This month our Staff Picks share a variety of different kinds of stories, experiences, and voices from library collections that engage with themes of fear and courage as well as education and action, challenges, resilience, resistance and growth.
Twelve-year-old Mysti Murphy is faced with many of the same trials middle schoolers face every day: friends turning out to be not so friendly, the work of making new friends, the wish to fit in and be accepted. But for Mysti true courage comes when she accepts herself, and her family situation, and ultimately asks for help.
Having courage does not mean shouldering the whole load. Courage often comes from recognizing our limitations, and accepting the help we need. With humor and an obvious love for avid readers, Karen Harrington spins a tale of family, friends, and courage in the face of adversity.
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Kerry’s Pick
Louis Sockalexis: Native American Baseball Pioneer is a picture book biography that tells the story of Louis Sockalexis, of the Penobscot Nation, the first Native American major league baseball player. The story focuses on his childhood in Maine and his baseball career, leading up to his first game with the Cleveland Spiders. Maine author Bill Wise writes that Sockalexis began playing baseball as a child when a group of white boys invited him to play, and he immediately took to the game. Although he excelled at the sport, he was constantly harassed and mocked by spectators who yelled racial slurs at him at him for “playing a white man’s game.” When Sockalexis joined the Spiders, Amos Rusie, the pitcher of the New York Giants, promised to strike him out. When it was his turn to bat the crowd booed and jeered, but Sockalexis ignored their taunts and hit a home run on the first pitch. He defied racism and prejudice, and his bravery paved the way for future Native American players.
Alexis Okeowo (a frequent contributor to TheNew Yorker) recently released her first book length work, A Moonless, Starless Sky: Ordinary Women and Men Fighting Extremism in Africa. Okeowo’s well-researched reportage adds humanity and depth to stories often treated shallowly in the international news, sharing stories that illuminate people caught in moments of tremendous upheaval and the ways they push back against turmoil.
Okeowo focuses on four tales of everyday life during challenging times across four different African locales. A chronicle of deeply flawed modern love unfolds across the borderlands of Uganda and Sudan (now South Sudan) during the height of the Lord’s Resistance Army, reflecting the muddy realities of the modern world. Resistance to slavery in Mauritania introduces the reader to an activist willing to risk his life to abolish the embedded institution from his society. A third storyline follows members of a community in Maiduguri, Nigeria, home to Boko Haram. Readers learn of individual acts of heroism from members of the “Chibok Girls,” as well as the establishment of a neighborhood militia, organized to oppose the increased presence of Boko Haram in the region. Finally the love of basketball takes Okeowo to Mogadishu, where she highlights the challenges facing a number of female basketball players and their defiance of Al-Shabaab.
More than just tales of overcoming fear, Alexis Okeowo’s writing embraces the imperfection of everyday life. A Moonless, Starless Sky avoids descriptions which paint countries in Africa as places where only good or terrible events occur; the individuals Okeowo writes about have faults and make questionable decisions. This book ultimately amounts to a return of agency to individuals and communities caught up in some of the world’s more tragic events, becoming an empowering testament to those who stand up for injustice throughout the world.
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Aprill’s Pick
Kate Evans shines light on the courage of refugees in her nonfiction graphic novel Threads from the Refugee Crisis. Evans spent time as an aid volunteer in the Calais Jungle, a French refugee encampment that sheltered thousands of African and Syrian refugees before it was destroyed by the French government in 2016. As a volunteer, Evans made friends in the camp, and she tells their stories throughout her account. I loved many things about this book, despite not feeling instantly attracted to its art. After just a few pages, it struck me as appropriate that the book’s art comes across as urgent, raw, and sometimes frantic, for how else does one report from a heartbreaking crisis of catastrophic proportions? In contrast to most of Threads’ more roughly hewn lines, at times we get to see the careful, tender portraits Evans drew for people she met in the camp. The portraits are powerful, both as gifts of art for those in camp, and as human faces that those of us reading cannot forget.
While conditions in the Jungle are horrifying, Threads serves as a report on the tenacity of the human spirit and its potential for courage. Despite the horrors of war, and the heartlessness of nationalist policies that keep many refugees from resettlement, Evans meets people who have hope. In the mud and cold rain of a refugee camp, babies are born, children play with soccer balls, and friendships are forged over shared makeshift meals. Threads’ message is clear: humanity persists, resilient despite all odds, but this does not excuse those of us leading less perilous lives from fighting to make the world a kinder and more just place.
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George’s Pick
Thus begins the story of Nien Cheng, a widow who had worked as a liaison to the Chinese government for the Shell Oil company until that night in 1966 when the Red Guard, under the banner of the Cultural Revolution, stormed her house and took her away from her home and her daughter. She was held in a dank prison cell for 5 years in which she underwent deprivation, illness and intense psychological manipulation, all to get her to “confess” to crimes against the state. She refused to do it. She demanded to know what the crime was that she was admitting to, but was never told. She faced her accusers fearlessly and never backed down, sometimes being left in her cell, in virtual solitary confinement, for months at a time. Even when they decided to release her, she refused to leave until they printed an apology to her in the newspaper. All the while, she had no idea what had become of her young daughter.
Life and Death in Shanghai is the story of one woman’s incredible character and integrity, and is really a wonderful read. It also gives you a view into the history of Maoist China in its heyday.
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Brandie’s Pick
I really enjoy Brené Brown’s books and have read most of them. I especially like listening to her audio books because she has a great voice. Although her books fall into the Personal Growth category, she is also a masterful storyteller. In her newest book, Braving the Wilderness, Brown focuses one of the most unsettling of fears…being alone. She argues that we’re experiencing a spiritual crisis of disconnection, and introduces four practices of true belonging that challenge everything we believe about ourselves and each other.
This book is short and to the point, with lots of truth bombs and motivational nuggets. Brown bases much of her book on a quote that she always struggled with by Maya Angelou: “You only are free when you realize you belong no place — you belong every place — no place at all.” It was only when she discovered freedom in standing alone that she realized there really is nothing to fear in the wilderness of being alone.
Author Steve Pemberton shares how he overcame mental and physical obstacles in the early years of his life, after he was dropped off at a foster home at the age of 5. It started with a neighbor’s small acts of kindness and caring—and a box of books. From one of those books he learns that he must fight in any way he can—for victory is in the battle. His victory is to excel in school.
Against all odds, Pemberton succeeded. He attended college, graduated, became a successful corporate executive, and married a wonderful woman with whom he established a loving family of his own. Through it, he dug voraciously through records and files and found his history, his birth family—and the ultimate disappointment as some family members embrace him, but others reject him. A Chance in the World is a heart-rending but uplifting story of the human spirit’s ability to prevail.
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Raminta’s Pick
Who’s Afraid of Contemporary Art? by Kyung An and Jessica Cerasi is a fantastic introduction to the current world of art. If you are a layperson just wanting to get a slight grip on the whats and whys of contemporary art, this really is the book for you. The book breaks down different topics in art into 26 different short essays. None of these need to be read sequentially and in fact, the essays encourage you to jump around. Topics range from why folks become artists to curating and conserving, along with quick descriptions of contemporary pieces by artists such as Yayoi Kusama and Tania Bruguera. This is a judgement-free book. One of my favorite chapters is entitled, “WTF?! What on earth am I looking at?” and it starts off by trying to put the reader at ease: “Contemporary art can be hard work. Everyone at one point of another has walked into an art gallery, taken one look at what’s on display and thought, ‘What The F… is that?!?!?’ And it may be that the little texts on the walls confuse things even more, leaving you feeling like you just don’t get it. Unfortunately, this experience is quite normal.”
Understanding art, whether it is contemporary or not, is a process that first starts with the person experiencing the art, allowing themselves to be open to whatever message the artist is trying to portray. And the best message portrayed in this book is that you don’t have to like all of it.
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Elizabeth’s Picks
Poet and writer Nina Riggs died from complications of breast cancer at age 39 this year, leaving her family, loved ones, and her memoir The Bright Hour behind. “I am reminded of an image,” she wrote, “that living with a terminal disease is like walking on a tightrope over an insanely scary abyss. But that living without disease is also like walking on a tightrope over an insanely scary abyss, only with some fog or cloud cover obscuring the depths a bit more — sometimes the wind blowing it off a little, sometimes a nice dense cover.”
Riggs’ candid exploration of fear and joy in her last months of life offers up a fog-blasting sense of perspective. Full of moving humor, gratitude, sorrow, and observations both gentle and sharp, her story is a memorable final homage to this brief life. The title quotes Riggs’ great-great-great grandfather, Ralph Waldo Emerson: “That is morning; to cease for a bright hour to be a prisoner of this sickly body, and to become as large as the World.”
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“The function of freedom is to free someone else.” Julia Alvarez quotes Toni Morrison in Women Writing Resistance: Essays on Latin America and the Caribbean. 16 writer-activists contribute to this new anthology, including Gloria Anzaldúa, Cherríe Moraga, Jamaica Kincaid, Rigoberta Menchú, and Michelle Cliff.
As Jennifer Browdy observes in the introduction,”As women who understand their writing as a form of resistance to the intertwined and complex oppressions of imperialism, elitism, racism, sexism, and homophobia, they have long been practicing transnational, intersectional feminism…all the contributors to this volume have challenged borders—linguistic, geographical, social, cultural, ideological—through their writing and in their own lives.” And as Gloria Anzaldúa writes: “Writing is dangerous because we are afraid of what the writing reveals: the fears, the angers, the strengths of a woman under a triple or quadruple oppression. Yet in that very act lies our survival because a woman who writes has power.” These powerful voices encourage truth-telling, courage, and connection in the darkest times.
“We write our resistance, page after page,” notes Veronica Chambers, “And we hope that the force with which we move our pens across the page can be matched by those who value life, democracy, equality, and humanity off the page, out in the world.”
This year Banned Books Week is September 24-30, and we’re celebrating the right to read! For our monthly staff picks post, we took a look at the American Library Association’s new publication “Field Report 2016: Banned and Challenged Books” by Robert P. Doyle. We each chose a title from the report that we were familiar with and that had been publicly challenged in 2016. Here are our personal responses to a few of the books that have recently come under fire, as well as some of the deeper discussions that the challenges or that the books themselves have inspired for us.
Carrie’s Pick
How I wish I had this book when I was a kid! Robie H. Harris’ title says it all, It’s Perfectly Normal, and this is what children need to hear over, and over, and over again. The message that what you experience during adolescence and puberty is normal, we all basically go through the same feelings and changes –and sometimes we don’t and that is ok too—comes through loud and clear. What I love about this book is the updating it undergoes and the kindness and understanding it conveys. With new information on LGBTQ youth and transgender issues, It’s Perfectly Normal maintains its spot as my go-to book for all children (and adults for that matter) looking for honest, factual, and lovingly presented information on our bodies and growing up. Bird and Bee guide you through the ups and downs of growing up and remind you that It’s Perfectly Normal!
Christine Baldacchino’s picture book Morris Micklewhite and the Tangerine Dress is an endearing story of a little boy who knows what he likes and doesn’t let gender norms define his play. His favorite outfit in the dress-up center at school is the tangerine dress. He likes it because the color reminds him of tigers and his mother’s hair, and he likes the sounds it makes when he walks. When the other children start bullying Morris and tell him he can’t wear the tangerine dress because he is a boy, Morris gets so anxious that he stays home sick from school. After spending a few days at home being himself with his supportive mother, Morris remembers why he likes the dress, and that it doesn’t matter what the other kids think. Morris returns to school and wears the tangerine dress, making sure the other kids know he is confident and comfortable in himself. When they realize Morris is still just as fun and interesting in a dress as not, the kids forget about what he is wearing and start just having fun.
Megan’s Pick
This One Summer follows a family at their usual vacation destination, Awago Beach. This is not a perfect summer adventure—our hero and main character Rose is feeling the pressure of growing up and hurts people around her constantly. She fights with her friend Windy, talks about older girls behind their backs, and yells at her depressed mother. Though it stings, I felt most connected during those rougher parts that channel how I felt as a young teen leaving a familiar childhood world behind.
As a counterweight, the book’s quieter moments give the characters room for vulnerability and let the art shine. The book is skillfully illustrated throughout by Jillian Tamaki. It’s one of the most gorgeous graphic novels I’ve read (the printing is all blue!) and worth picking up for the art alone.
I believe it’s important to read books that describe all the messiness of being human. The characters of This One Summer may not be perfect (or even likeable sometimes) but their humanity is what drew me in.
Kelley’s Pick
I was a newly minted Teen Librarian when I first read Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell. At the time, I was loving ALL teen fiction, and E&P charmed me with its underdog protagonists, 80s mix tape nostalgia (THE SMITHS), and the tragedy created for these teenagers by external forces they can’t control. For many, this is a new teen classic with a laundry list of accolades and prestigious starred reviews (Kirkus, School Library Journal, Booklist, Publishers Weekly). It has appeared on best-lists and is recommended by teachers and librarians.
Eleanor & Park has been formally challenged for being sexually explicit or even “pornographic,” for its depiction of bullying, and for excessive profanity, and these challenges are easy to dismiss as typical by those of us who read and promote books for Teens. This is my response to the most common reasons why Eleanor & Park is challenged by parents, community members, and others.
We read to explore the world, to not only find characters like ourselves but those that are having experiences we have not or will never have. This is especially important for young people as they are forging their own identifies.
Teens, maybe not your teen but maybe your teen, are experimenting with romantic relationships and sexuality at some level; wouldn’t it be positive for them to read books about other teens who are realistically experiencing the same emotions and choices, especially if those characters are treating each other with respect?
Likewise, bullying and abuse are happening to, by or around your teen. It was happening in the 80s, and it was happening now. Wouldn’t it be helpful for teens to see how realistic characters their age experience these traumas as well?
Teens are intelligent and able to read critically, and most young people are not going to rob a bank or jump off a cliff because a character in a book does.
Lastly, please read the book and don’t simply skim it in order to count the number of times profanity is used, #context.
Now, there is a different set of recurring complaints about this book which require discussion. Those who have issue with it are often readers and writers, so they do not challenge anyone’s right to read Eleanor & Park. But they’re vocal about why they think the book is problematic, arguing that it is riddled with cultural stereotypes, harmful fetishism of its Korean characters, and even racism. It has been pointed out that many (recurring) mistakes could have been prevented by proper research, by a careful editor, or by interviewing several Korean-Americans to learn about their real experiences. And there are claims (with evidence from the text) that these steps were not taken with Eleanor & Park. See here, and here.
“To unquestioningly accept any-and-every form of representation means dismissing and devaluing the fantastic stuff already out there. Representation of marginalized groups in YA lit shouldn’t simply be a matter of putting a check mark next to the diversity box. It shouldn’t involve stereotypes, exotification or cultural appropriation. It can and should be done right.”
I am a big fan of Rainbow Rowell’s writing (I have gifted Fangirl to every younger cousin going off to college for the first time). That said, I was a little ashamed of myself for not reading her most celebrated novel with a more critical eye. Eleanor & Park is worth reading, and worth discussing, but not because it is profane or inappropriate for teens to read.
Eileen’s Pick
A book that I loved, loved, loved when, paradoxically, I read it under duress in high school has a history of challenges to its suitability for kids the age I was when I read it and loved, loved, loved it. Apparently, A Separate Peace, John Knowles’s 1959 novel, has ruffled the odd feather.
Last weekend I read it again to see what I thought close to 50 years after my first revelatory foray. While it didn’t thrill me like it did when I was wearing a plaid uniform skirt and regulation navy blazer to school every day, it still resonated.
The milieu is Devon School, a New Hampshire prep school for boys. The focus is a small band of students, including Phineas and Gene, Class of 1943, a fraught time if you were staring down your 18th birthday in a world at war.
The confusion inherent in figuring out yourself, your companions, and the rest of the world isn’t particular to a time or place. Pendulating between trusting your best friend more than you trust yourself and wondering just how foolishly naïve you are if you do, alas, is not peculiar to prep school boys in the 1940s. Neither are the conflicted feelings of being best friends with someone who infuriates you, stymies you, fills you with self-doubt while he—how can this be? —bestows the gift of knowing you are special. Wrestling with the fallout of an act committed in the thick of this confusion never loses relevance, nor do the questions it spawns: Where does happenstance start and stop? How do we go on when we are bereft, and always, always and still, confused.
Gene observes, “I felt that I was not, never had been and never would be a living part of this overpoweringly solid and deeply meaningful world around me.” If there ever was a high school sophomore who didn’t feel this way at least three times a day, I can promise you this: that sophomore was not me.
Looking for substance in the chaos of puzzling out my place in the world, in A Separate Peace I found comrades in the struggle. I found tragedy to satisfy my adolescent craving for drama. And heck, you can’t learn too young that tidy resolutions aren’t the stuff of life. Life is shadowed with ambiguity and regret as well as brightened by the occasional chance to begin again. Time and distance can refine what we see if we choose to take a second look, whether it is through Gene’s eyes as he revisits Devon School and his past or through my own as I traversed Knowles’s book again with my young self as companion.
As for ruffled feathers and challenges and adolescents, I have this to say: I was encouraged to read whatever came my way, and was allowed the space to decide for myself what I thought about it all. I offer belated gratitude to my parents for their trust; and to my teachers for assigning books I didn’t know I wanted to read.
I usually make a point to read a banned book or two during September—one for me and one to my five-year-old son. I started earlier this year and did a second time around with The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I read it in high school through required reading.
That was over 20 years ago, so this second time around was like the first! It is amazing to me how much has changed since the story was written. A teen that I know was reading this for summer reading and was really struggling with the dialect. Language has changed so much that this is common when someone is attempting to read older texts in present day.
Elijah Wood of Lord of the Rings fame narrates an amazing audio version of this title. His performance, as always, is phenomenal. Listening to spoken words clarifies things when reading lines such as “Sometimes you gwyne to git hurt, en sometimes you gwyne to git sick; but every time you’s gwyne to git well agin.” I highly recommend listening along as you read so that you can deduce meaning through inflection and intonation.
Brandie’s Pick
I think timing is everything when you pick up a book. I tried reading The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls years ago and couldn’t get into it. Then my daughter read it this summer and insisted that I give it another try. This time, I loved it and couldn’t put it down. It was a hard read because of the neglect and abuse the children suffered. It also reads like a work of fiction, and you have to remind yourself that this is a true story full of dark times. Walls describes her hardscrabble upbringing and captures her complex and conflicting thoughts about her parents and childhood eloquently. Her descriptions are vivid and beautifully captured, and I found the way she told her own story so much better than the scenes in the recent Hollywood version of this book.
The Glass Castle is banned from many schools due to the scenes of sexual assault, profanity, and situations dealing with alcoholism and abuse. However, many challenges have been met with opposition, including student petitions, and proponents of the book say that the book is a real look at childhood neglect, poverty, and overcoming adversity.
Elizabeth’s Pick
Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States was challenged in 2016 in a New Jersey school for being a “biased account” of history. An earlier version of the book was required reading in my own high school in 1997. Our history teacher, Joan Davis, used it as part of a range of other historical texts and primary sources in a biased attempt to hone our youthful critical thinking skills. I remember Zinn’s text as one jumping-off point for interrogating historical narratives as well as thoughtfully examining any source of our intake of information: lessons from our teachers, other books, the media, our families and our friends. (If all histories are flawed, we reasoned, then A People’s History was too).
Mostly, the content of A People’s History and our discussions of it and other texts affirmed a number of sensible questions to keep at hand. Is history always written by the powerful? Who has the power in any given situation? Where does that power come from? How is that power sustained? Who is controlling the story? Whose story is missing? Why are facts important? Why should we keep asking questions? Why are “the people” important? Can the people influence social change? If these questions sound dated, they feel important as ever. Twenty years on I’m glad when, at school or in the library, students do have the chance to encounter a range of history books—and a chance to decide for themselves what questions they want to ask.
As a public library, we are committed to welcoming everyone. Our staff has compiled this list of resources for New Mainers and the Greater Portland Community to unite us in the spirit of National Welcoming Week.
We hope you will find these resources useful and will share with others. Our librarians are always ready to connect our patrons and our community with vetted sources for learning more.
Books in our collection
Welcoming Week works to bring together community members in a spirit of unity and to raise awareness of the benefits of making communities welcoming. Our Welcoming Week Book Lists tackle a range of relevant related issues. Here you’ll find memoirs, novels, and nonfiction, as well as books that discuss inclusive community building through civility, dialogue, and action.
From our Portland Room Archives – “Veasma Kem, a Khmer native language facilitator at Reiche School, teaches pupils about the Buddhist New Year and Cambodian culture.” April 1994, Portland Press Herald.
We also offer tutoring tables in the reference area for students and tutors to use. You can reserve a table by calling the Reference Desk at 207-871-1700 x725.
Explore our collection of adult fiction & nonfiction in non-English languages here.
USCIS Immigration Corner
United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has provided PPL with a collection of resources to help immigrants and refugees prepare for their next steps in the immigration process; including items that they can keep for their private libraries or to share with friends. The materials are located on the Lower Level at the Main Library.
In addition, the USCIS holds outreach sessions at the Main Library. They will be at the Library on the dates listed here.
Additional resources for Immigrants and Refugees are listed in our catalog. You can find a handy topic guide here.
USCIS “How Do I” Guides
Are you familiar with the USCIS “How Do I” guides series? These guides answer general questions regarding immigration benefits and are currently available in English, Spanish, and Chinese.
The USCIS invites any feedback on how to improve the guides. To share feedback visit the USCIS Idea Community.
Business Resources
Our Business Resource Center contains information about finance & financial literacy, business management, & law. We are happy to provide reference services and library resources to help Portland area businesses succeed.
We would like to introduce New Mainers to the Greater Portland Immigrant Welcome Center just around the corner from our Main Branch. This new organization is committed to endow the immigrant community with professional opportunities through access to creative collaboration, technology, and workspace in order to sustain and grow their organizations, businesses and the Greater Portland region.
