Though the writing is occasionally a little slapdash, this is a strong, original, and life-affirming book.
Second-novelist Woodson (the well-received Last Summer with Maison, 1990) gives thoughtful consideration to the impact of a pregnant teenager on the 12-year-old daughter of a friend who takes her in.
Afeni (Swahili for "Dear One") is still coping with her grandmother's death and her parents' divorce when her mother invites Rebecca, 15, daughter of a childhood friend who now lives in Harlem, to share their suburban home until her baby is born. Rebecca finds it as hard to deal with a group of caring women (which includes recovering alcoholics and a lesbian couple) as Afeni does to share her room with a stranger whose concerns are her boyfriend and the baby she's about to give up. Still, in their time together the two form a bond that enables each to grow in understanding and love.Minimal plot, but the characterizations are rich, warm, and memorable; Woodson draws a frank, realistic picture of a community of African-American women who thrive while bravely confronting a myriad of problems and life situations.
Though the writing is occasionally a little slapdash, this is a strong, original, and life-affirming book. (Fiction. 12+)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1991
ISBN: 0-385-30416-1
Page Count: 145
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1991
A poignant, powerful, and insightful collection of voices seldom heard.
Children, teens, and 20-somethings, from all over Gaza Strip and the West Bank, speak in their own voices about their daily experiences of living under occupation.
After explaining what the occupation is and how it affects those living under it, the authors organize the book into chapters by the places they visited: Ramallah, Jenin, Nablus, Qattana, Sebastiya, Gaza, Beit Ur, and Hebron. In each, following some background information, the young people interviewed speak for themselves. Children from Ramallah express their fear of Israeli settlers who sometimes fire bullets at them. A common sentiment is expressed by 20-year-old Muath: “It’s not normal to be a prisoner in your country.” Mohammed, 17, says: “I hate seeing the Wall. It’s wrong; it shouldn’t be there.” Checkpoints and walls are a constant in the lives of Palestinian youth. A 10-year-old in Nablus is one of many who expresses the fear he feels at the sight of an Israeli soldier. What readers will discover is that these young Palestinians want the same things young people want everywhere: a stable family life, the freedom to move about their country, and a safe and secure space in which to grow up. This is these young Palestinians’ story; readers interested in the Israeli perspective will need to look elsewhere.
A poignant, powerful, and insightful collection of voices seldom heard. (photos, maps, timeline, references) (Nonfiction. 12-18)Pub Date: July 25, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-56656-015-3
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Interlink
Review Posted Online: April 25, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2017
These are experiences that need to be remembered, though Arakawa’s are not as compellingly related as other novels or...
A child of Japanese immigrants looks back on her World War II–era experiences in internment camps and afterward.
Changing names and inventing details to fill in the gaps between memories, Arakawa, in character as Shizuye, begins with her 1932 birth on a Murphy bed in San Francisco, takes her narrative through multiple moves that become forced ones in the wake of Pearl Harbor, then concludes with a temporary postwar settlement in Denver and final journey back to the West Coast. Despite the fictive fill, her account is spotty and episodic, more hindered than helped in its course by such details as painstaking descriptions of the route between one home and the local playground or tedious tallies of the comings and goings of briefly known schoolmates. As much a personal story as testament to a historical outrage, her recollections mingle references to domestic strife, pre-adolescent bed-wetting, and suicidal impulses following the internment with incidents of being jeered as a “Jap” on the way home from school, encounters with neighborhood “racial covenants,” and other manifestations of prejudice—not to mention repeated forcible removals to hastily constructed camps in California and, later, Arkansas. Occasional mentions of “Caucasian” visitors or a friend’s “dark skin” serve as reminders that most of the figures here are Asian or Asian-American.
These are experiences that need to be remembered, though Arakawa’s are not as compellingly related as other novels or personal accounts of the travesty. (afterword) (Historical fiction. 12-16)Pub Date: May 16, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-61172-036-5
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Stone Bridge Press
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2017
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
