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“Being Toffee” by Sarah Crossan

September 6, 2020 By Patricia Hruby Powell 2 Comments

Allison runs away from her London home and her abusive father to the coastal town of Bude in Cornwall, England. Kelley-Ann, her father’s girlfriend, “escaped” earlier and asked 16 year old Allison along but Allison wasn’t ready to desert her troubled father. We know the father has injured Allison—there’s a mark on her face, but it’s quite a while until we get the details of how it happened, in the remarkable book “Being Toffee” (Bloomsbury 2020) by Sarah Crossan.

Allison finds a shed behind a deserted house near the beach, curls into a ball and sleeps the night. Come morning, she looks in the window of the deserted house and comes face to face with an odd old woman—it isn’t deserted after all. Allison bolts, but the woman calls after her, “Toffee.” Allison realizes she’s not being offered candy. The woman thinks she’s a long-lost friend named Toffee.

The woman, Marla, invites Allison in. Allison is quite willing to be “Toffee.” She’s hungry. She asks for a hot cross bun sitting on the counter, eats it, asks for another and devours it as well. Marla goes in and out of spells of dementia. When Marla goes upstairs at day’s end, Allison/Toffee finds a spare room and sleeps in a bed. Heavenly.

Allison says, “I am not who I say I am,/ and Marla isn’t who she thinks she is./ I am a girl trying to forget./ She is a woman trying to remember.”

Allison has left her phone in London so her father can’t track her. But now she has no means of contacting Kelley-Ann. While Allison hides in the upstairs bedroom, Peggy, Marla’s occasional caretaker comes to the house. Allison hides under the bed. Marla tells Peggy about her new friend “Toffee,” but Peggy thinks she’s delusional. Marla’s dementia is working for Allison.

Eventually, Marla’s dismissive son pays a visit. Again, Allison hides. She pinches Marla’s cash and food.

Allison finds rich girlfriends on the beach and drinks with them, saying, “…glug/ glug/ glug/ to prove I am fun,/ someone to invest in.” Allison begins doing their homework assignments in exchange for money and is able to pay Marla back more than she’s taken. Allison and Marla begin to take excursions together. They are lovely together.

In a conversation between the two, Allison says, “You come in and out of yourself, I say./ She laughs./ Sure, don’t we all?”

Eventually Allison contacts Kelley-Ann and together they are squatters in Marla’s house. There are surprises that I don’t want to spoil. But I’ll say, the outcome is authentic, moving, and heart-breaking—like life. Written in exquisite and accessible verse, “Being Toffee” is a must-read for anyone who cares about a person suffering dementia—or anyone who loves a great story beautifully told.

Patricia Hruby Powell is the author of the award-winning Josephine; Loving vs Virginia; and Struttin’ With Some Barbecue and the new Lift As You Climb. She teaches community classes in writing at Parkland College. talesforallages.com

“Clap When You Land” by Elizabeth Acevedo

August 16, 2020 By Patricia Hruby Powell Leave a Comment

One girl, Yahaira, in New York City says goodbye to her father, when he leaves on his annual summer trip to Dominican Republic. One girl, Camino in DR awaits her father to arrive for his summer-long visit where she will clap when the plane lands, as is the custom. But the plane crashes at the onset of “Clap When You Land” (Harper Collins 2020) by the remarkable poet Elizabeth Acevedo.

Camino has been raised by her aunt, Tia Solano, after her mother died. Tia is a curandera, a healer. Because she consults “the Saints,” some would call her a witch. But her healing with herbs offers effective cures in the barrio where they live. Camino accompanies Tia to births and visits to the ill. In fact, Camino wants to study medicine at Columbia University in NYC. She’s a good healer and an excellent student.

Yahaira lives with her mother in Harlem. She’s a bit spoiled by her doting Papi and her angry Mami who manages a nail salon. Yahaira’s girlfriend, Dre and Dre’s mother, a doctor, are a second family to her. Until recently, Yahaira has been a chess champion. Dark like her father, she traveled the nation with him for her championship tournaments.

In DR Camino lives in a poor barrio a short run to the beach. Camino says: “this thin body better fed than most, curved softly/ in the places that elicit whistles & piropos; swimming/ has kept this body honed like Tia’s oft-sharpened machete.”

They live in a nicer shack than most of their neighbors due to Papi’s money. The vecinos—neighbors—depend on Camino, Tia, and Papi with his summertime visits to help them climb out of the hardships of abject poverty. Papi pays off El Cero to leave fourteen-year-old Camino alone.

But Papi is dead. El Cero is dangerous, not just as a young man, but as a newly minted sex hustler. “I am a girl who is not full-fledged,” just the kind of girl El Cero wants. Camino is in danger. And without Papi, how will she get to medical school in NYC. She can’t even pay for her private school tuition in DR without Papi’s money.

In NYC, Yahaira’s mother is about to receive the half a million-dollar settlement from the airline. Relatives are requesting money and she’s giving it. Mami is furious, but grieving deeply. Papi, always bigger-than-life, not just to his family, but to the whole hood where he owns a couple billiard halls. Everyone is mourning.

“There are pieces/of him all over/ this barrio,” Camino tells us. Acevedo conveys island life and urban Harlem life as only an “own-voice” writer can—knowing it from the inside out.

The reader realizes early on that island-dwelling Camino and urban Yahaira are sisters and we witness their shocking discovery. We see how they maneuver among the adults, and how they ultimately find support in each other. What an emotional story, beautifully told.

“Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You” by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi

July 26, 2020 By Patricia Hruby Powell Leave a Comment

In the USA, Black people make up 13% of the population, yet they are 40% of the incarcerated population, Ibram X. Kendi tells us in the introduction of “Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You” by Jason Reynolds and Kendi. “Stamped” is a “remix” of the national Book Award-winning “Stamped from the Beginning” by Ibram X. Kendi.

This snappy young adult (or any adult) version begins with a history of racism dating back to 1415 when Portuguese Prince Henry convinced his father King John to capture the Muslim trading depot in Morocco and take the riches of Black Africans. Man’s downfall always seems to come down to greed.

White Portugal enslaved Black Moors—as more spoils of war. It has never been unusual for the victor to enslave their vanquished, and oftentimes it has been Whites enslaving Whites. At this time a White man known as Zurara wrote a chronicle championing the idea of Christianizing African “savages.” That narrative was a hit, and it convinced some Black men that they were indeed savages—inferior to Whites.

A Black man, Leo Africanus, wrote about hyper-sexual Black savages who “needed” to be enslaved and taught about Jesus. Written documents are powerful. They can be disseminated to the masses. And that is how racism became institutionalized, say Reynolds and Kendi.

The authors divide the population into 1) segregationists, the “real haters,” 2) assimilationists who only “‘like’ you because you’re like them,” and 3) antiracists who “love you because you’re like you.” Back to the history.

Puritans arrived in America in the 17^th Century believing themselves to be the chosen people, superior to others. This laid groundwork for the justification for over-running indigenous people and enslaving Black people. For the sake of their own riches, rich White men devised ways for poor Whites to turn against poor Blacks, creating White privilege (which still exists to this day).

Enter Cotton Mather who convinced people that, “the only mission of slavery, had to be to save the souls of slaves, because through salvation the enslaved would be whitened. Purified.” Whiter meant purer!

The many brief chapters include the history and ideologies of Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Booker T. Washington, and W.E.B. Du Bois. Don’t assume that anyone listed is lionized. Booker Washington and Du Bois were both assimilationists (category 2) for decades, fighting for White approval, until Du Bois eventually headed toward antiracism. And working toward the present—Martin Luther King, James Brown, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon. Again, don’t expect to find heroes, except maybe Angela Davis. Do expect to learn.

Reynold’s briefly outlines the plots of books and movies popular through modern history and shows how they both represented and guided people’s opinions—Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”; the outrageously racist movie “Birth of a Nation”; “Tarzan”; and “Planet of the Apes.”

There is so much here to study and assess. Everyone should read it. Everyone.

Patricia Hruby Powell teaches “Write Your Story” for Parkland College Community Education. Her newest book, Lift As You Climb: The Story of Ella Baker is available, signed from Jane Addams Bookstore or available wherever you buy books. talesforallages.com

“The Great Nijinsky: God of Dance” by Lynn Curlee

July 5, 2020 By Patricia Hruby Powell Leave a Comment

What do you know about Nijinsky? He was a legendary dancer, homosexual, he caused a riot in Paris when he performed to Stravinsky’s music? All true, but there is so much more as shown in Lynn Curlee’s “The Great Nijinsky: God of Dance” (Charlesbridge 2019).

The photos in the book show a stocky, plain, stationary Slavic-looking man with decidedly small feet. Only one photo hints at Nijinsky’s brilliance as a dancer. Yet the artwork of the author/illustrator suggests the dancer’s theatrical genius.

Born in 1890, a Pole in Russia, he was educated at the preeminent Imperial Ballet School in St. Petersburg and joined the Imperial Ballet upon graduation. In 1909, he was wooed by the great impresario Sergei Diaghilev to dance in his Ballet Russe. At the time, Vaslav Nijinsky was heterosexual but Diaghilev required complete dedication which included being his lover. With Nijinsky dancing and luminaries Michel Fokine as choreographer and artist Leon Bakst producing sets and costumes, Ballet Russe was innovative beyond anything Paris or the world had ever seen.

The book is divided by the great ballets, each with an illustration, program details, blurbs from reviews, and the ballet’s story. They include Fokine’s Firebird, Scheherazade, Carnaval, Specter of the Rose, Petrushka—all titles known to balletomanes. The story of Nijinsky’s life is interspersed. Nijinsky soon came to hate Diaghilev, but Diaghilev was conducting Nijinsky’s remarkable career, so the dancer remained living with the entrepreneur.

Whereas Nijinsky was thought to be a dull, shy man, he was lauded as a miracle on stage—the most accomplished, brilliant dancer of the early 20^th century. This is entirely based on memories, reviews, photos, because there is absolutely no existing footage of Nijinsky’s dancing. He was known as a sex symbol—a genius performer.

In 1912 Nijinsky choreographed Afternoon of a Faun on the Ballet Russe, to music of Debussy. A remarkable costume sketch by Leon Bakst is included and the dance is described as, “spare, severe, strangely erotic, totally original, and very beautiful.” Nijinsky required his dancers to abandon their classical training to execute challenging movement created to get from one “awkward” pose to the next. Some audience members, accustomed to lyrical Russian ballet hated it; some loved it. Regardless, Nijinsky was considered the “God of Dance.”

For the 1913 premier of Nijinsky’s Rite of Spring, Igor Stravinsky “composed a revolutionary score so audacious and original, so brutal and harsh, that when combined with Nijinsky’s unconventional choreography, it caused the audience to riot.” The yelling Parisians drowned out the orchestra so the dancers couldn’t hear it. Fist fights broke out amongst the audience.

Soon after, the Ballet Russe was booked to tour South America. Diaghilev stayed behind. On the voyage Nijinsky met a beautiful Budapest society girl, Romola de Pulszky, and married her, never thinking that Diaghilev would withdraw his support. But he did. Nijinsky’s career and mental health plummeted. Without the support of Diaghilev, Nijinsky, unable to dance, spiraled into mental illness and was institutionalized in 1919. He died in an asylum in 1950.

His life was tragic, his legacy stellar. I, among so many other dancers and admirers long to have seen this man dance.

Patricia Hruby Powell’s newest book, Lift As You Climb: The Story of Ella Baker is available, signed from Jane Addams Bookstore or available wherever you buy books. talesforallages.com

“Dig” by A.S. King

June 14, 2020 By Patricia Hruby Powell 1 Comment

The grandparents, Marla and Gottfried, sold off the family potato farm and developed it into a suburban subdivision to make a fortune. Their five children, who did not benefit from their parent’s new wealth, are all a wreck in one way or another, and their five children, the teens in the story, are a lot more together than the previous two generations, in “Dig” (Dutton 2019) by A.S. King, winner of the prestigious Printz Award.

The cover image at first glance looks like something anatomical, vaguely heart-like, but a closer look shows potatoes and their root system—the perfect image for this book.

So, there are twelve main characters plus two others—and they have actual names, but you don’t learn them until near the end of the book. The young adult generation in the story are Malcolm, the Shoveler, Loretta the Flea Circus Ringmaster, CanIHelpYou?, and the Freak. If I didn’t read in bed on my way to sleep, I would have made a chart and filled in their names as I went. And their lineage—which one is their parent.

I trusted, as I read this magical fabulously-written book, that it would come clear if I just let it wash over me. Well, sort of, but I still would have benefited from that chart. As it was, I actually had to keep thinking—THINKING—who was the parent of this one, who was the child of that one. But the microcosmic bits keep you going.

We get the history of the potato, which in itself, is fascinating, but is it as stupendous as the invention of the flush toilet, Malcolm wonders. The Shoveler wants to know who his dad is, while his mother is busy shoplifting porkchops. Loretta is a mess of flea bites, but it’s worth it because the fleas she keeps in her lunch box keep her going. CanIHelpYou? takes orders at a fast food window, as well as fills drug orders from her clients. The Freak “flickers” from place to place, visiting each of her four estranged cousins. This is the thread of magical realism that runs through the story. And we wonder why, until we finally get it near the end.

All of these kids and their parents could have their troubles ameliorated if the grandparents would part with a little of their cash—all except CanIHelpYou? who turns out to have immensely rich parents herself. The author addresses entitlement—specifically white entitlement—as well as racism and colonialism. Malcolm frequently visits Jamaica with his father who is dying of cancer, and maybe falls in love with a Jamaican girl. You might think I’m delivering a dozen spoilers here, but trust me, you’ll appreciate the help these spoilers offer. There’s so much to dig through here. Oh yes, and it’s a mystery.

Here is a perfect example of Young Adult literature being break-out literature—and it’s literature that will be read (by young adults and adults)—not sit gathering dust on a bookshelf.

Patricia Hruby Powell’s new and timely book about civil rights and the vote Lift As You Climb: The Story of Ella Baker releases on June 9, 2020. She teaches community classes at Parkland. talesforallages.com

Writing to Evoke Emotion – Writing Tip

June 2, 2020 By Patricia Hruby Powell Leave a Comment

Writing Tips

Writing to Evoke Emotion

By Patricia Hruby Powell

Readers read to have an experience—to go on a journey. Ideally, as writers, we take them out of their own lives and bring them into another. Most frequently, this is done when the reader engages so completely with the protagonist that the boundaries of the reader and the protagonist blur. Readers tend to feel what the protagonist feels and want what the protagonist wants. It works with some sympathetic secondary characters as well, but primarily it’s your main character the reader will identify with.

So, how do we emotionally get the reader into the world of our story? Showing rather than telling can be a great first step, because the reader can dive into the scene along with the protagonist and be there with them while the character is experiencing their own emotion. (See the Show-Don’t-Tell writing tip on my website).

We want to hook our readers—whether it’s our beta readers, agent, editor, or the general public. We must start at the onset and continue throughout the story. Here are some examples from books that do this job powerfully.

A Young Adult Example

In Laura Ruby’s young adult novel Thirteen Doorways, Wolves Behind Them All (Balzer & Bray 2019), the thirteenth word on page one is “orphanage.”Most of us are wired to care about the underdog. Injustice disturbs us. In the face of injustice, we might feel hurt, anger, despair, empathy, or all of those emotions. We immediately care about the unjustly orphaned character, Frankie.

Not every story is about an orphan, of course, but with the examples I’ve provided here and below you might think about how your own stories might hook your readers emotionally.

Back to Frankie. Not only is she orphaned, she can’t talk. Why? What happened? I care. I’m curious. I desire to acquire information. That desire is an emotional connection to the story.

The story continues, “And then the shot from her parents’ bedroom—so sharp, so loud, so wrong.” Then screaming. I’m riveted now. An orphan who is unable to speak after she hears a shot in her parent’s bedroom? That means Frankie wasn’t always an orphan. Most all of us value our parents. That moment when one becomes orphaned? Despair. A nightmare. And the result is that our character becomes mute? I identify. I’m stricken. I’m with Frankie. I feel emotional attachment to her. But what happened? Again, curiosity—I desire to know.

All of these emotions, I bring to the reading of this book. Some I consider more universal than others. Desire to know, desire for justice, despair. Some are more personal.

I read the word “gaslit” early in Ruby’s book and think, ahh, this is historic. I love historical fiction. That’s a personal preference of mine. The author describes cribs like “gravestones” and that cements the tone. Injustice poured down on orphans. And the way the author uses words! “Crawling, hot tears on her face.” I admire great use of language and image. That’s another emotion: admiration. I have confidence in this writer. She knows what she’s doing and I’m going on a well-guided journey into another world—I’m connected by emotion.

Of course, some aspects—arguably all aspects—are subjective to some degree. The reader brings his or her own experience to the story they’re reading. I love history, great use of words, and feeling I’m in good hands. Maybe most of us do. But consider this. What if the editor reading this as an unpublished manuscript was brought up in an orphanage, or her sister was adopted from an orphanage? It brings that editor that much closer to the story. This helps explain why a manuscript may resonate with one (editor) and not with others—for instance, the twenty who have rejected your manuscript to date. The next editor might have been brought up as an orphan and be the one who connects emotionally to your story.

And yes, in Thirteen Doorways, Ruby does a lot of showing rather than telling. This is why the reader can be inside the action, the story, the world, right along with the characters.

A Picture Book Example

Consider Laurel Snyder’s picture book, Hungry Jim (Chronicle 2019). It begins:

“When Jim woke up on Tuesday,

his tail had fallen asleep.

This seemed odd.

Jim had never had a tail before.”

I’m laughing. “Jim had never had a tail before.” Chuck Groenink’s nostalgic illustrations show Jim as a lion in a child’s bed—the illustrations are a huge part of connecting book to reader. Picture books have the advantage of dual-showing—both illustration and text. The author is telling in the above passage. But as the story continues, she shows Jim’s activity.

Humor is a great emotional connector. And the humor here is sly. Jim feels “beastly” and he wants to eat everything—including his mother. He’s in a mood. And he just can’t control it, until he does. And yes, the book is an homage to the great Maurice Sendak and Where the Wild Things Are (Harper Collins 1991). Humor brings delight—a strong emotion.

A Middle Grade Example

A Wolf Called Wander (Greenwillow 2019) by Rosanne Parry is a middle grade novel. I’m a sucker for well-done animal stories—especially wild animals. These were my favorite stories when I was young. Endangered wolves are the underdog. I’m there. I identify with wolves. This novel is told in first person by a young wolf, so yeah, I guess it’s anthropomorphized, but so gently. Our wolf shows his world from his experience.

The author has her wolf character use verbs that a wolf might understand by hyphenating English language verbs—because English can’t cover the wolf culture. You’ve heard that in the Inuit language there are two hundred different words for snow. Most English speakers don’t need two hundred words for snow because, thank heavens, we don’t have a regular experience with so many types of snow—they’re not part of our culture. Language reflects culture. Maybe we should consider Parry’s book a translation from wolf.

Our wolf says, “I crouch-growl-sniff” when he encounters an unknown scent. When he smells a human, he “crouch-freezes.” When he encounters a female wolf, his excitement causes him to “yip-spin like a pup.” Our young wolf, who will eventually identify himself as “Wander,” encounters an “almost-wolf” with “a deep voice . . . strange to my ear. Oof, oof.” We the reader know that the creature is a dog because Parry translates from wolf so adeptly. But Wander knows the creature only through his wolf experience: as “almost-wolf,” a meek creature who stays with his human rather than run wild with Wander.

So, part of the reader’s emotional connection is the joy of understanding another species as depicted by the writer. Again, as a writer, I admire the writing. And we need to read as writers. We need to learn from what we read—whether consciously or unconsciously. Which means reading a lot!

And Wander is so lonely. He longs for his long-gone pack. Surely loneliness is a universal condition. We connect emotionally to the lonely wolf.

On top of the emotional draw that comes from “becoming” a wolf—the reader/writer admiring the writing, the feelings of loneliness and vulnerability—there’s the huge emotional connection brought on by the life-or-death circumstances. Wander’s very existence makes him vulnerable to starving or being shot and killed. We care so deeply for him. He must find food and hunt, or he will starve. Humans are his worst enemy. His mother told him early on that humans “can kill with a look and a loud noise.” They carry black sticks that throw lightning. “A flash of fire, a clap of thunder, and the wolves go down.” There is so much loss in his young life, you root for him with everything you’ve got. And again, you feel the injustice he faces—hurt, anger, despair, empathy.

A Nonfiction Example

Nonfiction writers must also create this same kind of hook. Consider 2019 National Book Award winner for young people’s literature, 1919: The Year That Changed America (Bloomsbury 2019) by Martin W. Sandler. We do not identify with one protagonist—as we might in a biography. Instead, we’re fascinated by stories that surround the facts. A desire to know and to discover the interconnectivity of historic events.

Sandler’s opening chapter would be humorous if it weren’t so horrific. A huge vat of molasses—2.3 million gallons—explodes in Boston’s crowded North End in mid-January 1919, burying people and horses alive or blowing them clear into the bay. If the reader is anything like me, they’re riveted.

But molasses? Yes, as Sandler shows, molasses connects us directly to many other issues of 1919—the year that changed America. Molasses had everything to do with the slave trade. Sugar cane was grown and processed into molasses by enslaved people from the 1600s through the 1800s, which led to the racial unrest and riots that would break out across the country in 1919. Explosives were made by mixing molasses and ammonium nitrate during World War I, which had ended a few months earlier, in November 1918. Soldiers were still arriving home from that war. The Prohibition Act had just been passed by Congress so manufacturers were frantically making rum (from molasses) before the law would be ratified and the nation would cease to drink (legally).

Women were largely behind the prohibition of drinking, in order to protect their families from drunken husbands. And they worked diligently for women’s suffrage, which would become the 19^th Amendment, passed in June 1919. Are you hooked? Are you curious? I hope so. There’s so much information to attain in such a riveting emotional ride—racial injustice, gender injustice, immigrant injustice, worker injustice, and information about our history.

In reading this book we marvel at the fact that molasses can connect so many issues. I’m thinking of the awe or surprise emoji. Awe is a good emotional connector.

Finding Your Emotional Center

Look at your own manuscripts or books. Do they have the emotional hooks you need to pull your readers into the story? In my picture book Josephine (Chronicle 2014) I aimed to lure readers with Josephine Baker’s exuberance and her response to racial injustice. We can all be inspired by her living her dream. The book is a dance and, as I have written, “Dancing makes you happy when nothing else will.”

Loving vs. Virginia (Chronicle 2017) shows two people in love who can’t be married and live where they want to live. Both romance and love are great emotional connectors, as is injustice.

Struttin’ With Some Barbecue: Lil Hardin Armstrong Becomes the First Lady of Jazz (Charlesbridge 2018) shows a feisty piano-playing girl with an overbearing mother, who falls in love with the great jazz trumpet player Louis Armstrong. Injustice and love. It reads (or is meant to) like an early jazz tune. Music might be the ultimate emotional connector.

My upcoming Lift As You Climb: The Story of Ella Baker (McElderry/Simon & Schuster 2020) is about the African American woman who worked her entire life for African Americans’ right to vote. Again, injustice. Next comes my book about women’s suffrage (Chronicle). Unbelievable that only 100 years ago women couldn’t vote! Injustice. Look at your work and learn what hooks you emotionally. I seem to be injured by injustice. I want justice!

But maybe I’m moving on now. The life of dancer Martha Graham was about finding and presenting truth over beauty. Even though I’m a Graham-trained dancer, did I know that before I began writing about her? Not really.

So, check out your work. Where is your emotional heart? If you don’t see it in your writing, is it blocked in some way? Are you afraid to reveal it? I often think that I write to discover what I know. Or to discover what I don’t yet know. If your work is not evoking emotion in others, maybe you need to journal to figure out why.

I’d love to know where your emotional heart lies.

Patricia Hruby Powell, who writes in Champaign, Illinois, is comforted by her husband and her Tree Walking Coonhound. And really she’s pretty happy, maybe in part because she feels she’s connecting young people to their emotional hearts and helping them build empathy. At least she’s trying to do that. You can reach Patricia at phpowell@talesforallages.com or at talesforallages.com