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On this episode, we discuss the second prompt in the Books and Bites 2022 Reading Challenge, inclusive and diverse award winners. Our Teen Librarian Jacqueline Cooper stops by to talk about the Global Reads for Teens challenge. [Content warning: the books we discuss describe abuse and racism.]
Books and Bites
JCPL librarians bring you book recommendations and discuss the bites and beverages to pair with them.
2_22 Books and Bites
[00:00:00] Carrie: Welcome to the Books and Bites podcast. Each month, we bring you book recommendations and discuss the bites and beverages to pair with them. I'm Carrie Green, and I'm here with my cohosts, Michael Cunningham and Adam Wheeler. On this episode, we're talking about the second prompt in the Books and Bites Challenge, an inclusive or diverse award winner.
So what are some of the awards that people can use for this challenge?
[00:00:30] Adam: Well, I know the one that I am reading The Bridge Home, it was the winner of the Walter Dean Myers award. And that is for outstanding literature, outstanding like children's and teen literature honoring Walter Dean Myers who was a pretty prolific
teen and children's author and it focuses on diverse stories, told with a really good diverse context.
[00:00:56] Carrie: And what list did yours come from? Michael
[00:00:59] Michael: Mine came from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association.
[00:01:04] Carrie: Yes, there's another good one. Um, mine came from the Anisfield-Wolf book awards, which is specifically for books that address race and issues of diversity.
We'll have a list of other awards that you can choose from on our blog. And of course we'll have a display out in the adult book section, which we always do so you can pull books from that. I also happen to think that any book that is written by a person from a diverse or marginalized group that won a big award would count for this challenge.
What do you all think?
[00:01:44] Adam: I think we could work that
[00:01:47] Carrie: because, I mean, that's the ideal, right? Is that people from all backgrounds should be winning these awards. So like an example that I have been interested in, but haven't gotten to yet is the book, All That She Carried by Tiya Miles, which won the National Book Award for 2021.
[00:02:08] Adam: So speaking of diverse award winners, if you're interested in some diverse reads our coworker, Jacqueline Cooper, who is a guest today, is our teen librarian. And she has a world reads book club coming up. The very first one is The Bridge Home, which I'll be talking about today. So Jacqueline, do you want to tell us a little bit about the
the world read's club.
[00:02:31] Jacqueline: So the program is Global Reads for Teens, and it's a four-month program for teens to explore other books set in other countries. And through these books, they're going to look at, we're going to do art, crafts, food, and virtual travel. So every month we'll do a different activity in a different book.
So it's much more than a book club and you can track your participation in our Beanstack app. So, which is a web based software where you can track all the activities and earn badges that you participate in. And the more you participate, the more chances you have to win a $25 gift card. And I did choose The Bridge Home which is set in India because I felt like it gives the reader a real chance to look at
real life characters and in real settings and the way people live in that area. Yeah.
[00:03:26] Adam: Yeah. I agree. It's really engaging book with some pretty heavy points. Also there
[00:03:32] Jacqueline: are, but it really shows you it's. It shows you that Rukku is even more, she's one of the main characters. It shows you that she's more than her disability.
And that's one of the reasons I really like it. And I just think it's a really great book. And I guess you do too, since.
[00:03:50] Adam: Yeah, it's pretty good. I did this for a school book club also. So I actually watched a questionnaire with Padma Venkatraman, the author of The Bridge Home earlier today and she shared that she has a disability herself and it's not one that people always see.
So it's really good that she has an opportunity to kind of explore a disability in this book in a cultural setting also.
[00:04:16] Jacqueline: Yeah, it is. She did an excellent job of, of showing that Rukku was, is not just her disability and that she's a real person and she has something to give to the world, no matter, even if, you know, if you have a disability, you're, you have so much to give.
And she did that by making bracelets, necklaces, and helping her sister and forming friendships with everyone. Yeah.
[00:04:41] Adam: Yeah. She's really a part of the survival team in there, for sure. So for world reads do they get a, do they get a copy of the book if they participate?
[00:04:50] Jacqueline: Oh yeah. Sorry. They do. So if they want to participate, they will need to register to get a free book for the book discussion portion of the Global Reads Challenge.
And then they just come to the teen desk and let us know that they've registered and we'll give them a free book. And we also give them a little trinket based on the country. So we're, at this time we're giving away bracelets that are friendship bracelets.
[00:05:15] Adam: Okay. Awesome. That sounds fun. So, uh, nice activity going over a few months for middle and high school students, you can get some free books.
You have a prize-winning opportunities. You can do some online sort of travel and exploration sounds like a really good deal. Yeah. What are all the countries that are included? So
[00:05:35] Jacqueline: we're going to be going to India of course is the first one and then Scotland and then Africa. And then last Iran.
[00:05:43] Adam: Okay.
Awesome. That sounds like a lot of fun. I hope so. Yes. I really hope a lot of people get involved with it.
[00:05:50] Jacqueline: Yeah, me too. I'm really, they teens have asked me for book clubs. So I think this is beyond the book clubs. I think it's just going to be fantastic.
[00:05:59] Adam: I agree. Yes.
[00:06:00] Jacqueline: Thank you. Thank you for having me.
[00:06:02] Adam: Thanks for being here.
[00:06:03] Carrie: Yeah. Thanks Jacqueline. We appreciate you taking the time to come tell us about the book.
[00:06:17] Adam: Okay. So we've talked about the World Read's club. And I did mention that the very first book is going to be The Bridge Home by a Padma Venkatraman. And so I'm going to talk about that very book right now and get you excited. So hopefully you'll participate. So The Bridge Home, Padma Venkatraman's first, middle grade novel, and at the stellar step into new territory, this novel, which follows sisters, Viji and Rukku
as they navigate homelessness in India, won the 2020 Young Readers Category Walter Award. Non-profit "We Need Diverse Books" states "The Walter Dean Myers Awards for Outstanding Literature recognize diverse authors whose works feature diverse main characters and address diversity in a meaningful way".
So I think Padma Ivanka trauma and fits the bill 100%. And the story that also brew broaches is difficult subjects like abuse, homelessness, disability, and religion in an accessible format for young readers. That also does a good job of contextualizing the story within Indian culture. Quick heads up as I'm getting into this we all have very heavy books today, so
just, just be prepared for that. Readers will feel immersed in Venkatraman's descriptive sensory writing and learn Indian greetings, foods, and more in the glossary placed near the book's beginning.
The descriptive writing is immersive in happy moments but also educational for introducing readers to instinctual responses when meeting new people: "My back hadn't felt like a snake was crawling up it when I'd met Celina Aunty, like I'd felt with the creepy waste mart man and the nasty bus driver. If anything, she seemed unusually kind".
So it's, it's kind of giving a physical response to, if someone is setting off your danger alarms in a way that a kid would understand, Actually, Venkatraman shares in a Q&A with Penguin Middle School that a few women and children have contacted her saying the book helped them recognize they were in an abusive situation and find a way out.
So when I say impactful, yeah.
[00:08:36] Carrie: I don't think you can be more impactful than that.
[00:08:39] Adam: Right? Yes. Venkatraman wastes no time in getting the story rolling - the first small chapter features a figure named Celina Aunty gently persuading Viji to write a letter to her sister Rukku. The second chapter introduces the characters, Amma (mother), Appa (father) and their homelife succinctly. Viji talks about the way Rukku felt like her younger sister despite being the older sibling - with a different appearance and halting speech, who always found comfort in Viji's storytelling, and was picked on at school; and we find that Appa was supposedly a better man in the past - but Viji compares him to a plump, bruised mango - one that Amma picked herself in hopes the bad parts could be cut away.
We learned that because Alma picked up a herself rather than taking an arranged marriage. They are all estranged from family who might've otherwise helped if they'd been around. And then we start to see kind of. Very specifically what their home life is like when a Viji returns home on her 11th birthday.
And it starts as a happy occasion with a filling meal made by Alma, including a special sweet treat of Payasom that is pudding made with rice or noodles. And however, the mood really quickly shifts as Appa returns home and they're all clued in by his heavy footfalls. It shifts to survival mode so they can tell just by the sound of him coming in the door, whether it's going to be a safe night or not.
And Amma, whose arm was broken that night, followed by promises and forgiveness. And we see how this cycle has been repeating for a while after Rukku is hurt in an altercation. In the third chapter, Viji tries convincing Amma to finally leave, but she stays because it's the only way she knows how to survive.
Amma believes maybe correctly that she would be unable to find work as an uneducated woman in her community. This is the impetus for Viji to leave home with Rukku because it is safer on the streets than with Appa, and Amma will never leave. The following story sees Viji and Rukku take a bus to the city, depleting, almost all of what little money they have and narrowly avoiding abduction by a duplicitous bus driver.
I'm really laying out a lot of heavy material here, but the story, it really does also have some very shining moments of joy in the friendships Viji and Rukku make with two homeless boys and a very loyal stray dog. It's not all sad. It's not all trauma though. A lot of it is you know, life has never just all the horrible things all the time.
Overall, this is a wonderful story of perseverance, survival, and chosen family. The story is accessible to young readers and honestly, readers of any age can find important lessons about culture, homelessness and breaking cycles of abuse. I think it's an excellent read.
[00:11:46] Michael: That sounds like. Intense. Yeah.
But very, I mean, very important
book.
[00:11:53] Carrie: Yeah. It sounds like a really a really good one to start the book club with.
[00:11:58] Adam: Yeah. And that's, that's really just in like the first 20 or so pages.
[00:12:03] Carrie: Oh, wow.
[00:12:03] Adam: Yeah. You know, after that it finds them, you know, making connections with some other kids living homeless
under a bridge and a graveyard sifting through trash heap for like materials they can sell for a man who may or may not be trustworthy. It's rough, it's rough. It ends on happier notes. I will tell you that. I'm not gonna tell you what happens, but. Good things happen in the book
too.
[00:12:31] Carrie: Okay. Well, that's good.
There's something to hold out hope for then.
[00:12:36] Adam: Yeah. If you need something else to hold out hope for maybe try making some Moong Dal Payasam, a nice tasty rice pudding made with sabu moong dal that is dried whole green dal with skin that's been, you know, processed and ghee, sweeteners, cashews raisins on cardamom powder.
Cause you need something really, really tasty. Sounds like a really tasty warming treat to me.
[00:13:06] Carrie: And what book is that recipe from?
[00:13:07] Adam: Oh, that is a good question.
I should have. Should've thought to share that this is Indian for Everyone: The Home Cook's Guide to Traditional Favorites by not by Anupy Singla.
And, you know, we'll have that on
the blog too.
[00:13:22] Carrie: Great. Thank you.
[00:13:34] Michael: My recommendation this month for a book winning a diverse or inclusive award is The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead. This book won a lot of awards, most notably the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. But it also added the 2020 Black Caucus of the American Library Association Literary Award for Fiction to its impressive list of accolades. The BCALA awards, first presented in 1994, "acknowledges outstanding works of fiction and non-fiction for adult audiences by African American authors. Recipients of these awards offer outstanding depictions of the cultural, historical, or sociopolitical aspects of the Black Diaspora and embody the highest quality of writing style and research methodology."
This book opens in present day Florida as a group of archeology students are digging at the site of the abandoned Nickel Academy for boys. During their dig, they stumble upon a secret burial ground and start unearthing skeletal remains of former Nickel boys. As the media catches wind of the story, Elwood, a former Nickel Boy, decides it's finally time to return.
Flashing back to the 1960's, Elwood Curtis was a bespectacled young man who idolized Martin Luther King, Junior and his speeches, playing them constantly on vinyl. He was a good student who lived with grandmother, his parents having run off when he was little. He held down a job through high school and was getting ready to take college courses. On the first day of classes, he hitched a ride out to the college, but he never made it. He and the driver were pulled over by a cop and accused of stealing the car. Elwood was arrested and sentenced to the hell that was the Nickel Academy for Boys.
A segregated school, overseen by the racist and vindictive Mr. Spencer, the boys were tasked with jobs like growing crops and producing bricks, and lived at the whim of the house fathers, who watched over each dorm and preyed on their charges.
These boys lived in fear of the White House, an old work shed converted into a torture chamber. Boys would be abducted in the middle of the night and taken there and beaten with a strap for even the smallest of infractions. And if the infraction was deemed serious enough, they would take them "out back", to a pair of bolts in two trees and the boys would never be seen again.
I guess I should stop real quick and mention that the Nickel Academy for Boys was closely based on the very real house of horrors that was the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys. There was a real White House, where they administered brutal beatings and archaeologists did identify unmarked graves in 2012, leading to brutal stories finally coming to light of what survivors endured during their time at Dozier.
Going back to Elwood's story now. A short time into his sentence, he befriended a boy named Turner, who was "always simultaneously at home in whatever scene he found himself in and also seemed like he shouldn't have been there; inside and above at the same time; a part and apart."
Where Elwood was more idealistic, Turner was a bit more cynical, keenly aware of the state of the world and his place in it. Turner described Elwood as sturdy even though he looked "soft, conducted himself like a goody-goody, and had an irritating tendency to preach. Wore eyeglasses you wanted to grind underfoot like a butterfly. He talked like a white college boy, read books when he didn't have to, and mined them for uranium to power his own personal A-bomb."
They worked their community detail together, doing chores at the houses of school board members and helping to shuttle food stuffs from the school that were being sold to local businesses under the table. Turner helped keep Elwood's idealistic nature in check, enduring the horrors of the school together until Elwood finally decided it was time to act, making a decision that reverberated throughout the school, the state, and each other's lives for years to come.
Just a hair over two-hundred pages, it packs in a lot of complex ideas and isn't an easy book to read or digest, especially how closely it's based on our own history.
For this challenging read I paired it with the easy-drinking Guayabera Pale Ale from Cigar City Brewing located in Tampa, Florida. Brewed with the Citra hop, it has a great aroma of berries and tropical fruit upfront with the bitterness you usually get in many pale ales and IPAs taking a backseat creating a nicely balanced brew. You can find it at most places that sell craft beer around town.
[00:17:56] Carrie: So I have to admit, that has won so many words and has so many good reviews, but I've always been, you know, a little put off to even try it because of the subject matter. How did you feel reading it?
[00:18:14] Michael: There were some, some parts that were kind of hard especially when they took the trips to the white house and their, you know, allusions to
rapes that happen. Here's some of the other boat, the other boys when they disappeared or there's a particular scene where there's, they have a every year they have a boxing match between the whites, the white boys and the Black boys. And, you know, they started betting on them and then one forgot what round it was and he disappeared.
So I mean, it, I mean, it's, it's heavy. But, you know, I tend to read some, a lot of the darker, more suspenseful stuff, so I'm kind of used to it. But considering what you do read most of the time, it would be, yes, it would be pretty, pretty heavy.
[00:19:07] Adam: So I'm curious you are used to reading some of the darker kind of more messed up stuff.
Was this considerably more difficult, especially knowing it's based on a true story.
[00:19:20] Michael: Yes. Yeah. While I was reading this, you know, I would go look up to see what the school looked like. Cause the ruins are still there I believe. And. You know, and we have a couple of books in the collection too, that deal with, I think one's called the White Boys or the White House Boys.
That talk about what they went through. I mean, just, you know, this reading their stories. It's pretty, it makes it a lot more real and harder to read because it's not fiction. Really. And yeah.
[00:19:56] Carrie: Were there any moments of joy in the book?
[00:19:59] Michael: At the beginning, when you, you know, you get Elwood's story before he gets arrested, you know, you know, he's, he, he's gonna have to go off to college.
He's getting ready to take these courses. You know, he's still learning his way and he's working part-time at a little store, living with his grandmother and his parents have abandoned him, but he likes comic books and loves Martin Luther King Jr. And plays it on repeat and that's what kind of, what gets them through it?
Yeah, his time at Nickle, he just remembers these quotes and from MLK. So, I mean, there, there is some moments of joy in there, but like in Adam's book, but there's definitely more trauma in there.
[00:20:45] Carrie: Yup. All right. Well, thanks. Thanks for sharing.
Okay. So I, I wish I could say that my book brought the cozy or the lightness for this episode of Books and Bites, but, alas we were all kind of on the same track. So just a warning that this is also a book about a difficult topic. My book is Memorial Drive: A Daughter's Memoir by Natasha Tretheway, and I've talked multiple times on the podcast about Natasha Tretheway.
She's a poet who won the Pulitzer Prize for her book Native Guard, which would also work for this challenge. And she served two terms as the nation's poet Laureate. And Memorial Drive, as I mentioned earlier in the podcast, won the 2021 Anisfield-Wolf book awards, "which recognized books that have made important contributions to our understanding of racism and our appreciation of the rich diversity of human cultures."
When Trethewey was just nineteen years old, her former stepfather murdered her mother, Gwendolyn. Memorial Drive reveals the poet trying to survive this tragedy in the only way she knows how--through story.
Trethewey was born in 1966, a time when her parents' marriage--her father was white, her mother Black--was illegal in her Mississippi birthplace. She writes about her early childhood in Gulfport, Mississippi, where she felt loved and protected by her parents and grandmother, with whom they lived. "Within the tight circle of extended family," she says, "with their watchful interventions into my daily life, I felt protected, insulated from racial intimidation and violence, regardless of the ferment all around us" (37).
That feeling of safety was all too brief. In 1972, after her parents divorced, Trethewey and her mother moved to Atlanta, where Gwendolyn pursued a graduate degree in social work. Gwendolyn began to date Joel Grimmette, a troubled Vietnam vet who immediately made Trethewey wary. He emotionally abused Trethewey even before he and her mother married and had a son.
In chapter 6, the book's first person narration shifts to a second person "you." This point of view allows Trethewey the distance to address some of the most difficult moments in the book. She writes: "You are in the fifth grade the first time you hear your mother being beaten" (101). When she told a favorite teacher what she'd heard, the teacher responded with a cliche, and Trethewey realized "there is nothing she is going to do" (103).
That teacher's failure is not the only failure by an authority figure to respond to the domestic violence. Though Gwendolyn eventually left Joel, his abuse escalated with an attempted murder and, after a stint in prison, threats on her life. He fatally shot her when the police officer stationed outside her door left his post early.
Throughout the book, Trethewey weaves in the archives of her mother's life, including police statements and a chilling transcript of her last phone call with Joel. Trethewey analyzes family photographs, looking for metaphors as she tries to reach across the chasm of loss to understand something that is ultimately unknowable. Her writing is lyrical and spare and absolutely devastating. I challenge you not to weep while reading it.
But for all that, it is a story of Trethewey's survival. As she writes near the end of the book:
"What matters is the transformative power of metaphor and the stories we tell ourselves about the arc and meaning of our lives....
To survive trauma, one must be able to tell a story about it" (207-208).
In one of the memoir's early chapters--you do see some joy of her living with herher family--Trethewey describes gathering pecans and figs with her great aunt Sugar, how "at teatime she'd serve iced tea with butter sandwiches--the brown edges cut off and soaked in milk laced with sugar. All the days sweet like that" (31). Savor the sweetness of those days with Easy Fig Pecan Bars, a recipe from the blog Food Lust People Love. We'll link to it on our blog.
[00:26:03] Adam: Having a hard time wrapping my head around what a butter sandwich is. Is it, is it just butter between bread, grilled with milk and
sugar is,
[00:26:15] Carrie: You know, she doesn't really describe it.
I don't think it's necessarily grilled. I've I mean, I suppose you could do it either way. I think what she means is they, is she cut the crust off and soaked those in milk and sugar.
[00:26:33] Adam: Okay. Interesting
[00:26:34] Michael: my
daughter would absolutely love that
I'm going to have to try that. Butter bread.
[00:26:42] Carrie: Yeah.
I mean, it's like, I kind of looked some stuff up about that. And it sounds like. You know, it's kind of nursery food. Like what people feed their kids for like comfort meal or whatever. Yeah, which we could all probably use after this episode of the podcast.
[00:27:05] Adam: I think what's especially depressing is that book resonates with this book in that there are.
It is filled with opportunities for bystanders to do something. And the abuse continues and bad things continue to happen because no one steps in was that pardon? Is that, I mean, yours is about institutional stuff. Like, I don't know if it's the same,
[00:27:32] Michael: not to give too much away, but people outside of Nickle Academy in government are made aware and nothing
happens. And I think in real life with the Arthur C Dozier school, I want to say that I don't think they even got an apology till, like, I think the Desantis finally apologized, you know right around when they uncovered those. But like, I think, you know, they knew about it. They knew it was going on, but like, Even people in charge.
[00:28:07] Carrie: Yeah. Well, you know, we're actually recording this on Holocaust Memorial Day. There's like the classic example of people turning blind eyes to what's going on.
[00:28:22] Michael: Wow.
[00:28:24] Carrie: So yeah. What are we, what do we take from this?
[00:28:27] Michael: If you see something, say something,
[00:28:31] Adam: maybe taking intervention training. There's probably a lot online that don't cost much or anything.
Though it's not always really that easy, right? It can be dangerous. It can be dangerous to get involved.
[00:28:47] Carrie: And, you know, there are lots of stories out there of people who did, who did interfere, certainly in the Holocaust. There are many people who risked their lives to help Jewish people. And and I'm sure that happened.
That is also the case throughout history, but being reminded of these really difficult stories is also really important, you know, especially like right now, there's this rise in antisemitism. And so we really need to remember what can happen. Yeah. Okay.
[00:29:25] Adam: Yeah. Now it's time to pet a cat, play with the puppy.
Ruminate a little and then do a happy thing.
[00:29:35] Carrie: And next month we're talking about books recommended by young people. So we hope that it will be a little bit lighter and just for a little preview. My eight year old niece has recommended that I read the Cat Kid Comic Club. So.
[00:29:53] Adam: That could be fun.
[00:29:54] Carrie: That, that one is definitely a little bit lighter.
There are as most Dav Pilchy is it Pilchy or Pilky? Anyway, Captain Underpants. There are poop jokes
[00:30:10] Michael: who doesn't
love a good poop joke?
[00:30:12] Carrie: That's right
[00:30:14] Adam: Yeah. You're never too old for those.
[00:30:17] Carrie: So.
We, we hope to see you then.
Thanks for listening to the Books and Bites podcast. To learn more about the Books and Bites Challenge, visit our website at jesspublib.org/ books- bites. Our theme song is "The Breakers" by Scott Whiddon from his album "In Close Quarters with the Enemy." To learn more about Scott and his music, visit his website, adoorforadesk.com.