying to perfect the art of becoming the human chameleon. But as I went through high school and then college, a strange and wonderful thing started to happen. I began to see myself for who I was, past all the cladding of "immigrant versus American born," of "accent versus no accent." There was a side to me, I realized, that had nothing to do with the labels other people gave me. I started to pay attention to that side more, to unearth who I was for myself. My volunteering with the teen crisis line and individuals with developmental disabilities, for instance, helped me see I was a person capable of empathy and kindness. My high school best friend, who happened to be the daughter of Nigerian immigrants, helped me see that there was nothing inherently wrong with being an immigrant. She embraced her Nigerian roots and celebrated her parents accent and where theyd come from. The way she spoke openly about the injustices they faced helped me see that thats what they were--injustices, prejudice, ignorance. Id had a hard time seeing it when it was directed at me, but seeing it directed at a friend drew the line between right and wrong pretty starkly. I met incredible women in the places where I volunteered, who told stories of overcoming traumatic pasts and abusive partners, mental illness and poverty. We had a mutual sense of responsibility to share what resources we now had with others less fortunate. We spoke about what it meant to be female, how easy it was to be hurt, but how capable we were of healing. I enjoyed the freedom of being able to walk down the street without being incessantly catcalled or waiting in line without being groped. I began to see that I had inherent worth as a young woman that went beyond my looks, and I was eager to see what that might look like for me. Although my high school teachers had not seen much merit in my writing, people at college did. I still remember one of my English professors telling me hed seen my essay in the literary magazine. He looked at me appraisingly from behind his glasses. "Youre a good writer," he said. "Have you written anything else?" And so I began to believe, once again, that I was talented, that I had something to offer that other people wanted to see. I met my husband, a white boy, who believed that I was beautiful as I was--dark skinned, on the shorter side, with curly black hair. I began to realize that for every ignorant, misinformed, or prejudiced person I met, there was a counterbalancing person in the world who would recognize my worth and stand up for me and others like me. I heard the Mr. Rogers quote, "When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping,?" and it really resonated with me. It was true, I realized. And somehow, realizing that other, good people saw me as worthy helped me realize that people who didnt see my worth, who automatically categorized me as "less than," were the ones in the wrong. I had to lean on other people to find myself, but once I did, I began to blossom. It was a little like emerging after hibernation, I imagine. I came out into the sunlight, blinking and unsteady, but I was warm again. I began to tunnel my way out of self-doubt and anxiety. I realized I was so much happier when I put myself in charge of my life, when I refused to accept what other, misinformed people said about me. A large part of that, too, was realizing that adults werent always right. Being raised in Indian culture, Id been taught to always respect my elders, to never disagree, to accept what I was told. But adults, I was quickly learning, could be judgmental and cruel, prejudiced and bigoted. Adults did not automatically get a pass anymore. I had a right to question them. I began to make art again, with gusto. I drew, painted, and wrote short stories and poems. I sometimes even made up song lyrics and Details ISBN1534409009 Author Anna-Marie McLemore Pages 320 Audience Age 14-99 Publisher Simon & Schuster Year 2020 ISBN-10 1534409009 ISBN-13 9781534409002 Format Paperback Subtitle 21 YA Authors Get Real About Injustice, Empowerment, and Growing Up Female in America Place of Publication New York Country of Publication United States Edited by Amy Reed DEWEY 305.24220973 Short Title Our Stories, Our Voices Language English Illustrations f-c matte lam cvr w- spot UV Publication Date 2020-03-03 NZ Release Date 2020-03-03 US Release Date 2020-03-03 UK Release Date 2020-03-03 Edition Description Reprint Alternative 9781534408999 Audience Teenage / Young adult AU Release Date 2020-02-29 Imprint Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. 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