Border Crossing

Border Crossing Jessica Lee Anderson

Manz's mother is an alcoholic, a sometimes painter who is still reeling from a stillbirth. His dead father was crazy. Manz's best friend has an abusive father.

Manz and Jed get a job over the summer at a local ranch where Manz meets Vanessa, one of the kitchen worker. Only, when Manz hears about Operation Wetback*, he starts thinking that the government is starting it up again. Even though Manz is a citizen, US-born of a white citizen mother, the voices in his head tell him everyone else is in on it, tell him that the government will ship him to Mexico, unless he can stop it.

As the voices grow louder and louder, Manz can't stop them, can't not do what the tell him. He doesn't realize that no one else can hear them.

On the surface this is an ISSUE NOVEL. Paranoid Schizophrenia! Alcoholism! Domestic Abuse! Immigration! Dead babies!

But, in execution, told through Manz's eyes it's not heavy-handed. It's just the way things are. The real story is Manz's worsening condition. Anderson does a good job of letting the reader know what is "real" and what isn't. Part of this is that she does a good job of setting everything up before Manz starts to lose his grip on reality.

It's a fast-moving, compact book. I like the ending-- there's resolution, without it being super-tidy.


Interestingly, I just saw this photo on another book jacket--American Dervish by Ayad Akhtar. Same cover photo, different nationalities. Hmmm...


Operation Wetback was a pretty extreme anti-illegal immigration/deportation program in the early 50s.

ARC Provided by... the publisher, at ALA a few year ago.

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Nonfiction Monday: Flesh and Blood So Cheap

Flesh and Blood So Cheap: The Triangle Fire and its Legacy Albert Marrin

It's probably about time I got around to reviewing the book that I nominated for the MG/YA Nonfiction Cybils.

While this book is about the tragic fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, it's about so much more. Much of the book is about placing the fire in context. We're more than half-way through the book before the actual fire. Marrin instead details the immigration boom between the Civil War and WWI. He explores the tenements and the life that many of the Triangle workers led. There's some great stuff on photographer Jacob Riis and income inequality on Manhattan. There's a history of the sweatshop and how garment manufacture moved from home-based piecework to the factory. We also get information on the labor movement up until that point in time.

And then comes the devastation of the fire and the aftermath-- both in the local sense of judgements and sentences handed down (or not) and the larger impact on worker's rights.

There's also great information on how the mob became linked with unions and the history of the garment industry since the Triangle fire.

I most appreciated the end section on the modern sweatshop and the double-edged sword of sweatshop labor. Not even that it allows us cheap clothing, but that while, to a Western eye, these jobs seem horrible and inhumane, often in the locale of the sweatshop, its seen as a very good job with a much higher earning potential and better working conditions than anything else out there. It's a complicated issue that has more gray than we like to think, and I was happy to see it so well presented in a book for younger readers.

All in all the fire, the context, and the effects are presented and explained really well. There are several black-and-white photographs to illustrate the text and bring turn-of-the-century New York to life.

Today's Nonfiction Monday Round-up is over at Books Together.


Book Provided by... my wallet

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Poetry Friday: Denied, Deported, Detained

Statue of Liberty Dreams of Emma Lazarus, Awakens with Tears on her Cheeks

Naomi Shihab Nye

Give me your tired, your poor...
But not too tired, not too poor.
And we will give you the red tape,
the long line, white bread in its wrapper,
forms to fill out, and the looks, the stares
that say you are not where or what you should be,
not quirw, not yet, you will never live up to
us.

Your huddled masses yearning to be free...
Can keep huddling. Even here. Sorry to say this.
Neighborhoods with poor drainage
Potholes, stunning gunshots...
You'll teem here too.

You dreamed a kinder place, a tree
no one would cut, a cabinet to store your clothes.
Simple jobs brining payment on time.
Someone to stand up for you.
The way I used to do, for everyone. Holding my torch
to get you to your new home in this country stitched
of immigrants from the get-go...
But you would always be homesick. No one said that.

I was the doorkeeper, concierge, welcome chief,
But rules have changed and I'm bouncer at the big club.
Had no say in it, hear me? Any chnace I could be, again,
the one I used to be?

I lift my lamp beside the golden door.
It's still up high. At night I tuck it into my robe.
And worry. What will happen to you?
Every taunt, every turn-around,
hand it over. That's not what you came here for.
I'll fold it into my rubbing rad,
Bring back a shine.

Denied, Detained, Deported: Stories from the Dark Side of American Immigration Ann Bauseum

Well, the call has gone out for 2011 CYBILS judges (you should totally sign up!) So I decided it was about time I FINALLY finished going through my notes and writing up the last lingering books that were nominated in 2009. (I read them all in 2009, I just didn't get around to reviewing all of them.)

This book opens with the poem I posted above. There are 5 chapters-- Exlcuded tells to the story of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and anti-Chinese sentitment during the late 19th century. Deported looks at the case of Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, Russian immigrants who became involved in the labor and anarchy movements at the beginning of the twentieth century and were deported for it after living in the US for decades. Goldman was already a citizen. Denied tells the of the ill-fated voyage of the St. Louis-- a ship of Jewish refugees who were denied port in Cuba and the US before returning to Hitler's Europe. Detained tells of Japanese internment during WWII. Exploited looks at the long history of Mexican immigration and the role of migrant workers in the US economy.

I wanted to like this one more than I did. It's beautifully done visually. The history is well explained and Bausum ties it in well with broader trends at the time as well as current events (and other events that happened between then and now.) The title chapters focus on just one family or person to give faces and names to some of the effected people. But... there is something about this book that I can't put my finger on that kept it from being truly awesome.

I ended up liking Bausum's Unraveling Freedom: The Battle for Democracy on the Home Front During World War I which I reviewed in March much better.

Today's Poetry Roundup is over at Miss Rumphius Effect.


Book Provided by... the publisher, for Cybils 2009 consideration

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National Poetry Month: Inside Out and Back Again

Black and White and Yellow and Red

The bell rings.
Everyone stands.
I stand.

They line up;
so do I.

Down a hall.
Turn left.
Take a tray.
Receive food.
Sit.

On one side
of the bright, noisy room,
light skin.
Other side,
dark skin.

Both laughing, chewing,
as if it never occured
to them
someone medium
would show up.

I don't know where to sit
any more than
I know how to eat
the pink sausage
snuggled inside bread
shaped like a corncob,
smeared with sauces
yellow and red.

I think
they are making fun
of the Vietnamese flag
until I remember
no one here likely knows
that flag's colors.

I put down the try
and wait
in the hallway.

September 2
11:30 am

Inside Out and Back Again Thanhha Lai

I got to review this wonderful novel for School Library Journal. My full review is here.

If you don't want to click over and read, here's the takeaway:

1. It got a star
2. Sensory language describing the rich smells and tastes of Vietnam draws readers in and contrasts with Hà's perceptions of bland American food, and the immediacy of the narrative will appeal to those who do not usually enjoy historical fiction


Book Provided by... School Library Journal, for review

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Year of the Historical: Double Crossing

Double Crossing Eve Tal

When Raizel's father buys his tickets from Russia to America, he also gets a child's ticket. Instead of her brother, Raizel will go with her father and help him keep house while he works to earn the money for the rest of the family to come. Raizel doesn't want to leave her home and family, but has no choice.

The journey is long and hard-- everything's more expensive than they budgeted for, and when there is food, unless they can guarantee that it's kosher they won't eat it. They don't have passports and have to sneak across the Russian border.

Throughout, Raizel remembers the stories her Bobbe told her, tying her to her home and family.

While this might sound like most immigration stories you've read before, it isn't, but I can't get into it what makes it different without MAJOR SPOILERS. So... just trust me on that, ok? It ends up being not what you'd expect.

Personally, I was most intrigued by the culture clash between Raizel's small village knowledge when she meets people from larger cities, people who make the richest people she knows look poor. Also, the different ways these people practice their Judaism. Raizel wonders what it is that makes someone Jewish-- is it the side locks and skull cap? Or something deeper inside? What if you keep a kosher house but eat tref when not at home?

Also, her amazement at the beauty of the Antwerp train station. It is such a beautiful station and I knew exactly what she was talking about.

Most historical details are explained in context, but I would have loved an author's note that went a little deeper explaining the mistreatment of Jews in Czarist Russia, what the Siberian War was (I'm assuming the Russo-Japanese War) and the Pale of Settlement.

Things you might want to know: Be prepared for a large dose of Antisemitism. Also, there were one or two comments about "Wild Indians" which are historically accurate to cultural stereotypes and attitudes at the time, but...

Book Provided by... my local library

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Return to Sender

Return to Sender Julia Alvarez

Tyler's family has had a run of bad luck-- first his grandfather dies, and then his father is injured in a horrific farm accident. Timed with his brother going away to college, and it looks like the family might lose the farm. Then Tyler's dad hires three Mexican workers to help out on the farm-- workers that aren't legal.

Mari and her sisters were used to life in North Carolina, but Vermont is different. Colder. They stick out more here. Even worse, Mari's mother went back to Mexico to tend to her dying mother. She hasn't returned yet and now the family has moved...

Told in alternating voices, Mari learns to trust, and Tyler learns that just because something is the law doesn't make it right.

I really really liked and really really didn't like this story all at the same time. Mainly, this is a book WITH A MESSAGE. A huge agenda written all over this. And I didn't necessarily mind that so much, but it made the writing uneven. Sometimes Tyler seemed 6, sometimes 60, rarely was he the sixth grader he was supposed to be. Mari's parts of the story are told in letters to her missing mother, but she includes all this back story that's necessary for the reader to know, but not necessary for her mother to know. Also, in the beginning of the story, Tyler compares EVERYTHING to the Trail of Tears. I understand how when they learn about something like that, kids try to put it into a context they can recognize. But really kid? You losing your farm is JUST LIKE a systematic forced eviction of an entire people? REALLY?! It was offensive.

THAT SAID, I really got into the story. It took me awhile (I was only reading it because I had to for a training at work) but...despite the book's flaws and slow beginning, I really cared about Tyler and Mari and the paths they were taking and by the end, I couldn't put it down.

Book Provided by... my local library

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