Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

Invisible Man

By Ralph Ellison

Image Credit: Encyclopedia Britannica

1.      Bibliography

Ellison, R. (1952). Invisible Man. New York: Vintage International. ISBN 0808554123

2.      Plot Summary

“The narrator of Invisible Man is a nameless young black man who moves in the 20th-century United States where reality is surreal and who can survive only through pretense. Because the people he encounters "see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination," he is effectively invisible. He leaves the racist South for New York City, but his encounters continue to disgust him. Ultimately, he retreats to a hole in the ground, which he furnishes and makes his home. There, brilliantly illuminated by stolen electricity, he can seek his identity.”

An unnamed black narrator strives to understand both himself and what it means to be black in America. In the prologue, we are introduced to the narrator who lives rent-free in an abandoned basement of a New York City apartment.  It is the present and the following chapters are told retrospectively about how he became “invisible”. He tells how he grew up in a Southern town where blacks cater to whites.  He tells about his grandfather, a slave, who said on this deathbed to “overcome with yeses”. He is invited to speak at a hotel and is awarded a scholarship to a black college. At the college, he is given the responsibility to drive one of the trustees but things go horribly wrong and he is kicked out of college.  The college president gives him letters of introduction to trustees in New York City.  He is turned away from these men and ends up working at a paint factory. An explosion at the factory puts him out on the street where he is taken in by a kind lady in Harlem.  Coming across an eviction in process, he comes to the aid of the evicted couple giving a speech the stirs the crowd into action.  This speech is overheard by “The Brotherhood” who asks him to work for them using a scientific method to bring about action in the community. The narrator and The Brotherhood clash in ideology.  Things go wrong culminating in a riot that brings our protagonist to find his hidden home and discover his invisibility.

3.      Critical Analysis

Invisible Man is Ralph Ellison’s first novel.  It is a story of self-discovery and is widely recognized as one of the great novels examining the African-American experience. The invisibility of Ellison’s title character is about the invisibility of identity (above all, what it means to be a black man) and its various pretenses, confronting both personal experience and the power of collective misconceptions. The novel’s special quality is its skillful combination of inquiry into identity and what it means to be socially or racially invisible. It is a metaphor for the history of the African-American experience in America. The first-person narrator remains nameless, looking back at his moves through the dreamlike reality of surroundings and people from the racist South to the no less unwelcoming world of New York City.

Key characters include the Invisible Man who acts as the narrator.  He is a young naïve black man and everything is seen through his eyes.  Dr. Bledsoe, the college president, pretends to be humble and subservient to whites, yet is intent on having power.  Mr. Norton, a college trustee, and northern white businessman is obsessed with love for his daughter and brags about his generous monetary gifts to blacks. Lucius Brockway, an old black man who works in the basement of the paint factory. Mary Rambo, a kind black lady who dedicates herself to others.  Brother Jack a white leader of the Brotherhood.  Outwardly calm and nonracist but in reality, he uses people and betrays them.  Tod Clifton, and intelligent, sensitive, handsome and idealistic black youth.  He is a man of action, popular in the Brotherhood but he cannot tolerate the reality that he is no more than a puppet to the organization. Brother Tarp, and older black man and fatherly toward the narrator.  Ras the Exhorter, a black militant who believes in the total separation of the races.

The themes of the novel include invisibility.  The narrator discovers that people neither see nor understand him.  No one sees the individual underneath all his labels and he does not see his full potential.  Quest for identity is explored.  As a young man, the narrator tries to be what he thinks others want him to be. He discovers, after much struggle, that freedom lies in finding out who he really is as a human being and as a black man. Another theme is the stereotyping of African-Americans. The protagonist responds to whites’ prejudices by using lots of deodorants, always being punctual, and eating traditional American food. The novel also explores the rejection of Marxism.  The primary character rejects the Brotherhood’s Marxist view of history as a rational, scientific process moving in a straight line toward the ultimate goal of a classless society.  And, most certainly, the novel explores black pride. The narrator knows that his position of “invisibility” is absurd.  He is human but is seen as less than human. Ellison claims that blacks have sometimes responded to whites’ racism by showing a passive, yet constant hatred (like the narrator’s grandfather), by adopting amoral behavior (like Rinehart), or by deceiving and using whites (Bledsoe). Ellison’s alternative is to assert black cultural pride.

The main symbols used in the story include the blindfold which represents those barriers that prevent people from seeing themselves and others.  Another symbol is the battle royal which symbolizes the struggle of blacks in a society controlled by whites.  The sambo dolls represent those blacks who are easily manipulated by whites.  The possessions of the evicted couple represent the black American past and animals stand for primitive human instincts that lie beneath the civilized surface. The briefcase stands for the narrator’s past life.  It contains papers from his past and he has to destroy it to illuminate his present and move into the future. The author uses rich, powerful, superbly controlled language. A first-person narrator gives an overall impression of events rather than a detailed, analytical view.  A tone of detachment keeps the narrative from sounding bitter.

While Invisible Man bears comparison with other existential novels, it also maps out the story of one man’s identity against the struggles of shared self-definition. The novel takes the central character through the limited possibilities offered to African-Americans, from enslaved grandparents through southern education, through to all the Harlem politics. Ellison’s precision in the way he shows his narrator-protagonist working through these possibilities is skillfully worked into a novel about particular people, events, and situations, from the terrifying world of the mockingly named Liberty Paints to the socialist scheming of the Brotherhood. In the process, Ellison offers sensitive but harsh critiques of the resources of the black culture, such as religion and music.

4.      Expert Reviews

-         -  National Book Award for Fiction

-        -   Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Special Achievement

-        -   Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read

-         -  Kirkus Review: “An extremely powerful story of a young Southern Negro, from his late high school days through three years of college to his life in Harlem. This is Ellison's first novel, but he has complete control of his story and his style.”

-          - New York Times: "Invisible Man" is tough, brutal and sensational. It is uneven in quality. But it blazes with authentic talent. No one interested in books by or about American Negroes should miss it.”

-         -  Newyorker: “This complicated kind of progress seemed to me to accurately reflect how, for the marginalized in America, choices have never been clear or easy.”

5.      Connections

Other books by Ralph Ellison:

-          (1986). Going to the Territory. Random House. ISBN 0679760016

-          (1996). Flying Home. Random House. ISBN 0679457046

-          (2000). Trading Twelves. Modern Library. ISBN 0375503676

-          (2010). Three Days Before the Shooting. Modern Library. ISBN 9780375759536

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

The Bluest Eye

By Toni Morrison

Image Credit: Penguin Random House

1.      Bibliography

Morrison, T. (2007). The Bluest Eye. New York: Vintage Books. ISBN 0307278441

2.      Plot Summary

A grown woman, Claudia, tells us about an incident that happened years ago in Lorain, Ohio. The memory of this event continues to trouble her today because there are no answers as to why it happened. The knowledge that a friend of Claudia and her sister was pregnant with the child of her own father, suddenly ripped away all of their childhood innocence. They knew that men often get violent when they are drunk and that sometimes men, in blind despondency, commit mean and hateful acts – including rape. But neither Claudia nor her sister had ever seen anyone whose father had raped his own daughter.

They wished long and hard that the baby would be well and strong. In an attempt to help make this happen, they secretly planted some marigold seeds thinking that if the marigolds grew and bloomed, then maybe there would be hope for their friend’s baby. But they didn’t. Claudia has decided that the earth was suppressing the repulsive act of rape, letting people know a terrible atrocity had occurred and that people should realize that the absence of marigolds would be remembered as a symbol of this crime against nature.

3.      Critical Analysis

The Bluest Eye is an introspective novel of black consciousness, written in 1970 by Toni Morrison. The author grew up in Lorain, Ohio, not far from Cleveland.  She was deeply influenced by the authors William Faulkner, James Joyce, and Virginia Hamilton. She began writing books that she wanted to read; books that no one had written yet, while she worked as an editor at Random House. Her novel Song of Solomon received the Book Critics Circle Award for fiction; Beloved received the Pulitzer Prize. In 1993, she was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature.

The Bluest Eye takes place mostly in Lorain, Ohio although, the back-story of the primary character’s parents takes place in Georgia and Kentucky.  The primary story takes place from 1940 to 1941. The key characters include Pecola Breedlove; an exceedingly plain young black girl who is placed in the MacTeer home after her father accidentally and drunkenly burns the family house to the ground. Pauline Breedlove; Pecola’s mother who was left with a permanent limp after stepping on a nail when she was a child. Cholly Breedlove; Pecola’s father who was discarded and left to die on a pile of junk when he was only a few days old. Sammy Breedlove; Pecola’s brother who lives in perpetual dread of this father’s violence. Geraldine; a black woman striving for middle-class status. Louis, Jr; Geraldine’s son. Soaphead Church; a mixed-blood, eccentric, self-claimed faith healer whom Pecola seeks out, asking him to give her the miracle of blue eyes. And, Claudia MacTeer; the frame narrator of the novel.

The main themes of the novel include the need for a home, acceptance, and fantasy.  Pecola and both of her parents have felt abandoned and alone through most of the story; they long for a loving home.  The theme of acceptance also is a major thread of the story. Pecola does not feel love or belonging (acceptance) anywhere.  Her father ignores her, her mother pours more comfort into the daughter of the family for whom she keeps the house.  And, because she feels ugly due to the extreme blackness of her skin, she feels that even her friends don’t want her. The theme of fantasy runs through the novel.  Several characters live in the fantasy of a better life.  Pecola’s fantasy of having blue eyes is central to the story.  Her mother “plays house” by trying to make her siblings have a better life.  The MacTeer’s border, Mr. Henry watches his fantasy life in a motion picture.  Pecola’s father’s fantasies are triggered by alcohol when he imagines that Pecola is a younger version of his wife.  Soaphead Church imagines he’s of noble ancestry. Maureen Peel, the most popular girl in school, is the sexual fantasy of all the schoolboys.

            The main symbols of the novel include blue eyes, marigolds, Dick and Jane, a Shirley Temple Drinking Cup, and “two lynch ropes”.  To Pecola, blue eyes are a symbol of the seemingly perfect world of white people. She latches onto this idea from reading the primer picture books with the blue-eyed children, their loving family, fun pets, and near-perfect life. Pecola believes that if she had blue eyes, she would be pretty and others would love an accept her.  Geraldine had a prized black cat with blue eyes.  And, owning that cat made her feel special, classier and unique.  She blames Pecola for killing her cat and makes Pecola feel more unworthy of approval.  Marigolds are a hardy fall flower. Claudia feels that, since they generally grow easily, it is a sign when they can’t get the flowers to grow in the barren earth. This lack of fertility, she feels, is nature crying out against the violation of what parents can do to their children. Dick and Jane, the -white family in the books that were used to teach children to read, was worshiped by Pecola.  She feels that this is the family and life you get to lead if you have blue eyes. The Shirley Temple cup is the cup that Pecola gets to use at the MacTeer house.  Pecola drinks a lot of milk just so she can gaze at the blond-haired, blue-eyed image on the cup. Toni Morrison describes the character of Maureen as having her hair braided into ‘two lynched ropes’. The schoolchildren adore her for her ‘white looks’ and have been taught by their parents and Hollywood to value images with white-woman-coifed-hairdos. The MacTeer girls have better self-esteem and don’t see Maureen as their other classmates do.

            The novel is written from the vantage point of a frame narrator with Claudia MacTeer recounting the story after she is grown. Each section starts with sentences from the Dick and Jane primers.  She runs them all together in a dizzying effect. The sentences are repeated over and over as if Pecola is trying to memorize them and learn the secret of how to live in that fantasy world.  The sentences come a spiral and blue as Pecola herself spin into madness. The story is told through four seasons.  This structure is used to show the passage of time.  The seasons are used as section headers but don’t seem to be used to mean anything within the story.  The backstories of Pecola’s mother and father interrupt the flow of time as does the story of Geraldine’s cat. The seasons, as a passage of time, indicate how much a young girl’s life can change in such a short amount of time.

            The Bluest Eye was Toni Morrison’s first novel.  It started as a short story that Morrison read to members of a literary club at Howard.  Unlike most stories of the time, it was not about a brave black girl battling prejudice but about a victim and bias for light skin.  Morrison writes about racial harassment by her black schoolmates, family, and neighbors.  And, Pecola, who never protests or retaliates but is a victim and lets things happen all while hoping and believing that blue eyes would deliver her from her terror and squalor.  It is also a novel of survival.  Even though Pecola goes seemingly mad, she survives.  Her friend Claudia fights battles for her friend.  Pecola’s mother is also a survivor.  She endures years of abuse at her husband’s hands, and through a subservient job in order to provide, and in the end provides a home for Pecola who is unable to care for herself.  In Morrison’s story, the women survive and the men perish or run.

4.      Expert Reviews

-          Kirkus Review: “A skillfully understated tribute to the fall of a sparrow for whose small tragedy there was no watching eye.”

-          New York Times: “So precise, so faithful to speech and so charged with pain and wonder that the novel becomes poetry.”

-          Newsweek: “This story commands attention, for it contains one black girl’s universe.”

-          The Detroit Free Press: “A profoundly successful work of fiction. Taut and understated, harsh in its detachment, sympathetic in its truth…it is an experience.”

5.      Connections

Other books by Toni Morrison:

-          (1973). Sula. Knopf. ISBN 1400033438

-          (1977). Song of Solomon. Alfred Knopf, Inc. ISBN 140003342X

-          (1987). Beloved. Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. ISBN 1400033411

-          (2012). Home. Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. ISBN 0307594165

George by Alex Gino

George

by Alex Gino

Image Credit: George at alexgino.com

1. Bibliography

Gino, Alex. George. New York: Scholastic, 2015. ISBN 9780545812573

2. Plot Summary

When people look at George, they see a boy. But George knows she’s a girl. George thinks she’ll have to keep this a secret forever. Then her teacher announces that their class play is going to be Charlotte’s Web. George really, really, REALLY wants to play Charlotte. But the teacher says she can’t even try out for the part … because she’s a boy. With the help of her best friend Kelly, George comes up with a plan. Not just so she can be Charlotte – but so everyone can know who she is, once and for all. GEORGE is a candid, genuine, and heartwarming middle grade about a transgender girl who is, to use Charlotte’s word, R-A-D-I-A-N-T! (Summary Credit: George at alexgino.com)

3. Critical Analysis

George was an easy character with whom you can quickly relate because she is like any child you might meet. Gino does a good job taking us through several different stages of anxiety a transgender child has to go through. The book begins with George mistrusting who she is, how people see her while yearning to be who she feels. And when she finally feels brave enough, thanks to the help of her friend, Kelly, George admits to those who she hopes will care to listen: "I'm a girl." She pulls her confession deep from the pit of her heart, where readers had watched it simmer since chapter one, and presents it, first, to Kelly, her mother, and her older brother. And as she shows herself to others she must deal with evidence of disgust, rejection, bullying, and confusion. But George is able to find contentment in the acceptance she gains from those she loves. Her big brother, Scott has the ability to sense George's distress and attempt to cheer her up with video games paired with his typical teenage response to her admission ("Weird. But it kinda makes sense. No offense, but you don't make a very good boy."). George's mom struggles to understand her transgender daughter. There was no "Ah Ha" moment or hand-holding around the dinner table. There was rejection, frustration, trepidation for her child’s future, but, most importantly, always love. Kelly is the model "best friend" character. She was constantly happy for George and always supportive. And when George was mad and lashed out at poor Kelly due to her own feelings of hurt and frustration, it was understandable. They are kids, after all. There's a substantial section of the book where they're not speaking to each other and George is sad and lonely without her best friend. Yet, their make-up scene is incredibly short. Kelly quickly forgives George and is all excited and happy to help her again.  Since the setting is at home and school, it provides the opportunity to introduce classmates reactions to George’s coming out.  You see both the classic bully response like Jeff but also some positive reactions from classmates and cast mates.

Multicultural markers do not jump out at you like they do in some multicultural children’s literature; especially since this culture does not have its own celebrations, music, food or language. But, with that said, every time George refers to how hard it is to be a girl in a boy’s body, it is a cultural reference for the transgender community. The first such reference in the story is when George takes her stash of “girl” magazines in the bathroom to look at pictures of the girls she wishes she could be, brushes her hair down on her forehead like bangs and reads the articles on how to apply makeup. In class, she cries when Charlotte dies and her teacher calls her a “fine young man”. When George goes to the restroom to compose herself, the bathroom is blue (for boys) and at the end of the day, she has to line up in the boys' line. When it is time to audition for the school play, she admits to her friend that she wants to play Charlotte. When her friend says it should be alright because acting is pretending, George thinks “playing a girl part wouldn’t really be pretending” and when Kelly tells her that in Shakespeare’s day boys always played girls and even kissed on stage, this makes George tingle. Her mom calls her “Gee Gee”, she wears a towel under armpits after a bath and when they had to pick a color that represents them she wants to be pink. And, when she’s thinking in her head “what if I’m a girl”, Kelly is saying “it’s not like you want to be a girl.” When all the stress builds up and George has a really good cry she says she’s crying about crying in class about Charlotte dying, being mad at Kelly, Ms. Udell thinking that trying out for Charlotte was a joke and “crying about myself”.  When George’s mother finds her hidden magazines, her mother’s first reaction is, “I don’t want to find you wearing my clothes.”

When Scott is consoling George with video games; George plays with Toad but wishes he were the Princess (which she plays when she is alone).  Scott asks if George is having “Girl Problems?” After George gets in a fight and is called to the principal’s office, the principal has a rainbow flag and George gets the first inkling that she has allies.  One of the reason’s George wants to play Charlotte is so that her mom finally sees that she is a girl.  When Kelly finally calls her a girl, George feels a tickling in her stomach.  And, after she tells her brother he said he thought George was “like that” and that George finally made sense to him for the first time.  At the end of the play, George felt that even though Charlotte was dead, she felt alive in a way she had never imagined and at the curtain call she curtsied.  After the play, the principal tells her mother “you can’t control who your children are, but you can certainly support them.”  When George gets back to her room she twirled around and around like a spider dancing in a web.  Kelly gets the idea to take George to the zoo as “best girlfriends” and George becomes Melissa.  We find out that when George was young she was caught wearing moms skirt and that she always wanted to be a ballerina.  After she gets dressed up at Kelly’s house, she looked in the mirror and gasped and Melissa gasped back at her. When Kelly pulls out a bucket of shoes, George says that she didn’t know that Kelly was such a girly girl. And, her uncles comments that “you girls are dressed mighty fancy for the zoo.”  At which, a wave of warmth filled Melissa from deep in her belly and out her fingers and toes.

I greatly endorse George to book lovers of all ages. With its plain writing style, it is much easier to relate to the emotions of the characters. Nothing is overstated or exaggerated to impart a message. Alex Gino delivers a great story that both warms the heart and opens the mind. I only wish that George was required or suggested reading in many schools. 

4. Review Experts

~Stonewall Award

~Kirkus Reviews: “George, a fourth-grader who knows she is a girl, despite appearances, begins to tell her secret. The word “transgender” is used midway through, but far more work is done by the simple choice to tell George’s story using third-person narration and the pronouns “she” and “her.” Readers then cringe as much as George herself when bullies mock her or—perhaps worse—when well-meaning friends and family reassure her with sentiments like “I know you’ll turn into a fine young man.” Each year the fourth-graders at George’s school perform a dramatized version of Charlotte’s Web, the essentials of which are lovingly recapped (and tear-inducing ending revealed) for readers unfamiliar with the tale. George becomes convinced that if she plays Charlotte, her mom will finally see her as a girl. George’s struggles are presented with a light, age-appropriate, and hopeful touch. The responses she gets when she begins to confide in those closest to her are at times unexpected but perfectly true-to-character—most notably her crude older brother’s supportive observation that, “No offense, but you don’t make a very good boy.” A coda to Charlotte’s Web story, in which George presents herself as a girl for the first time, is deeply moving in its simplicity and joy. Warm, funny, and inspiring.”

~School Library Journal: “Melissa is like many other fourth-grade girls; she loves fashion magazines, experimenting with hairstyles, and talking with her best friend. But the outside world sees her as the gender to which she was born, not the one with which she identifies; they see her as George. Nailing the younger middle-grade voice, Gino offers a straightforward and authentic story, crafting a character whose universal need for recognition and acceptance will be embraced by all readers.”

5. Connections

Gather for classroom reading, the follow-on book by Alex Gino:

            You Don’t Know Everything, Jilly P! ISBN 0545956242

Read other winners of the Stonewall Award, these might include:

            Colbert, Brandy. Little & Lion. ISBN 0316349003

            Slater, Dashka. The 57 Bus: A True Story of Two Teenagers and the Crime That Changed Their Lives. ISBN 0374303231

            Riordan, Rick. Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard: The Hammer of Thor. ISBN 1423163389

            Charlton-Trujillo, e.E. Fat Angie. ISBN 9780763680190

            Cronn-Mills, Kirstin. Beautiful Music for Ugly Children. ISBN 9780738732510

Read other books with similar themes, these could include:

            Ewret, Marcus. 10,000 Dresses. ISBN 1583228500

            Polonsky, Ami. Gracefully Grayson. ISBN 1484723651

Palacio, R.J. Wonder. ISBN 0375969020

Use in a unit about bullying and allies

Habibi by Naomi Shihab Nye

Habibi

by Naomi Shihab Nye

Image Credit: Habibi at kirkusreview.com

1. Bibliography

Nye, Naomi Shihab. Habibi. New York: Simon Pulse, 1997. ISBN 0689825234

2. Plot Summary

This soul-stirring novel about the Abbouds, an Arab American family, puts faces and names to the victims of violence and persecution in Jerusalem today. Believing the unstable situation in that conflict-ridden city has improved, 14-year-old Liyana's family moves from St. Louis, Mo., to her father's homeland. However, from the moment the Abbouds are stopped by Jewish customs agents at the airport, they face racial prejudice and discord. Initially, Nye focuses on the Abbouds' handling of conflicting cultural norms between American and Arab values as they settle into their new home. Then Liyana tests her family's alleged unprejudiced beliefs when she befriends Omer, a Jewish boy. She wants to introduce him to her but finds she must first remind him of his own words. (Summary Credit: A Boy and a Jaguar at publishersweekly.com)

3. Critical Analysis

The main character of Habibi is Liyana Abboud, a 14-year-old American girl whose family moves from St. Louis to Israel.  Liyana is a typical American teenager who has to learn how to live in a new culture foreign to her own.  Other characters in the story are mostly her family, immediate and extended; her father Dr. Kamal Abboud (Poppy), her mother (Susan the Arabs call soo-sun) and her younger brother.  Her father was raised in Israel and has fond memories of the “way it used to be”.  Her younger brother is young enough that he is more adaptable to his new environment.  The primary extended family character is Sitti (grandmother in Arabic).  She doesn’t speak any English but Liyana is able to connect through cooking and other chores her Sitti teaches her.  The rest are mostly referred to in a huge crowd that Liyana describes as “burst into the room, bustling, hugging, pinching cheeks, and jabbering loudly” or “trilling wildly”. The setting is mostly Jerusalem and the nearby Palestine village.  Locations mentioned help paint the picture of the setting. Towns mentioned include Ramallah, Mecca, Jericho, and Hebron. Sites that the family visit in Jerusalem include the Doors of Jerusalem, Church of Holy Sepulcher, Chapel of Calvary, Garden of Gethsemane, Via Dolorosa, Wailing Wall, Dome of the Rock, Damascus Gate, Herod’s Gate, Jaffa Gate, New Gate, Lion’s Gate (St. Stephen’s Gate), the Dung Gate, Kfar Kana Church, and Hisham’s Palace.  Other locations in the story are Liyana’s Armenian school of St. Tarkmanchatz, Dead Sea, Al-Makassad Hospital and the Jorden River.

There are many other cultural references and of many cultures; Palestine, Jewish, and Bedouin. A lot of the Palestine references come from Poppy and Sitti.  Poppy tells his children that they should know both sides of their history, he recounts stories of coming to America and thinking hot dogs were made of dog meat and that shiny trash cans were mailboxes. He tells Liyana that Arab women don’t wear shorts and she should comb her hair in private.  And, to explain why she needs to be a proper young lady he tells the story of a guy found kisses a girl who was beaten up by the girl’s brothers.  He speaks of “old anger” in Jerusalem and he is glad that Palestinians had a “public voice” again. He recounts a tale of being lowered into the village well as a child and finding secret shelves and shallow corridors dug into its sides above water level; on the shelf are ancient clay jars probably from before biblical times. Poppy tells the kids that Sitti’s stories have no logical sense of cause and effect and that in this part of the world the past and present are often rolled into one. Sitti wears old-fashioned long dresses and a smoky scarf. She tells Liyana that if a bird pooped on clean white sheets it is bad luck but if a bird pooped on your head then your first baby would be a boy. She says that her cold feet meant she would live longer. Sitti asked that when she died for Poppy to give money to the poor, the gravedigger and the women who washed her body and to leave space so she could sit up in the grave and talk to angels.

One of the first cultural references Liyana runs into is a woman on the planes traveling with Jell-O boxes, paper napkins, and coffee filters and Liyana questions whether you could get these things in Jerusalem. Liyana notices and experiences many new things in her new home: women soldiers, back of a women’s hands tattooed with the dark blue shapes of flying birds, people kissing on both cheeks, gold bangle bracelets, a shoemaker, a butcher with live chickens in cages, clotheslines on flat roofs, signs in Arabic, Hebrew and English, diesel exhaust, military checkpoints, orchards, minarets, olive trees, long cloaks, sitting on the floor, women carrying water from the spring on their head, arranged marriage, chicken pens, yarmulkes, oriental rugs, henna, gravestones with no words, olive oil soap, reading fortunes in the tea leaves, an antique scale, paper cone to pour things in a paper bag, sitting straight up in the salt of the Dead Sea, Israeli military tanks, cedar trees, a funeral procession (with an open coffin), donkeys, shepherd in dusty brown cloak, and a refugee camp. The Bedouins live in tents and own a camel.  And, one of the shops has the Hindu elephant Ganesha.

Liyana learns a lot of Arabic and these words are used throughout the story.  Some of the Arabic words include: booza (ice cream), kaffiyehs (male headwear), muezzin (person who gives the call to prayer), taboon (mounded oven where you slap bread dough), marhaba (hello), Ana Liyana (I am Liyana), Yimkin (maybe), nos-nos (half-half), Alham’dul-Allah (Praise be to God), wahad, min-fadlack (one, please), shookran, fidda (silver), urjawaani (purple), and souk (marketplace).  Character names are also Arabic and include: Liyana, Rafik, Kamal, Sitti, Tayeb the Elder, Fayed, Fowzi, Muna, Saba (means morning), Abu Mahmoud, Amal, Muhammad, Hamza, Zaki, Abu Janan (means father of Janan), Imm Janan, Ismael, Khaled, Kevork, Babgen Bannayan, Mr. Bedrosian  and the Hebrew name Omer. Foods eaten are from this region of the world.  Some of the food items mentioned include: round flatbread, maramia (tea), baked lamb, soupy yogurt drink, lentils, olives, baba ghanouj, hummus, baklava, roasted peanuts, pomegranate, almonds, sumac, hot tea with mint, pumpkin seeds, falafel, chickpeas, the spice saffron, dates, pistachio, katayef (pancake stuffed with cinnamon and nut, soaked in syrup), olive oil, and apricot. The extended family celebrates the Abboud’s arrival in Jerusalem with the killing of a lamb in their honor, red lanterns and shooting guns in the air. And, there is some mentioned of Muslim religious practices.  They mention the mosque, small blue prayer rugs, the call to prayer and a pilgrimage to Mecca.

4. Review Experts

~ ALA Best Book for Young Adults

~ALA Notable Children’s Book

~Kirkus Reviews: “Liyana Abboud, 14, and her family make a tremendous adjustment when they move to Jerusalem from St. Louis. All she and her younger brother, Rafik, know of their Palestinian father's culture come from his reminiscences of growing up and the fighting they see on television. In Jerusalem, she is the only "outsider'' at an Armenian school; her easygoing father, Poppy, finds himself having to remind her--often against his own common sense--of rules for "appropriate'' behavior; and snug shops replace supermarket shopping--the malls of her upbringing are unheard of. Worst of all, Poppy is jailed for getting in the middle of a dispute between Israeli soldiers and a teenage refugee. In her first novel, Nye (with Paul Janeczko, I Feel a Little Jumpy around You, 1996, etc.) shows all of the charms and flaws of the old city through unique, short-story-like chapters and poetic language. The sights, sounds, and smells of Jerusalem drift through the pages and readers glean a sense of current Palestinian-Israeli relations and the region's troubled history. In the process, some of the passages become quite ponderous while the human story- -Liyana's emotional adjustments in the later chapters and her American mother's reactions overall--fall away from the plot. However, Liyana's romance with an Israeli boy develops warmly, and readers are left with hope for change and peace as Liyana makes the city her very own.”

~Publishers Weekly: “Nye expertly combines the Abbouds' gradual acceptance of Omer with a number of heart-wrenching episodes of persecution (by the different warring factions) against her friends and family to convey the extent to which the Arab-Israeli conflict infiltrates every aspect of their lives. Nye's climactic ending will leave readers pondering, long after the last page is turned, why Arabs, Jews, Greeks, and Armenians can no longer live in harmony the way they once did.”

5. Connections

Gather for classroom reading, other books by Naomi Shihab Nye, these could include:

            19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East. ISBN 9780060504045

            The Turtle of Oman. ISBN 0062019783

            Going, Going. ISBN 0688161855

Read other books with similar themes, these might include:

Abdel-Fattah, Randa. Does My Head Look Big in This? ISBN 0439919479

Budhos, Marina. Ask Me No Questions. ISBN 1416949208

Dau, John Bul. Lost Boy, Lost Girl: Escaping Civil War in Sudan. ISBN 9781426307089

Robert, Na’ima B. Far From Home. ISBN 9781847800060

Ho, Minfong. The Stone Goddess. ISBN 0439381975

Use with a unit discussing different religions

Use in a unit about the Middle East