The history of Mexican Americans spans more than five centuries and varies from region to region across the United States. Yet most of our history books devote at most a chapter to Chicano history, with even less attention to the story of Chicanas. 500 Years of Chicana Women’s History offers a powerful antidote to this omission with a vivid, pictorial account of struggle and survival, resilience and achievement, discrimination and identity. The bilingual text, along with hundreds of photos and other images, ranges from female-centered stories of pre-Columbian Mexico to profiles of contemporary social justice activists, labor leaders, youth organizers, artists, and environmentalists, among others. With a distinguished, seventeen-member advisory board, the book presents a remarkable combination of scholarship and youthful appeal. In the section on jobs held by Mexicanas under U.S. rule in the 1800s, for example, readers learn about flamboyant Doña Tules, who owned a popular gambling saloon in Santa Fe, and Eulalia Arrilla de Pérez, a respected curandera (healer) in the San Diego area. Also covered are the “repatriation” campaigns” of the Midwest during the Depression that deported both adults and children, 75 percent of whom were U.S.-born and knew nothing of Mexico. Other stories include those of the garment, laundry, and cannery worker strikes, told from the perspective of Chicanas on the ground. From the women who fought and died in the Mexican Revolution to those marching with their young children today for immigrant rights, every story draws inspiration. Like the editor’s previous book, 500 Years of Chicano History (still in print after 30 years), this thoroughly enriching view of Chicana women’s history promises to become a classic.
Survival
Crossing The Wire
When falling crop prices threaten his family with starvation, fifteen–year–old Victor Flores heads north in a desperate attempt to “cross the wire” from Mexico into the United States so he can find work and send money home. But with no “coyote money” to pay the smugglers who sneak illegal workers across the border, Victor must struggle to survive as he jumps trains, stows away on trucks, and hikes grueling miles through the Arizona desert. Victor’s journey is fraught with danger, as he faces freezing cold, scorching heat, hunger, and dead ends. It’s a gauntlet run by millions attempting to cross the border. Through Victor’s often desperate struggle, Will Hobbs brings to life one of the great human dramas of our time.
Journey Of Dreams
For the peaceful highlanders of Guatemala, life has become a nightmare. Helicopters slash like machetes through the once-quiet air. Soldiers patrol the streets, hunting down suspected guerillas. Villagers mysteriously disappear and children are recruited as soldiers. Tomasa’s family is growing increasingly desperate, especially after Mama goes into hiding with Tomasa’s oldest brother. Finally, after their house is razed to the ground and the villagers massacred, Tomasa, Manuelito, and baby Maria set off with Papa on a perilous journey to find Mama and Carlos, only to discover that where one journey ends, another begins. This gripping novel tells the story of how Tomasa’s family survives the Guatemalan army’s brutal regime and how, in the midst of tragedy, their love and loyalty — and Papa’s storytelling — keeps them going on their harrowing journey as refugees to the United States. Mirrored in the tapestries of Tomasa’s dreams, the dramatic events of the Guatemalan army’s “scorched earth” campaign of the 1980s are tempered with hope and the generosity of the human spirit.
Rituals of Survival: A Woman’s Portfolio
A collection of five short stories and a novella which offers valuable portraits of New York City women and the rituals of survival that shape their lives.
Wild Magic
The Pied Piper had his reasons for enchanting the children of Hamelin and stealing them away—ones rooted in a deep history of wild magic. Mari and her brother Jakob are among the children who followed the piper’s song, and they are now trapped in a beautiful but cruel world inhabited by a horrid Beast. They must remain there until he finds the right child, the chosen one, who can lift his century old curse. But the price of breaking the curse is a terrible one. This fast-paced, richly fantastical continuation of a familiar tale is a powerful story of a family torn apart by tragedy, and the magical adventure that heals them.
Panda Kindergarten
School is in session! But this is no ordinary kindergarten class. Meet sixteen young giant panda cubs at the China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda at the Wolong Nature Preserve. The cubs are raised together from infancy in a protected setting, where they grow strong. Under the watchful eyes of the scientists and workers, the cubs learn skills that will help prepare them to be released into the wild.
Street Child
A fictional account of the experiences of Jim Jarvis, a young orphan who escapes the workhouse in 1860’s London and survives brutal treatment and desparate circumstances until he is taken in by Dr. Barnardo, founder of a school for the city’s “ragged” children.
Weirdo’s War
While trapped in a cave with one of his fellow students, a longtime enemy, Daniel relives his troubled relationship with his schoolmates.
Dusk
Dusk is more than just a girl—her DNA was fused with hawk genes in a military experiment to make the best warriors, resulting in traits like night vision. After 13 years of being held captive in a government lab, she escapes and hides in an abandoned town. There she lives in an uneasy truce with the other subjects who fled the lab: a horde of killer mutant rats and a clan of vicious guard dogs. Then one day, a boy named Jay stumbles into town. Will Dusk follow her human instincts and save Jay? Or will the hawk in her see an easy prey? In vivid prose, Susan Gates conjures a tale of science gone wrong that seems eerily realistic. As Dusk and Jay dance around both the local predators and each other, readers will find deep sympathy in their situation, even as they race through the pages to see what happens next.
The Kin
It is two hundred thousand years ago. A small group of children are cut off from their Kin, the Moonhawks, when they are driven from their Good Place by violent strangers. While searching for a new Good Place, they face the parched desert, an active volcano, a canyon flood, man-eating lions, and other Kins they’ve never seen before. These young Moonhawks are brave, clever, and warmhearted, and all three traits are crucial to their survival. Told from four points-of-view, with tales of the Kins’ creation interspersed throughout, this epic novel humanizes early man and illuminates the beginning of language, the development of skills, and the organization of society. Winner of a Printz Honor for The Ropemaker, Peter Dickinson has won most of the major British writing awards (some of them twice). With The Kin, he more than lives up to his honored reputation.