Patricia Hruby Powell

Ever wonder where your chocolate comes from? Cocoa, Hersey bars, brownie mix—you name it—chocolate. I wasn’t sure why I was buying “fair trade” chocolate. That changed when I read Tara Sullivan’s young adult novel “The Bitter Side of Sweet” (Putnam 2017).

Fifteen-year-old Amadou chops cacao pods alongside his eight-year-old brother, Seydou, in Ivory Coast. The two are from Mali, where boys leave home, due to severe drought, and work elsewhere, to send money home to their families. But these boys have been kidnapped and forced to work alongside other slave boys, being told that they can earn back the price of their keep and be freed. However, they’ve been working there two years already, and no freedom is in sight.

The boys are beaten if they don’t make their daily quota, and they frequently don’t, because Amadou is chopping for himself and his little brother all the while working to protect his little brother from getting injured from swinging machetes. Amadou takes Seydou’s beatings, so he’s kind of a mess. He obsessively counts his pods to make quota and to forget the pain. Counting. Counting.

Then a girl around Amadou’s age, Khadija, arrives—the first girl the boys have seen in two years. The “wildcat” attempts escape over and over. She tricks Seydou into untying her. She runs, is apprehended and Amadou takes Seydou’s punishment. Amadou and Khadija are locked in the herbicide shed after being beaten.

So Amadou is not out in the forest chopping and protecting Seydou. The first day Seydou is successful in making quota, but the second day on his own, a terrible accident occurs. In the meantime Khadija has been raped by the managers who aren’t terribly much older than Amadou. The word “rape” is never used, so the younger reader might be protected from that particular violence, but a savvier reader will understand what happened.

The managers, particularly Moussa, might be sympathetic. We can’t quite tell. It turns out he’s in a hard position, too, trying to make his farm quota, and he seems to have bought into the desperate system. Eventually, Amadou uses the herbicide in an act of heroism, and we follow the escape or Khadija, Amadou, and the severely injured Seydou.

Along the way you learn the cacao trade, how the boys husk the seeds, ferment them, wait for the middlemen to drive in to haul them to the towns where they’re further processed. These trucks might be a route out of slavery. Or maybe not.

It happens that Khadija’s mother, a journalist, had been writing an article about the corrupt chocolate trade. Khadija had been kidnapped in order to silence her mother.

Khadija’s mother might be able to save Khadija from the corrupt cacao lords, but can she do anything for the two Malian boys? There are waves of tension due to loyalties and class distinctions among the well-drawn and realistic protagonists. So interesting!

 

 

Patricia Hruby Powell is author of the young adult documentary novel Loving vs. Virginia and Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker   talesforallages.com

 

Be warned. You could become an activist after reading Girl Rising: Changing the World One Girl at a Time (Wendy Lamb Books 2017) by the remarkable Tanya Lee Stone. Follow twenty five girls world-wide who were denied education, fought back, and won.

Suma from Nepal was not an orphan, but her family lived in poverty. Suma was first bonded into kamlari—or slavery—when she was six. She worked from dawn until late night, ate scraps from the master family’s finished plates, and slept in the goat shed. She was sexually abused. Suma fought back. Six years later she was given a scholarship with Room to Read and is now receiving an education. She plans to be a medical assistant.

Sokha from Cambodia, Senna from Peru, Mariama from Sierra Leone have similar stories. So do girls from India, Ethiopia, Haiti. Interesting fact: in more than fifty countries, school is not free. Either are books, paper, and pencils.

“A girl on planet Earth has a one-in-four chance of being born into poverty . . . Slavery and child marriage are two major obstacles keeping girls out of school . . . poverty is often at the root . . .” If parents cannot feed their daughters, they hope a husband can. Once married, girls rarely go to school.

It is not always a case of poverty. In many cultures boys pursue education but girls cannot. Woman’s role is to bear and raise children and serve her husband. “In India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Jordan, Syria, and many other places, girls have been abducted, sexually abused, poisoned, shot, and had acid thrown on them: their schools have been bombed, burned, down, and shut down—all payback for the crime of wanting to be educated.”

The remarkable Malala Yousafzai is probably the most famous of these young women, but she is by no means alone.

Stone used hundreds of hours of raw footage shot by the filmmakers of Girl Rising, as well as original research to bring to life the stories of girls who are conquering obstacles. The reader gets to know these indomitable girls, see them create lives for themselves, and inspire other girls in their communities to break through cultural barriers in order to go to school. We come away hopeful and ready to fight for more girls.

Stone shows that not only individual girls from around the world are helped, but by educating girls, the world is made safer and more prosperous. When girls and women rise, so do their communities. And women have the perfect “platform” to pass their values on to their children.

In a chapter entitled, “Use What You Love to Inspire Change,” Stone suggests that the reader can organize a fashion show, poetry slam, cabaret, or a hoops competition to raise funds for one of the many Women’s organizations (with websites) she lists. Besides stories and full color photos of the girls in the stories, Stone introduces us to the filmmakers of Girl Rising. Read the book. See the documentary. Become an activist.

 

Patricia Hruby Powell’s is the author of the young adult documentary novel Loving vs. Virginia, Josephine, winner of Boston Globe Horn Book Honor, and other books. talesforallages.com

What a moving and timely story! Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter lives in the black ghetto of Garden Heights and
goes to a white private Williamson in “The Hate U Give” (2017 Balzer & Bray) by Angie Thomas.

At her white school Starr says, “I’m cool by default because I’m one of the only black kids there. I have to earn coolness in Garden Heights.” At Williamson, “It’s dope to be black until it’s hard to be black.”

Starr attends a party in the hood where she knows she doesn’t belong. She meets up with Khalil, her best friend until he recently started selling drugs. A fight breaks out. Khalil grabs Starr’s hand and they drive off.

A white cop stops them for a broken taillight and orders Khalil out of the car. Starr hopes Khalil knows what her Daddy has drilled into her—“Keep your hands visible. No sudden moves. Only speak when spoken to.” Khalil bends his head to ask Starr if she’s okay and the cop shoots him. He dies in Starr’s arms on the street.

Starr is devastated, of course, and says, “ . . . people like us in situations like this become hashtags, but they rarely get justice . . .we all wait for that one time, though . . . when it ends right.”

We experience Starr’s loving complicated family. Daddy is an ex-con who got out of the neighborhood gang by serving time for the gang leader. Momma is a nurse working in the clinic. Starr’s parents work hard to protect their kids. Seven is her older half-brother whose other family is fathered by the abusive gang leader, King.

Seven, Starr, and younger Sekani all study at Williamson where Starr has a white boyfriend, Chris. Starr says, “ . . . am I betraying who I am by dating him?” Her Black Panther Daddy would think so, and it doesn’t go over easy when he discovers the relationship in the midst of the hood riots.

If Starr comes forward as the witness, her family will suffer repercussions in the hood. She’s reluctant, but circumstances move her to act. On the news, Khalil is described as a thug, as if to excuse the cop’s action. Her uncle is a detective and vows to protect her. Can he?

Starr battles racism at school at the hands of blond Hailey. But Maya, her Asian friend says, “We minorities must stick together.” Chris is frustrated by Starr’s secrets. But she can stand on her feet and won’t take any nonsense, just as her Momma won’t.

“Daddy once told me there’s a rage passed down to every black man from his ancestors, born the moment they couldn’t stop the slave masters from hurting their families.” You accept Daddy’s rage, and, boy, do you worry for him. You see him humiliated by cops in front of his children. You love every member of this family who is trying to change a bad situation, but in a real way. There is nothing sugar-coated or easy here. Wow!

 

Patricia Hruby Powell’s is the author of the young adult documentary novel Loving vs. Virginia, Josephine, winner of Boston Globe Horn Book Honor, and other books. talesforallages.com

Rowan Chase, 17, the daughter of a white oil magnate father and a black lawyer mother finds a skeleton under the floorboards in the “back house” of her spiffy Greenwood area Tulsa home in “Dreamland Burning” (Little Brown 2017) by Tulsa resident Jennifer Latham.

Will Tillman, 17, son of a white shop-owner and full-blooded Osage Indian mother, is in love with Addie, the prettiest girl at school, in 1921 Tulsa. Sincere and ignorant Will sees Addie at a speakeasy with a handsome young black man. It’s Prohibition, which doesn’t stop anyone from drinking, and Will is stumbling drunk. His manly pride injured, Will goes racist haywire on the black man, Clarence. In defense, Clarence pushes Will who falls and breaks his wrist. Bad news in segregated Tulsa.

In 1921, Greenwood was the wealthiest black neighborhood in the nation. If you know your race riot history, you know Memorial Day weekend began the worst race riot of the nation, when white people burned 35 blocks of black Greenwood. An estimated 300 people were killed. And it was all hushed up for decades. That’s the background story.

Alternating voices take us back to Rowan who slips a mildewed wallet from a scrap of pocket off the skeleton before her mother calls the police. The police aren’t real concerned about a hundred year old murder case, but Rowan is.

1920s Will is white enough to attend the white school, but his detractors call him “half-breed.” His Osage mother has oil rights to Maple Ridge plus she’s inherited 2 other portions. She’s rich. But racism against Indians requires her to have a white sponsor to hold her monies. That would be Will’s father, who is building a luxury house for the family on the edge of Greenwood.

Rowan and Will are both complex and well-drawn characters. Privileged and snarky Rowan describes a nearby high-end shopping mall “where the flowerbeds are perfect and the luxury cars roam free.” Her summer job is at a free clinic, and she loves the job.

Under the influence of his friend Clete, Will has falsely accused Clarence of assaulting him. Clarence is beaten by a white mob that plans to lynch him. Will isn’t bad, but he’s young and weak, until he begins to grow up.

Due to the parallel stories we can view racism—the degree of hatred allotted to varying complexions—then and now. Rowan’s mother says, “Black men and women are dying today for the same reasons they did in 1921. And we have to call that out . . .”

Rowan and best friend James are trying to solve the aged mystery with the contents of the skeleton’s wallet and it’s not pretty. Because we, the reader, have Will’s story, we’re a little ahead of Rowan, but not much. Latham has ingeniously structured her story to be a page-turner—every single page.

Readers follow two teens coming of age, making moral decisions and discovering their own values, while being steeped in the deep waters of history.

 

 

Patricia Hruby Powell’s young adult documentary novel in verse, Loving vs. Virginia, is now available. talesforallages.com

 

Affable Adam, a senior, appears to have a perfect life. Maybe he’s a little wired, but he’s lovable, affable, and he’s everyone’s friend. His Mom deals with his ADHD with homeopathic drops so he’s on no hard medications. His elective is perfect—he’s the aide to the school psychologist in Robin Roe’s debut novel “A List of Cages” (Hyperion 2017).

Adam’s first assignment is to deliver the elusive freshman, Julian, to counseling. Julian turns out to be the kid that Adam tutored in reading when he was ten and Julian was five.

Then two years later, Julian’s parents both die and Adam’s family fostered him. That fostering ended badly. On every page you wonder why.

Julian is still sweet, he writes stories like he used to—but he’s quiet now. He disappears at school, is never seen at lunch. He’s keeping secrets.

We follow Adam with his lively group of close friends. Alternately, we follow Julian into the theater, into the fly area, over a gap, through some loose boards and into his hidden space. And boy, does this kid have a lot to hide from.

Julian is meek and broken like a whipped puppy. He lives with his Uncle Russell now, but Russell is gone for days on end. Whereas that’s lonely, it’s worse when Russell arrives home. Julian had cleaned his grimy shoes with something he found under the sink and left a bleach mark on Russell’s beautiful wooden floors. Russell accuses Julian of being spoiled. Sensitive Julian hears “spoiled like old meat”—“no-good garbage.” Just like Julian “spoiled” his bedroom when he put up a poster the first day he’d arrived, some years ago.

Russell whips Julian with a willow switch. He leaves scars but his ill-fitting clothing hides the marks and Russell has arranged Julian not to take PE. So why is Russell’s house beautiful, pristine, expensive, while Julian wears too-small filthy clothes? Adam sees that something is amiss. As a reader, I got so immersed in Julian’s pain it was sometimes hard to leave him and transfer to Adam.

Julian says about the school psychologist: “She’s being nice, but it just makes me more nervous because she expects me to tell her things so personal that they need to be confidential.” Playing SORRY! is too cruel a game for Julian because the SORRY! card means you kill off your opponent’s people. Who would want to do that?

About missing his parents: “You miss the things they did and who they were, but you also miss who you were to them . . . When you know you’re going to tell someone everything, you see your day through your eyes and theirs, as if they’re living it alongside you . . . But when you don’t, it isn’t only not seeing double—it’s not seeing at all. Because if they aren’t there, you aren’t either.”

Robin Roe counsels troubled teens and you know this is real. You will love both Adam and Julian and rejoice in their friendship.

 

 

Patricia Hruby Powell’s young adult documentary novel in verse, Loving vs. Virginia, is now available. talesforallages.com