By Michael Greene, ’22

Staff Cartoonist

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By Mrs. McHugh

HHS Librarian

With some books, being confused is part of the fun. The author drops clues and layers plot twists so you’re constantly trying to figure out what’s going on. When it’s done well, you enjoy the ride – even if your predictions were off the mark. The final reveal shocks you, entertains you and makes you go back through the book to see what you missed.

These young adult books do it really well. They can be hard to describe without spoilers, but I’ll try.

Tell Me My Name by Amy Reed is the story of Fern, a quiet working-class teen living in a community that’s a playground for the rich and famous. Floods and drought have destroyed much of the country, and there’s a huge gap between rich and poor. Fern watches and waits – for college, a boyfriend, and adventure. When teen celebrity Ivy Avila moves into town, Fern feels alive for the first time in her life. Touching on serious issues like inequality, climate change, drug addiction and sexual assault, the story is about finding and keeping your identity in a turbulent world.

In Monday’s Not Coming by Tiffany D. Jackson, Claudia is trying to solve the disappearance of her best friend. But no one else seems to know anything about the missing teen, or they assure Claudia that everything is fine. The story highlights racism, poverty and other social issues that cause people to fall through the cracks. It also explores the impact of trauma on your heart and mind. I was confused through much of this book, but since it received good reviews, I trusted the author and stuck with it. The ending was shocking and thought-provoking.

We Were Liars by E. Lockhart is about a group of friends that spend summers together with their families on a private island off the coast of Massachusetts. Raised in privilege, the friends have few worries until one devestating summer. Cadence, the main character, reveals the story in two parts – what happened that fateful summer when she was 15 and what takes place when she returns two years later, still bearing the scars. When I finished this book, I immediately flipped back to the first page to try to see how I missed signs of the big twist. It was amazing. Family of Liars, a prequel by the same author, will be published in May.

By Mrs. McHugh

HHS Librarian

Our region is rich with Native American history, but it’s all too easy to focus only on lives from the past. These recent books remind us that Native Americans still exist today, striving to preserve their cultures and cope with the scars of a turbulent past.

In The Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley, Daunis is a young woman whose community is wracked by drug abuse and mysterious deaths. When she agrees to help with a police investigation, she grows close to an undercover officer who is posing as a local hockey star. Soon, she feels torn between protecting her community and bringing people to justice. The story takes a little while to build as it introduces its multigenerational cast of characters and the traditions of the Ojibwe culture. The action-packed ending is worth the wait. It’s a crime thriller, family saga and cultural celebration all in one.

There, There by Tommy Orange tells the stories of a dozen different characters whose lives converge at an Oakland cultural festival. Despite their different reasons for attending – some hopeful, some scared, some ready for violence – they all share the scars of the nation’s oppressive treatment of Native Americans, which includes forced removal from ancestral lands and the erasure of culture in government-sponsored boarding schools. These scars come through as struggles with poverty, suicide, alcoholism and identity. The mix of voices telling the story is powerful and eye-opening.

Hearts Unbroken by Cynthia Leitich Smith follows Louise Wolfe, a Native American high school senior living in a largely white Kansas town. When the director of the school play shakes up the casting of their production of The Wizard of Oz, the ensuing backlash reveals long-held prejudice and divides the community. As Louise writes about the controversy for her school newspaper, she begins to fall for a fellow student. But she knows that “dating while Native” is never easy. Whose hearts will be broken before this is over?

By Mrs. McHugh

HHS Librarian

Imagine if the government deemed you and your family a threat to national security. You’re told to pack what you can carry and report for relocation, not knowing if you’ll ever see your home, community or possessions again. 

This is what happened to thousands of people of Japanese ancestry living on the West Coast after the attack on Pearl Harbor Dec. 7, 1941. While the United States had previously watched World War II from afar, the conflict now hit closer to home than ever imagined. The U.S. government turned its sights on possible spies and saboteurs within its own borders, focusing on Japanese Americans and immigrants. Some of these prisoners – referred to as internees or evacuees throughout history – were U.S. citizens. Some had lived in the country for decades, but hadn’t been allowed to become citizens because of immigration laws. Many had children born here, who were citizens no matter their parentage. Yet all were treated the same, their rights stripped from them because they looked like the enemy, imprisoned in isolated and inhospitable “internment camps” with uncertain futures.

There have been many books written about this awful chapter in American history. One of the latest, We Are Not Free by Tracy Chee, is a moving novel sharing the stories of 14 teens from one San Francisco community. What I liked about this book is that it covers many different experiences: the Americanized teen trying to make the best of life in the camps, which offer dances and sports along with barbed wire and armed guards; the young man who enlists in the Army because he believes in America despite what it’s done to his family; the conflicted youth whose parents would rather return to Japan than deal with such poor treatment; the teens who protest the harsh living conditions. With a chapter told from the point of view of each character, the reader learns a lot more about the time period than they might from their history textbooks. While there may have been some cases where people of Japanese ancestry acted as spies in the war, most families who were imprisoned were innocent victims of bigotry and fear. The chapter about a young man named Twitchy is especially powerful, based on the real experiences of Japanese-American Army units who saw some of the toughest fighting of the war.

If this topic interests you, here are a few more recommendations:

The Train to Crystal City by Jan Jarboe Russell – While We are Not Free touches on the experience of imprisoned families facing deportation to Japan, this nonfiction book goes into much more depth. For one thing, it wasn’t just Japanese immigrants who were imprisoned in camps during World War II; there were Germans in America who were considered dangerous as well. When these immigrants – mostly men who pledged loyalty to the U.S. and were never charged with a crime – were jailed in camps, their wives and children would join them rather than struggle to survive on their own. If the men were deported, the children followed without question, even if they were born in America and therefore citizens. The author describes one such family that was sent to a Japanese city devastated by an atomic bomb; there were neither the resources nor the goodwill to welcome them and the family struggled to survive. 

Manzanar by John Armor and Peter Wright – In commentary by a journalist who covered World War II and stark black and white photographs, this nonfiction book details life in one of the largest prison camps for Japanese Americans. While the camps offered things like Boy Scout troops, dances and softball leagues, they also featured tall barbed wire fences and armed guards. Homes were crowded barracks that barely provided shelter from the harsh weather of the isolated mountain or desert regions where camps were built. Food was rationed, mail was censored, and prisoners lost hope.

Internment by Samira Ahmed – Although fiction, the premise of this story feels a little too easy to imagine. It’s the near future, and the U.S. government has imprisoned all Muslim-Americans in internment camps, including 17-year-old Layla and her family. Even though they are citizens, they are stripped of their rights and possessions and considered enemies of the state. This echoes what happened to Japanese-Americans during World War II. It also draws on the hate and fear directed at Muslims after the September 11th attacks committed by radicals in the name of their religion. This is a fast-paced, thrilling story of tolerance and reason triumphing over fear and hate. It also highlights the danger we face when we stay silent in the face of injustice.

Featured image: A Japanese internment camp in California in 1942. Eliot Elisofon/The LIFE Picture Collection via Getty Images from https://eji.org/news/history-racial-injustice-forced-internment-of-japanese-americans/

By Mrs. McHugh

HHS Librarian

The end of the world is upon us, and you’ll only survive if you’re useful. But who gets to decide if what you can offer is important enough?

That’s the question facing 16-year-old Denise in the young adult novel On the Edge of Gone by Corinne Duyvis. A comet is on track to hit Earth, causing devestation not seen since the dinosaurs were wiped off the planet. If you’re wealthy and connected, you’ve bought a spot on a “generation ship” set to colonize another planet. If you’re not – like Denise – you’ve been assigned to a temporary shelter and after a few days, you’ll be on your own.

As the impact nears, Denise and her mom stumble upon a different kind of ship, one that will take people with practical skills that will help the community survive. There are doctors, engineers, computer scientists, teachers. Denise is desperate to prove they deserve a spot. But she’s a teen with autism whose inability to read social cues or handle change often causes her problems. And her mom is struggling with drug addiction. Can they convince the ship’s community that they’re worth saving?

This science fiction thriller has some exciting action sequences, and could easily be turned into a gripping television series or movie. In fact, when it ended, I wanted a sequel so I could find out what happens next to all of the characters. The book also raises thought-provoking questions about identity and purpose. The author is autistic, so her depictions of the sensory issues and meltdowns that Denise endures are honest, accurate and valuable for those not familiar with the challenges. There are also several LGBTQ characters, including Denise’s trans sister and a lesbian couple on the ship. So in addition to being an action-packed story, it provides representation for some groups that are often sidelined or restricted to just “issue” books. 

By Mrs. McHugh

HHS Librarian

Too often, when people think of Africa, they think of it as one big place, not the dozens of individual and unique countries that make up the continent. Or maybe they come up with generic images: lions on the savannah, slave ships teeming with misery, or famine and civil war.

None of these is the full picture.

As Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie once said in a widely quoted TED talk, there is a danger to just one story. “The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete,” she said. “They make one story become the only story.”

I read a lot and consider myself pretty open-minded, but when a colleague recommended one of this author’s novels last summer, I realized that I knew very little about Africa – especially contemporary Africa. In the ensuing months, I read the book she suggested and two others that took me deep into the culture of Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa. I learned that this one country alone has more stories than I ever imagined.

Some may wonder, why does it matter? Africa is so far away; it doesn’t really impact our daily lives. Of course, there’s the danger of a single story – when we know little about a country or people, we default to stereotypes, and stereotypes make it hard for us to empathize. Empathy not only makes us better people, it prepares us – in this interconnected world – for the eventual encounters we are likely to have.

Also, what is happening in Nigeria – the conflict between ethnic groups, city life versus village life, the clash of economic and social classes, climate change issues, and emigration in hopes of a better life – is taking place in a lot of countries. These issues are changing our world, and we need to know something about them.

Finally, reading about this faraway place reminds me that things such as love, family and growing up are universal. The rituals and circumstances experienced in each society may be different, but emotions and relationships are very relatable.

This review covers three books, starting with Americanah by Adichie, recommended by former HHS English teacher Mrs. Pavao. The story follows Ifemelu and Obinze, teens in love when they leave Nigeria for better opportunities. Ifemelu heads to America, where she struggles with what it means to be Black, African, and an immigrant in a country divided by race. Obinze, barred from the United States, ends up an undocumented immigrant in England. Their vastly different experiences impact their relationship and, ultimately, their ideas of identity and home. I loved how the book explored so many angles and issues, and I rooted for Ifemelu to find happiness.

Next I read The Girl with the Louding Voice by Abi Dare, suggested by English teacher Mrs. Doyle. Adunni is a 14-year-old village girl who dreams of getting an education when her father promises her as the third wife of an old man. Faced with abuse in the arranged marriage, Adunni flees to the wealthy capital city. There, she finds work in the home of a cruel businesswoman and her preying husband. Adunni dreams of using her voice to improve her own situation and help other Nigerian girls. Through every heartache, she never gives up hope. I was right there with her hoping for a happy ending. Some readers may struggle with the dialect; Adunni’s English is very rough at the start of the story and improves as she grows older and more educated. But if you can stick with it, it’s worth it.

Finally, I returned to Adichie with Half of a Yellow Sun, which senior Elsa Little-Girl raved about. This is more historical, taking place before and during a civil war in the 1960s. Conflict between different ethnic groups leads to a massacre and war, which we experience through the lives of five unique characters: a servant boy from a small village, the university professor he works for, a young woman who prefers the intellectual life to that of her upper class parents, her bold twin sister, and a white Englishman visiting the country. I had my favorite characters, but I was fascinated by how their lives intertwined. It was a compelling way to tell the story of a society torn by civil war.

Sometimes there’s a gap between what we feel we should read and what we want to read. If you fear these books may seem “meaningful” but too much work, rest assured; they’re also really good stories.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED Talk on the danger of a single story

Featured image: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-54357810