Amara Goodman
Dr. Warner
English 112B
May 19, 2005
Diversity is fundamental to the "melting pot" notion, especially as it refers to American culture. We are unmistakably a multicultural nation. The diverse multicultural make-up on the national level is reflected in many classrooms. "If these multicultural classrooms exist, then a multicultural approach to literature in the secondary English classroom is essential because it can foster a self-worth and motivation in students of diverse cultural backgrounds that was not present before"(Leon 2002). The inclusion of multicultural literature into the canon is not only important for fostering a sense of self worth for the students of diverse cultural backgrounds, but it also provides students who may otherwise not live in diverse settings the opportunity to expand their sense of value and worth to marginalized groups.
As history testifies, groups and the individuals within these groups, be they ethnic, racial, religious or gender based, can focus either on the differences between the groups, which fosters intolerance and violence, or upon the similarities, which fosters harmonious coexistence. Fear is an incredibly seductive force that generates hate and violence. When one group does not know about the "other" or has fear that the "other" will take away what the group considers to be their own, usually resources such as land and jobs which are markers of social status, the group will feel hatred toward the other group or individual.
Literature has the power to become a great equalizer, in that it has the potential to bring the reader into an intimate association with the "other." While the characters of fiction have realistic attributes, nevertheless, unlike the "characters" of non-fiction, particularly the protagonist in an autobiography or memoir, they are unreal. The actual existence of the protagonist or narrator brings about a tangible association between the reader and protagonist that can influence and have a practical effect on the readers' relationships in his or her life.
In continuing discussions with her students about world-views, global awareness and immigration issues, Professor Klein will hear comments like, "Well why do people from other parts of the world come here?" "Why don't they learn the language and get the skills they need to secure a job?" Introducing multicultural nonfiction into students' curriculum, forces them to explore their own biases, experiences with diversity, sense of cultural and linguistic awareness as well as their threshold of tolerance (Kiein 2004). Moreover, as a result of reading multicultural nonfiction literature, specifically an autobiography or memoir, students not only come to discover why it is that so many people immigrate to the United States, but through the association forged between the reader and author, these students inevitably come to empathize with the protagonist. As the reader is placed in the authors' situation, he or she will merge his or her identity with that of the protagonist. This exchange of identity causes the reader to directly experience the similarities between him or herself and the protagonist. The "other" no longer remains the "other." In fact, through the art and magic of literature the "other" becomes inseparable from the reader.
I have included an extensive, but by no means exhaustive annotated bibliography, specifically focusing on multicultural autobiographies, biographies and memoirs. Inspired by My Forbidden Face, Latifa's informative and deeply moving personal account of the Taliban, I sought books that would unveil lives of hardship as well as celebrate the triumph of the human spirit This annotated bibliography covers a range of cultures and time periods in order to emphasize the universal similarities that define humanity. When we can experience our commonalities through the vehicle of multicultural literature we can transcend our fear-based discriminatory practices and truly embrace diversity.
Works Cited
De Le�n, Leticia. "Multicultural Literature: Reading to Develop Self-Worth." Multicultural Education 10.2 (Winter 2002): 49-51.
Kiein, Ana. "Narrative History in the College Classroom: Re-Contextualizing Multicultural Issues through Close Re-Reading of Juvenile Literature." Multicultural Education 12.2 (Winter 2004): 51-54.
Annotated Bibliography:
Multicultural Nonfiction: Autobiography, Biography and the Memoir
1. Chang, Pang-Mei. Bound Feet and Western Dress. New York: Doubleday. 1998.
In this thoughtfully written dual memoir, the author explores the differences in cultures between her Chinese great-aunt and herself as a Chinese-American. Chang Yu-i was born in China in 1903, when a woman was considered nothing. It was during the time of bound feet, concubines, and arranged marriages. Chang Yu-i escaped having her feet bound, but not the arrangement of her marriage to a stranger. Her husband was a scholar, ashamed of being married to a country girl. He shunted her off to the countryside where he would visit her on weekends only to keep the families happy. After several years, they divorced, an unheard-of event in China at that time. Chang Yu-i had the support of her brothers, though, and with their help became educated. She had an ear for languages and learned to speak several of them. This was a woman who always found a way to improve herself without neglecting her familial duties. She trained to be a kindergarten teacher, became vice-president of the Shanghai Women's Savings Bank and manager of a clothing store. She moved to the U.S. in 1974 to be with her brothers who had immigrated years before. She died in 1989 at age 88. The grandniece nicely contrasts her life with that of her great-aunt. She details the freedoms she had as a child growing up in America with the hardships of her relative. Fortunately, most of the story concentrates on Chang Yu-i, because her life is so much more fascinating than that of her great-niece, who lived a typical middle-class American childhood. Anyone studying China would find this book a valuable resource. It brings the history and customs of a country alive in a personal way. The author shows candidly and sometimes brutally the effects these customs can have on a family and, especially, on one tender young girl.
Royal, Dorothy. 32.2. Kliatt. (March
1998).
2. Collins, Aukai. My Jihad: the True Story of an American Mujahid's Amazing Journey from Usama Bin Laden's Training Camps to Counterterrorism with the FBI and CIA.Conn.: Lyons Press.2002.
Collins is an angry man. He grew up in America and suffered from neglect from addicted parents. While in juvenile lockup. He was converted to Islam and re-entered the world searching to find ways to fight for Moslems and fight his jihad. He is a devout Moslem who also loves guns and warriors. (As I read his story, I was reminded of the more famous American Taliban. John Walker Lind--believe me, Aukai Collins is no John Walker Lindh, a suburban kid, idealistic, scholarly.) Collins is an angry kid from the streets, a gangster, really, who found a way to channel his anger in jihad. His great desire to fight for Islam took him to training camps in Osama bin Laden's Afghanistan. and it took him to fight in Chechnya. He speaks Arabic, lost a leg, has a wife in Arizona and some children with her; he also fell in love with a woman in Chechnya who had his child, but who was lost to him, After 9/11, is Aukai Collins a man the FBI and the CIA could use to gain intelligence for them? He volunteered his services and much of this book details the work he prepared to do but was thwarted in carrying out--by his account because of the idiocy of the bureaucrats. It does make a riveting story. If his tale is accurate, it's scary to think we are putting our trust in such bumbling institutions.
This is a rough account, filled with violent deeds and indeed violent thoughts. However, it is fascinating in its own way, and offers readers some idea of how a religious fanatic evolves.
Rosser, Claire. Kliatt. 37.4 (July 2003): 38.
3. Delman, Carmit. Burnt Bread and Chutney: Growing Up Between Cultures: A Memoir of an Indian Jewish Girl. New York: One World. 2002.
In the politics of skin
color, Carmit Delman is an ambassador from a world of which few are even aware.
Her mother is a direct descendant of the Bene Israel, a tiny, ancient community
of Jews thriving amidst the rich cultural tableau of Western India. Her father
is American, a Jewish man of Eastern European descent. They met while working
the land of a nascent Israeli state. Bound by love for each other and that
newborn country, they hardly took notice of the interracial aspect of their
union. But their daughter, Carmit, growing up in America, was well aware of her
uncommon heritage.
Burnt Bread and Chutney is a remarkable
synthesis of the universal and the exotic. Carmit Delman's memories of the
sometimes painful, sometimes pleasurable, often awkward moments of her
adolescence juxtapose strikingly with mythic tales of her female ancestors
living in the Indian-Jewish community. As rites and traditions, smells and
textures intertwine, Carmit's unique cultural identity evolves. It is a youth
spent dancing on the roofs of bomb shelters on a kibbutz in Israel-and the
knowledge of a heritage marked by arranged marriages and archaic rules and
roles. It is coming of age in Jewish summer camps and at KISS concerts-and the
inevitable combination of old and new: ancient customs and modern attitudes,
Jewish, Indian, and American.
Carmit Delman's journey through religious traditions, family tensions, and
social tribulations to a healthy sense of wholeness and self is rendered with
grace and an acute sense of depth. Burnt Bread and Chutney is a rich and innovative book that opens wide a previously
unseen world.
http://www.amazon.com
4. Dumas, Firoozeh. Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing up Iranian in America. New York: Villard.2003.
Dumas first came to the
U.S. from Iran in the early '70s when her father was sent to California on a
two-year contract from the National Iranian Oil Company. Her family soon
discovered that his presumed skill in English was basically limited to
"vectors, surface tension and fluid mechanics." In short, humorous
vignettes, the author recounts their resulting difficulties and Americans'
almost total ignorance of Iran, illustrating the kindness of people and her
father's absolute love of this country. After a brief return to Iran, they came
back. This time, however, they were mistrusted and vilified, as a result of the
Iranian hostage crisis. Her father lost his job and was forced to sell most of
their possessions. Even this harsh treatment didn't diminish his love for the
U.S., and they later reestablished themselves, though with a lower standard of
living. Throughout, Dumas writes with a light touch, even when, after having
been flown to DC by the state department to welcome the shah, they faced death
threats and had to leave town. Her descriptions of American culture and her
experiences with school, TV, and language (she was once called "Fritzy
DumbAss" by a receptionist) could be the observations of anyone new to
this country, and her humor allows natives and nonnatives alike to look at
America with new insight.
5. Godden, Jon, and Rumer Godden. Two Under the Indian Sun. New York: Knopf.1966.
The authors state that this autobiographical account of the five years they spent in Narayanguji, now Bangladesh, is "an evocation of a time that is gone, a few years that will always be timeless for us." Adult perspectives and childhood memories inevitably intermingle as they provide a delightful account of their lives in British India from 1914-1919. The autobiography is organized into individual chapters that recount experiences in connection with a single aspect of their lives. The Goddens, thus, give interesting details of their father's work in a shipping company, servants' lives and their duties in the household, the bazaars, school, summer trips to hill stations, and British friends and parties. Their adult distance is particularly apparent in "Cain" where they focus on poverty, cruelty, and tragedy. Although they lived modestly compared to other Britishers, they experienced only the laughter, wonder, and variety of their daily routine. An evocation of the atmosphere around their house at daybreak when the call of the muezzin awakened plants, birds and humans and the beautiful descriptions of the Sundarbans poignantly express the young girls' communion with the soil of Bengal.
Khorana, Meena. The Indian Subcontinent in Literature for Children and Young Adults: An Annotated Bibliography of English Language Books. CT: Greenwood Press.1991.
6. Haing, Ngor. Cambodian Odyssey. New York: Macmillan. 1987.
Haing Ngor survived the killings fields of Cambodia's brutal Pol Pot dictatorship, but he did not survive the streets of Los Angeles. Born in 1947 (some sources give different years) in a farming village south of Phnom Penh, his earliest impressions of Cambodia were of a beautiful, peaceful land. He was still a boy, however, when civil war came.
As Ngor relates in his autobiography, Haing Ngor: A Cambodian Odyssey, a childhood experience of being harassed by soldiers while trying to take his mother to the doctor gave young Ngor the ambition of helping his people by becoming a physician. Although coming from a poor agricultural family, he went to live in a temple with Buddhist monks, and later pursued his medical education. Having obtained his degree, he set up an obstetrics-gynecology clinic in Phnom Penh, and served as a Cambodian army doctor.
In 1987 Ngor co-authored an autobiography, A Cambodian Odyssey, with journalist Roger Warner. It unsparingly told of Ngor's experiences. Reviewing the audio book version, KLIATT contributor Pat Dole commented on the "incredible horrors" its author had gone through. Library Journal reviewer Peter Josyph stated, "This highly compelling account . . . of cruel, sadistic oppression masquerading as ideology and should be heard in full by anyone who cares about freedom," and added that its importance is so great, any collection should contain it in order to be complete. Ngor, in a 1985 interview with People, had summed up his post-Khmer Rouge experience with this comment about his Killing Fields performance: "I wanted to show the world how deep starvation is in Cambodia, how many people die under Communist regime. My heart is satisfied. I have done something perfect."
http://0-galenet.galegroup.com
7. Jiang, Ji-li. Red Scarf Girl: a Memoir of the Cultural Revolution. New York: Harper Collins. 1997.
Jiang's story is immediate, captivating and brings readers directly into the world of twentieth century China under Communist rule, a country seldom explored for children--and never before explored to such effect. It's not so much that we are in the mysterious East, but that the assumptions for life under Chairman Mao are so different. Twelve-year-old Ji-Li is a happy child, surrounded by loving family, doing well in school, with friends and the respect of her classmates. The Cultural Revolution and the expurgation of "Four olds"--the traditions and thoughts of earlier capitalistic times--gradually seeps into her life to devastating effect. It is not only that Ji-Li and her family are labeled a bad class, due to their grandfather's having been a landlord, but that there is no way out of the injustices that rain down upon them. The descent and destruction are gradual. We start with a pretty picture of life; the renting of picture books at a kiosk is particularly vivid. The new rules and the way they reach into every corner of Ji-Li's family life unfolds until it seems there is nothing left. What is left, however, is a resilience and strength of spirit that unfair persecution cannot stamp out. The author is telling her own story and knows what needs to be explained. She deftly avoids an emphasis on the cultural details that would distance readers. Instead, she offers us her characters, human and vivid, their suffering painfully understandable, even as the basic assumptions of life are revealed as being so strange and opposed to our own, It is this capacity that is particularly valuable. At almost every turn, we listen to the thoughts and struggles of Ji-Li to accommodate her respect and fervor for Chairman Mao and the Cultural Revolution while it is clearly delineated that there is no possibility of justice for her. The supporting cast is not shown in black and white terms, or perhaps one should say, red and black. It is clear that for some of the persecutors there is a vengeful and spiteful quality to their deeds, while others seem genuinely convinced that these horrors are necessary steps to rid the country of capitalistic evils. This fair-handed approach increases the intensity of the memoir. Jiang is not painting a biased picture full of propaganda, but simply recounting events and their consequences. Seemingly simple, this account brings readers face to face with understanding the way every society has assumptions about choices and values. You can't help wondering why the reactions common in the West simply do not occur to anyone there. Just as the Cultural Revolution was possible because of the things people in China valued and believed, so is our own society built on definite assumptions. We are products of the way we are brought up. We may be unaware of exactly what we regard as possible or good, but looking hard at Ji-Li's struggles brings up to the surface our own very different outlook on life. Jiang's memoir changes the way we see the world and ourselves.
Edwards, Carol .The Five Owls. 12.1
(September/October 1997).
8. Kpomassie, Tete-Michel. An African in Greenland. New York: The New Yorker Reviewer of Books.1981.
A chance encounter with a picture book about Greenland inspires the young Tete-Michel Kpomassie to embark on a life-changing journey that would last ten years. Leaving his native Togo, he travels to the Ivory Coast, Senegal, Mauritania, Paris, and Copenhagen before reaching his ultimate destination. The author's distinctly African voice and perspective create a narrative that is refreshingly free of Western assumptions and prejudices. Readers witness innumerable culture clashes between the African and Inuit cultures, as well as occasional surprising similarities. A New York Times Notable Book.
9. Latifa. My Forbidden Face: Growing Up Under the Taliban: A Young Woman's Story. New York: Hyperion, 2001.
My Forbidden Face is a rare and uncensored memoir of a young Afghani woman. Born into a world of warfare, Latifa gives testimony to life under the Soviet military intervention and evacuation, civil war and the siege by the Taliban. The future is bleak and the country becomes imprisoned under the Taliban. Latifa finds herself, like all other women, essentially under house arrest. Her words graphically retell the cruelty of the Taliban and take us where no cameras have ever ventured. Can her family stay intact in a country that is falling apart? This is a story that attests to the triumph of the human spirit. Even in the fulcrum of atrociousness and horror, the precious dignity found in the human spirit cannot be forbidden or destroyed.
10. Malvern Gladys. Dancing Star: The Story of Anna Pavlova. New York: Messner. 1942.
The book begins with young Anna's first trip to the Marinsky Theater, where she is inspired to become a dancer. After mush insistence, she is, at the age of eight, finally taken to the ballet school in St. Petersburg where she is told she must wait until she is ten years old to be admitted. The story goes on to tell of the young dreamer's admission to the school, of her progress and dreams to be great, and of her selection to play a small role in a play immediately upon graduation, a most exceptional occurrence. Her performances and love of dancing are brought to life as her greatness continues to develop and she is declared a "prima ballerina." She becomes one of the first Russian ballerinas to travel throughout Europe; and after a performance in London is touched by the comments of a hotel maid, who explains her extremely avid and warm reception by the poor of London as their way of expressing their gratitude for "taking the pain and misery out of their lives, at least for a few hours." This becomes the driving force for her dancing. This drive is exemplified in the excruciating demands she puts not only upon herself but upon her whole company as well. The author brings out these personal traits through dialogues and personal events in the life of the ballerina. The book indicates that the talent and hard work combined made Anna Pavlova the great dancer she was. Sparse black-and-white drawings enliven the text.
Povsic, Frances. The Soviet Union in Literature for Children and Young Adults: An Annotated Bibliography of English-Language Books. CT: Greenwood Press.1991.
11. Mehta, Ved. Vedi. New York: Oxford University Press. 1982.
A well-known Indian writer, Ved Mehta narrates the story of four years of his life from 1937-1941, when at the age of five he was sent to they Dadar School for the blind in Bombay. Mehta's style is touching not because he tries to evoke pity or sympathy for himself, but because he narrates his experiences in an honest and matter-of-fact manner. Readers' emotions are engaged by the marked difference in the material circumstances of a pampered child from a wealthy and educated family who is sent to a school two days' journey away to study and live with blind orphans and beggars from the streets of Bombay. Even though young Vedi was treated as a special student, he was exploited by the other children, the sighted school master of the boys' dormitory, and the principal's wife. The cruelty of the streetwise blind students is reminiscent of Dickens' novels; yet, Vedi endured all indignities because he did not want to end up like a beggar. His years in Bombay were valuable because he formed strong bonds with the other children, especially with the partially-sighted Deoji who became his protector; he learned to become independent by taking care of his personal needs; and he did well in English, mathematics, geography, and braille.
As Mehta recreates these years of his early childhood, he inserts his adult perspective to clarify and give additional information on the incidents and people associated with the school. He acknowledges that the formative years at the Dadar School sparked his ambition to study at the Perkins Institute in the United States.
Khorana, Meena. The Indian Subcontinent in Literature for Children and Young Adults: An Annotated Bibliography of English Language Books. CT: Greenwood Press.1991.
12. Norbu, Thubten Jigme, and Heinrich Harrer. Tibet is My Country. New York: Dutton.1961.
The autobiography of Thubten Jigme Norbu, eldest brother of the present Dalai Lama, as told to his friend Heinrich Harrer, is a touching portrait of a young monk's life. Norbu, who is the reincarnation of a famous monk, vividly describes his happy childhood as a simple farmer's son before he left home at the age of eight to begin monastic training. With simplicity and feeling Norbu recounts his pangs of separation from family and village and his yearning to be reunited with them. Interspersed with this account of his life is valuable information on Tibetan culture, history, and Buddhism. As a brother of the Dalai Lama and Abbot of one of the biggest and most important monasteries in Tibet, Norbu's personal experiences reflect the rapidly deteriorating and hopeless political situation in Tibet. Subjected to severe persecution and indoctrination by the representatives of Red China in Tibet, Norbu voluntarily went into exile in 1950 and worked on behalf of Tibetan refugees. The overwhelming impression one gets of Norbu is his humanity and gentle and modest personality.
Khorana, Meena. The Indian Subcontinent in Literature for Children and Young Adults: An Annotated Bibliography of English Language Books. CT: Greenwood Press.1991.
13. Shehadeh, Raja. Strangers in the House: Coming of Age in Occupied Palestine. Vt.: Penguin. 2002.
On the cover is a photograph of Raja as a student at the American University of Beirut in 1971. This memoir he has written is subtitled "coming of age," but in fact this is an intricate, complex autobiography that may appeal to only those YAs with a serious interest in Palestine and Israel. Raja was born several years after his family left Jaffa when Israel became an independent state in 1948. He grew up in Ramallah (so often in the news today) on the West Bank, with his father (educated in England) working as a lawyer. In the war of 1967, when the Israeli army occupied the West Bank, Raja's father saw then that the solution would be to establish two parallel states--Israel and Palestine. This position caused him to be considered a traitor by other Palestinians and the greater Arab world, for compromising with the Israelis. Raja too was educated as a lawyer in England and returned to live in the occupied territories, working at his father's law firm. But the two men didn't agree, and the struggle of father and son becomes the central story of this memoir. The father felt that Raja should marry and have a family and continue with rather safe legal work in the family firm. In fact, Raja established a human rights group, El Haq, and monitored the torture and ill treatment of Palestinian prisoners by the Israeli military. In this way, he continued the struggle, even after his father was murdered.
Although this is as much about fathers and sons as it is about the politics of an exceedingly complex region, it is poignantly about loss, as the Palestinians since 1948 have increasingly lost more and more of their land and their autonomy. There is so much sadness and hopelessness in this one family's story, and events in our daily headlines tell us of endless more sorrow experienced by so many families living in that place.
Rosser, Claire. Kliatt.37.4 (July 2003): 40-41.
14. Taring, Rinchen Dolma. Daughter of Tibet. London: Murray.1970.
In a narrating the story of her life and her aristocratic ancestry, Taring provides a detailed account of the history, feudal system, religion, and culture of Tibet prior to the Chinese invasion in 1950. Details of their elaborate home and lifestyle, western schooling in Darjeeling, India, three marriages, and official appointments and trip to China are simply, yet eloquently described. She also gives a straightforward and honest account of the close relationship between Church and State, the conspiracy against her father, and the government's suspicion against her family for being open-minded and friendly with the British. Taring's account of the Chinese invasion, genocide, and the Dalai Lama's escape is all the more poignant because it is given from the perspective of one who is not bitter or emotionally anguished, but of one who is forgiving even though her own children and grandchildren were left behind in Tibet. Like thousands of noblemen and common folk, Taring followed the Dalai Lama into India where her life as a social worker caring for refugee children was built on hopes for the future. The resilience and strength of Taring's nature is symbolic of the calm dignity with which Tibetans have collectively faced and adjusted to their suffering. Their mission is to preach the love and peace of Buddha by trying to achieve desirelessness and liberation from the illusion in their daily conduct.
Khorana, Meena. The Indian Subcontinent in Literature for Children and Young Adults: An Annotated Bibliography of English Language Books. CT: Greenwood Press.1991.
15. Tate, Sonsyrea. Little X: Growing Up in the Nation of Islam. San Francisco: Harper.1997
From her childhood in the sixties through her early teens, Tate was reared and educated as a "Little X" in Washington, D.C.'s Nation of Islam community. This is her account of growing up in a strict, proud, complex religion that molded yet challenged her identity. At Washington's Nation-run University of Islam, Tate attended Muslim Girls' Training classes, learning to sew and be a good wife, and regular classes that taught her reading, math, science (at a more advanced level than public school students), and that "black people, especially the few...chosen for the Nation of Islam, would rule the world." When she was nine the Nation closed its school, and Tate was enrolled in public school. "[It was like] moving to another country, adjusting to a culture and philosophy we had been trained to despise," she writes. Later, Tate, her parents, and her siblings would leave the Nation to become Orthodox Muslims, a conversion sparked by Elijah Muhammad's death; the organization's restructuring; and the hypocrisies and confusion of faith that pervaded Tate's family. But the Nation had stirred in Tate a sense of determination, and a desire to make her own decisions. By her last year in school, she was a self-motivated, independent thinker seeking her own choices about faith and worship, and considering a career in journalism. This autobiography is composed of segments of Tate's life, and after a few jumps, it flows smoothly. The people in Tate's life are not fully exposed, but each is drawn well enough for readers to get a true sense of how they helped shape the author. Little X will ring true for YAs growing up in religious communities with fundamentalist beliefs--Muslim or otherwise.
Powell, Faye. VOYA. 20.4 (October 1997)
16. Vega, Marta Moreno. When the Spirits Dance Mambo: Growing Up Nuyorican in El Barrio. New York: Three Rivers Press. 2004.
"Cotito" was the favorite of her grandmother, a high priestess of the Yoruba religion, whom she helped tend her altar. She accompanied Abuela to the botanica in East Harlem and witnessed the occasional possession by spirits. As she grew older, Vega found that these traditions could suffocate as well as nurture. Her parents' acceptance of machismo led to a double standard in the treatment of brother Chachito and his sisters. Mami, a trained nurse, was not to work outside the home because such women "get ideas" and cheat on their husbands. When she disobeyed, Papi's anger and violence were said to be the result of his love. Cotito silently decided that she didn't want such a love, just as she refused to lie to cover for her brother's philandering. Racism was found in the outside world (school, police) and at home: the children were expected to marry lighter-skinned Latinos, and Chachito jokingly called Cotito a "real African." Smart and perceptive, she became a strong young woman, and worked steadily toward her goal of becoming a teacher. At the mostly white arts high school, she and an African-American friend demanded that music from their cultures be included in music appreciation class. While rejecting the negative, she embraced the many positive aspects of her heritage and the love of her family. Cotito is as frank about her own shortcomings as she is about those of others. A vibrant, honest coming-of-age memoir that celebrates culture and community.
http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA446417.html