Eighteen-year-old Tommy Quinlan is riding the train from Salt Lake City to Chicago for the funeral of Joe Hill. The smells, noise, and movement bring back memories of a train ride eight years earlier with his uncle, a coal mining union activist. The two were on their way to Idaho for the murder trial of Big Bill Haywood and hidden inside a cigar box was one thousand dollars for the defense fund. Tommy feels guilty when Pinkerton detectives drag his uncle from the train and murder him, but he does manage to deliver the money. Back home in his small mining town, Tommy starts to work the mines to help support his widowed mother and discovers a gift for the guitar, honing his skills in the underground blackness. As the years pass, his work grows more dangerous, but his gift for making up lyrics to popular tunes and playing in saloons helps bring in money. Almost predictably, he falls in love with a girl from the other side of the tracks, actually the daughter of the man who owns the mine. Their romance is difficult, carried out in secrecy and over long distances. When Tommy is urged to sing the union’s cause and carry forward the work of Joe Hill, he harbors doubts about the direction of his life. Ultimately, he decides that he must be his own man and not give up the girl he loves. He will use his gift of word making as a lawyer and advance the cause of labor in that manner. Skurzynski (Ghost Horses, 2000, etc.) presents a good picture of the horrors of life in the pre-WWI western coal mines. However, in spite of Tommy’s meetings with Haywood and Hill, they remain somewhat distant and sketchy characters. The ongoing courtship of his mother by a miner and the difficulties of his own romance often slow down the pace of the narration and the storytelling lacks the strength and power of its subject. (Fiction. YA)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-689-83991-X
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2001
Small but mighty necessary reading.
A miniature manifesto for radical queer acceptance that weaves together the personal and political.
Eli, a cis gay white Jewish man, uses his own identities and experiences to frame and acknowledge his perspective. In the prologue, Eli compares the global Jewish community to the global queer community, noting, “We don’t always get it right, but the importance of showing up for other Jews has been carved into the DNA of what it means to be Jewish. It is my dream that queer people develop the same ideology—what I like to call a Global Queer Conscience.” He details his own isolating experiences as a queer adolescent in an Orthodox Jewish community and reflects on how he and so many others would have benefitted from a robust and supportive queer community. The rest of the book outlines 10 principles based on the belief that an expectation of mutual care and concern across various other dimensions of identity can be integrated into queer community values. Eli’s prose is clear, straightforward, and powerful. While he makes some choices that may be divisive—for example, using the initialism LGBTQIAA+ which includes “ally”—he always makes clear those are his personal choices and that the language is ever evolving.
Small but mighty necessary reading. (resources) (Nonfiction. 14-18)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09368-9
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2020
A powerful reminder of a history that is all too timely today.
A beautifully heart-wrenching graphic-novel adaptation of actor and activist Takei’s (Lions and Tigers and Bears, 2013, etc.) childhood experience of incarceration in a World War II camp for Japanese Americans.
Takei had not yet started school when he, his parents, and his younger siblings were forced to leave their home and report to the Santa Anita Racetrack for “processing and removal” due to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066. The creators smoothly and cleverly embed the historical context within which Takei’s family’s story takes place, allowing readers to simultaneously experience the daily humiliations that they suffered in the camps while providing readers with a broader understanding of the federal legislation, lawsuits, and actions which led to and maintained this injustice. The heroes who fought against this and provided support to and within the Japanese American community, such as Fred Korematsu, the 442nd Regiment, Herbert Nicholson, and the ACLU’s Wayne Collins, are also highlighted, but the focus always remains on the many sacrifices that Takei’s parents made to ensure the safety and survival of their family while shielding their children from knowing the depths of the hatred they faced and danger they were in. The creators also highlight the dangerous parallels between the hate speech, stereotyping, and legislation used against Japanese Americans and the trajectory of current events. Delicate grayscale illustrations effectively convey the intense emotions and the stark living conditions.
A powerful reminder of a history that is all too timely today. (Graphic memoir. 14-adult)Pub Date: July 16, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-60309-450-4
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Top Shelf Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 4, 2019
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