United States

Materials from United States of America

Keepunumuk: Weeâchumun’s Thanksgiving Story

Wampanoag children listen as their grandmother tells them the story about how Weeâchumun (the wise Corn) asked local Native Americans to show the newcomers how to grow food to yield a good harvest–Keepunumuk–in 1621. The Thanksgiving story that most Americans know celebrates the Pilgrims. But without members of the Wampanoag tribe who already lived on the land where the Pilgrims settled, the Pilgrims would never have made it through their first winter. And without Weeâchumun (corn), the Native people wouldn’t have helped.

The Second Chance Of Benjamin Waterfalls

Benjamin Waterfalls comes from a broken home, and the quickest fix he’s found for his life is to fill that emptiness with stuff he steals and then sells. But he’s been caught one too many times, and when he appears before a tough judge, his mother proposes sending him to boot camp at the Ojibwe reservation where they used to live. Soon he is on his way to Grand Portage, Minnesota, to live with his father, the man Benny hasn’t seen in years. Not only is boot camp not what he expects, but his rehabilitation seems to be in the hands of the tribal leader’s daughter, who wears a mask. Why? Finding the answer to this and so many other questions prove tougher than any military style boot camp. Will answers be enough for Benny to turn his life around and embrace his second chance?

Chronicles Of A Luchador

Jesse Baron, the son of the American Championship Wrestling star known as the Angel of Death, is about to graduate from high school. His parents expect him to attend the University of Texas and study mechanical engineering, something he’s not interested in. The young man knows he would be a natural at professional wrestling, and with his father’s help he might even reach the same level of fame and success.

But the Angel of Death, retired from the ACW and running a wrestling promotion and school, refuses to train his son for fear he will choose sports entertainment over a college degree. Jesse decides that once he gets settled at UT, he’s going to look for another place to wrestle. To keep his father from finding out, he’ll promote himself as a masked luchador from Oaxaca, Mexico, named Mascara de la Muerte. When no one will hire him, Jesse reluctantly considers joining a lucha libre organization, even though he doesn’t speak Spanish. Will the fans and his fellow wrestlers see him as a luchador-or just a gringo with a mask?

African Town

Chronicling the story of the last Africans brought illegally to America in 1860, African Town is a powerful and stunning novel-in-verse.

In 1860, long after the United States outlawed the importation of enslaved laborers, 110 men, women and children from Benin and Nigeria were captured and brought to Mobile, Alabama aboard a ship called Clotilda. Their journey includes the savage Middle Passage and being hidden in the swamplands along the Alabama River before being secretly parceled out to various plantations, where they made desperate attempts to maintain both their culture and also fit into the place of captivity to which they’d been delivered. At the end of the Civil War, the survivors created a community for themselves they called African Town, which still exists to this day. Told in 14 distinct voices, including that of the ship that brought them to the American shores and the founder of African Town, this powerfully affecting historical novel-in-verse recreates a pivotal moment in US and world history, the impacts of which we still feel today.

Chances In Disguise

“In this sequel to Evangelina Takes Flight, the young girl who left her home during the Mexican Revolution to start over in a small Texas border town is now seventeen. She has had several years of medical training with her mentor, Doc Taylor, but when a doctor from a neighboring town finds her helping an Anglo woman in labor, he is enraged. He calls her a dirty Mexican and kicks her out. The next day, Evangelina is arrested for murder. The racist sheriff and many of the townspeople believe Mexicans are inferior and that Evangelina must be guilty of using witchcraft to kill the pregnant woman. But she isn’t all alone. Doc Taylor believes in her innocence, as does Cora Cavanaugh, the spirited daughter of a wealthy businessman. And there’s Selim Njaim, a young Muslim with whom she has a forbidden relationship. Soon La Liga Protectora Mexicana assigns someone to represent her, but will Joaquín Castañeda be able to convince the jury that Evangelina is not a murderer? Set in Texas in 1915, this eye-opening historical novel for young adults reveals the racial inequity in the justice system, the discrimination experienced by Mexicans and other non-whites and the limitations placed on women. Teens will relate to the theme of finding confidence and bravery in times of uncertainty, while learning about the harassment, torture and killing of innocent Mexicans and Tejanos in the early part of the twentieth century.”

The Sky We Shared

Set during WWII and told in alternating voices, Nellie, a young Oregonian and survivor of a balloon bomb sent over by the Japanese, strives to understand how the war has torn her community apart and created prejudice against Japanese-Americans, while across the ocean, as part of her nationalist duty, Tamiko helps create the balloon bombs, but in her struggle to survive hunger and starvation, Tamiko muddles her way through her anger against the United States for the war.

Dead Man’s Gold And Other Stories: And Other Stories

Ten ghost stories about Chinese people who, having come to North America to make their fortunes, encounter ghosts who either help or hinder their success.

Staking A Claim, The Journal Of Wong Ming-Chung, A Chinese Miner, California, 1852

In 1852, during the height of the California Gold Rush, ten-year-old Wong makes the dangerous trip to America to live with his uncle, exchanging the famine and war of his native country for brutal bullies and grueling labor in America, Wong joins his uncle and countless others in the effort to strike it rich on the great Golden Mountain. Unfortunately, he, and most of the rest of the dreamers, soon discover that there’s no such thing as a Golden Mountain, only dirt, mud, and occasionally tiny flecks of gold dust flecks that are to be turned over to the owners of the mines, in return for barely livable wages. However, someone as clever and resourceful as Wong will have to find other ingenious ways of making money if they’re going to make it in America. But can they overcome the bitter, racist white Americans to find success?

Oranges On Golden Mountain

When hard times fall on his family, Jo Lee is sent from China to San Francisco, where he helps his uncle fish and dreams of being reunited with his mother and sister.