In 1966 Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution swept through China and transformed the life of Beijing teenager Ange Zhang. Ange longed to join the Red Guard with his classmates, but was denied membership after his father, a famous writer, was arrested and charged with being a counter-revolutionary. As Ange struggled to maintain his friends’ respect, he began to question the Revolution and his role in it.
This story about ranch life on the Argentinean pampas is told in the voice of young Maria Cristina, who describes the activities as the seasons change. Mama buys the ranch during a hot and steamy January. The children go back to school in March, and during the cold and rainy July winter vacations, most of the calves are born. Finally, on a very hot Christmas Eve, a special gift arrives. The story, based on the author’s childhood, challenges stereotypes of this culture by depicting a woman as the buyer and owner of the ranch.
Richard Hughes’s celebrated short novel is a masterpiece of concentrated narrative. Its dreamlike action begins among the decayed plantation houses and overwhelming natural abundance of late nineteenth-century Jamaica, before moving out onto the high seas, as Hughes tells the story of a group of children thrown upon the mercy of a crew of down-at-the-heel pirates. A tale of seduction and betrayal, of accommodation and manipulation, of weird humor and unforeseen violence, this classic of twentieth-century literature is above all an extraordinary reckoning with the secret reasons and otherworldly realities of childhood.
Pablo Neruda grew up in the rough and wild frontier town of Temuco, Chile. His father was a railroad man and not inclined to draw out the introspective boy. However, his stepmother, descended from the Mapuche people, was gentle and nurturing and told him stories of Chile’s native people. But in her husband’s presence, she was as silent as Pablo. So the child found refuge in nature and in books. And secretly he wrote down his thoughts. With the encouragement of Gabriela Mistral, an award-winning poet, teacher, and friend, Neruda’s writing grew resonant and powerful. At age sixteen he left Temuco for the university in Santiago and went on to become the “people’s poet” and to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Blending her telling of Neruda’s childhood with excerpts from his own poetry and prose, Ms. Ray captures the people and places that inspired him in her rich watercolor illustrations.
For thirteen-year-old Kim, travel to South Africa with her journalist mother will mark the end of her childhood and the beginning of a remarkable journey. Expecting nothing more than three months in her mother’s homeland, Kim comes to terms with the country’s diverse and often shocking history. The Truth and Reconciliation Hearings in post-apartheid South Africa open her eyes to the tragedy and brutality of its segregationist policies.
Kim’s first meeting with her relatives, her contact with schoolmates and cousins, bring her face-to-face with the realization that she is not as removed from this powerful story as she thought. As her mother struggles with her past, Kim becomes more and more determined to unlock the secret that has always kept her from knowing her father. Helped by the young son of a long-time family servant, whose own father was a casualty of Apartheid history, Kim eventually unlocks her mystery and brings her mother and herself to their own truth and reconciliation.
In this groundbreaking memoir set in Ramallah during the aftermath of the 1967 Six-Day War, Ibtisam Barakat captures what it is like to be a child whose world is shattered by war. With candor and courage, she stitches together memories of her childhood: fear and confusion as bombs explode near her home and she is separated from her family; the harshness of life as a Palestinian refugee; her unexpected joy when she discovers Alef, the first letter of the Arabic alphabet. This is the beginning of her passionate connection to words, and as language becomes her refuge, allowing her to piece together the fragments of her world, it becomes her true home.
Featured in Volume II, Issue 2 of WOW Review.
Relates the life experiences, from birth to beginning boarding school, of a boy growing up on a rubber plantation in rural Malaysia.
Discusses the childhood of Diego Rivera and how it influenced his art.
Sister Shako, an old woman whose family was killed in a vendetta, lives with her goats in eastern Turkey. She asks for shelter from Dalokay’s father who was the landlord of the village. The young boy’s friendship with the old woman flourishes with daily visits.
Mary Malbunka shares her stories of playing with friends, building cubby houses, climbing trees, collecting sugar bag digging for honey ants, hunting for lizards, and learning about the seasons, animals and plants, she creates a vivid picture of a truly Australian childhood in which country-ngurra-is life itself.