young adult Archives - Page 26 of 102

Call Me Athena: Girl from Detroit
by Colby Cedar Smith (Author)
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Booktalk: In this novel in verse is loosely based on the author’s paternal grandmother, Mary is the American-born daughter of Greek and French immigrants living in Detroit in the 1930s. Mary lives in a tiny apartment with her immigrant parents, her brothers, and her twin sister, and she questions why her parents ever came to America. She yearns for true love, to own her own business, and to be an independent, modern American woman–much to the chagrin of her parents, who want her to be a “good Greek girl.” Written from the perspective of three profoundly different narrators, Mary’s story is peppered with flashbacks to her parents’ childhoods in Greece and northern France. Their stories connect with Mary’s as they address issues of arranged marriage, learning about independence, and yearning to grow beyond one’s own culture.

Snippet:

A 2021 Cybils Poetry nominee

Home is Not a Country
by Safia Elhillo (Author)
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Booktalk: Nima wishes she were someone else. She doesn’t feel understood by her mother, who grew up in a different land. She doesn’t feel accepted in her suburban town; yet somehow, she isn’t different enough to belong elsewhere. Her best friend, Haitham, is the only person with whom she can truly be herself. Until she can’t, and suddenly her only refuge is gone.

As the ground is pulled out from under her, Nima must grapple with the phantom of a life not chosen–the name her parents meant to give her at birth–Yasmeen. But that other name, that other girl, might be more real than Nima knows.

And the life Nima wishes were someone else’s. . . is one she will need to fight for with a fierceness she never knew she possessed.

Snippet:
Baba

The photographs of my father are everywhere

alone in a suit framed in the living room

seated with his afro full taped to the mirror of my mother’s dresser

in the one on the coffee table he stares awestruck at his bride

a passport picture in mama’s wallet a single furrow in his brow

i like the one of him younger rounded & serious as a child

dusty-kneed as a teenager crowded with other boys arund a ball

before the car crash that took him from knowing me

before the father-sized ache before my mother all alone

still crowding herself to one side of the bed saving his place

soft browns of sepia photos
making him impossibly far away

A 2021 Cybils Poetry nominee