Prejudice Books

No-No Boy

John Okada

Amazon Price: $10.17 List Price: $14.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: University of Washington Press Amazon Marketplace: 116 new & used starting at $1.97

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 36 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Another side of the story 4 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

I have read many books dealing with the Japanese internment during WWII and the aftermath, but this book was the first I have seen that tells a very different story. Beautifully written, the author tells of the conflicts and guilt of a young man who refuses to serve in the US military during the war while his family was being held in an internment camp. After spending two years in jail for the refusal, he returns to the Japanese community in Seattle and struggles to reconcile his dual identify as Japanese and as an American.

Overwhelming. 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

In general, John Okada may have created one of the greatest piece of fiction I have ever read in the Asian American diaspora. The story kept me transfixed to the pages and I had no trouble keeping up. I thoroughly enjoyed the great detail and lengths he goes to accurately depict the life of a "No-No" boy in a world confused by a country whom had betrayed them and by their people who shun their existence. Powerful read.

Editorial Review:

John Okada was born in Seattle, Washington in 1923. He attended the University of Washington and Columbia University. He served in the U.S. Army in World War II, wrote one novel and died of a heart attack at the age of 47. John Okada died in obscurity believing that Asian America had rejected his work.

Song of Solomon

Toni Morrison

Amazon Price: $19.77 List Price: $29.95 Usually ships in 1 to 3 weeks By: Knopf Amazon Marketplace: 172 new & used starting at $0.01

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 218 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Morrison's earthy, poetic voice compliments perfectly the fantastical and mythical elements of Song Of Soloman. A world where fathers fly in clouds of rose petals, and women can cast spells. The text is perfectly suited for an audio rendition - as poetry, songs and the spoken word feature so heavily in the book.

Morrison narrates for three hours and lays out before us the complex lives and backgrounds of four generations of black family life in the south. Central is the character Milkman--an unfortunate nickname owed to his lengthy nursing period and delayed coming of age. Although a late starter, Milkman develops into a fundamentally strong person, who eventually learns to cherish his family and the importance of his roots.

The narrator breathes life into an intriguing and diverse set of characters--from violent criminals to devout parents. Through them Morrison explores complex social and racial issues using luscious lyrical language This text refers to the audiobook edition of this title.

Children of the River (Laurel-Leaf Contemporary Fiction)

Linda Crew

Amazon Price: $6.50 List Price: $6.50 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Laurel Leaf Amazon Marketplace: 194 new & used starting at $0.01

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 90 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

children Of The river 4 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Sarah
3/26/07


The book "Children Of The River" by: Linda Crew is about a young girl named Sundra and her aunts family, who are traveling from Cambodia to America. Sundra and her aunts family don't know what happend to her family because they were unable to escape from Cambodia. It was hard for Sundra to live in America because they had to work from dawn to dusk trying to make enough money to live in a house and to buy food. When Sundra turns 18 years old she has to get married because it's a Cambodian tradition and, usually her parents would arrange the marrage but since her family was gone her aunt arranged the wedding. Sundra's uncle is forbidding her from seeing the American boy because he is "white" But Sundra really likes the boy and he really likes her.
My opinion on the book is that it was pretty good because there was really good details and, the author really discribed the characters. But it was hard to understand since there were harder words in it. I also thought that the book ws a little bit borring at some parts. Maybe if there was more action in the book it would have been better. I would reccomend this book to people who like reading about culture and the different types of people and their historical background.

Editorial Review:

Sundara fled Cambodia with her aunt's family to escape the Khmer Rouge army when she was thirteen, leaving behind her parents, her brother and sister, and the boy she had loved since she was a child.

Now, four years later, she struggles to fit in at her Oregon high school and to be "a good Cambodian girl" at home. A good Cambodian girl never dates; she waits for her family to arrange her marriage to a Cambodian boy. Yet Sundara and Jonathan, an extraordinary American boy, are powerfully drawn to each other. Haunted by grief for her lost family and for the life left behind, Sundara longs to be with him. At the same time she wonders, Are her hopes for happiness and new life in America disloyal to her past and her people?

The House on Mango Street

Sandra Cisneros

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 610 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

A seventh grade view 3 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

"I knew that I had to have a house. A real house. One that I could point to. But this isn't it. The house on Mango Street isn't it. `For the time being,' Mama says. `Temporary,' says Papa. But I know how those things go." For Esperenza Cordero, living in a cramped, tiny, crumbling house on Mango Street in Chicago is not the kind of life she wants to live. There is nothing that she can do except stay put, while trying to make her boring life interesting by enjoying any small goodness she can find in her neighborhood, whether it's a physical object or just a thought.
Many people who accidentally get lost in Esperenza's neighborhood are scared that people like Esperenza and her family will come and hurt them. This is because most of the people on Mango Street are job-seeking immigrants from Mexico or Central America. This false judgment is one of the reasons why Esperenza doesn't want to live on Mango Street. However, Esperenza eventually accepts it along with her friends Lucy, Rachel and Sally as they learn that they don't need others' opinions to tell them who they are.
This book tells about a young girl who faces problems with racism and social prejudice and, at the same time, strives to find out who she wants to become and what she wants to do in the future. Sandra Cisneros truly captures the beauty and rich culture with her concise and poetic language. This book may express some of her Latino heritage and what her life was like growing up.
I recommend this book to readers of any age. They will find themselves lost in each chapter as they learn about how Esperenza Cordero discovers how she will live her life.

Editorial Review:

In hardcover for the first time--on the tenth anniversary of its initial publication--the greatly admired and bestselling book about a young girl growing up in the Latino section of Chicago. Sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes deeply joyous, this novel depicts a new American landscape through its multiple characters.

To Kill a Mockingbird

Harper Lee

List Price: $18.00 By: HarperCollins Publishers Amazon Marketplace: 21 new & used starting at $4.33

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1765 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

"When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.... When enough years had gone by to enable us to look back on them, we sometimes discussed the events leading to his accident. I maintain that the Ewells started it all, but Jem, who was four years my senior, said it started long before that. He said it began the summer Dill came to us, when Dill first gave us the idea of making Boo Radley come out."

Set in the small Southern town of Maycomb, Alabama, during the Depression, To Kill a Mockingbird follows three years in the life of 8-year-old Scout Finch, her brother, Jem, and their father, Atticus--three years punctuated by the arrest and eventual trial of a young black man accused of raping a white woman. Though her story explores big themes, Harper Lee chooses to tell it through the eyes of a child. The result is a tough and tender novel of race, class, justice, and the pain of growing up.

Like the slow-moving occupants of her fictional town, Lee takes her time getting to the heart of her tale; we first meet the Finches the summer before Scout's first year at school. She, her brother, and Dill Harris, a boy who spends the summers with his aunt in Maycomb, while away the hours reenacting scenes from Dracula and plotting ways to get a peek at the town bogeyman, Boo Radley. At first the circumstances surrounding the alleged rape of Mayella Ewell, the daughter of a drunk and violent white farmer, barely penetrate the children's consciousness. Then Atticus is called on to defend the accused, Tom Robinson, and soon Scout and Jem find themselves caught up in events beyond their understanding. During the trial, the town exhibits its ugly side, but Lee offers plenty of counterbalance as well--in the struggle of an elderly woman to overcome her morphine habit before she dies; in the heroism of Atticus Finch, standing up for what he knows is right; and finally in Scout's hard-won understanding that most people are essentially kind "when you really see them." By turns funny, wise, and heartbreaking, To Kill a Mockingbird is one classic that continues to speak to new generations, and deserves to be reread often. --Alix Wilber

Their Eyes Were Watching God: A Novel

Zora Neale Hurston

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 407 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

At the height of the Harlem Renaissance during the 1930s, Zora Neale Hurston was the preeminent black woman writer in the United States. She was a sometime-collaborator with Langston Hughes and a fierce rival of Richard Wright. Her stories appeared in major magazines, she consulted on Hollywood screenplays, and she penned four novels, an autobiography, countless essays, and two books on black mythology. Yet by the late 1950s, Hurston was living in obscurity, working as a maid in a Florida hotel. She died in 1960 in a Welfare home, was buried in an unmarked grave, and quickly faded from literary consciousness until 1975 when Alice Walker almost single-handedly revived interest in her work.

Of Hurston's fiction, Their Eyes Were Watching God is arguably the best-known and perhaps the most controversial. The novel follows the fortunes of Janie Crawford, a woman living in the black town of Eaton, Florida. Hurston sets up her characters and her locale in the first chapter, which, along with the last, acts as a framing device for the story of Janie's life. Unlike Wright and Ralph Ellison, Hurston does not write explicitly about black people in the context of a white world--a fact that earned her scathing criticism from the social realists--but she doesn't ignore the impact of black-white relations either:

It was the time for sitting on porches beside the road. It was the time to hear things and talk. These sitters had been tongueless, earless, eyeless conveniences all day long. Mules and other brutes had occupied their skins. But now, the sun and the bossman were gone, so the skins felt powerful and human. They became lords of sounds and lesser things. They passed nations through their mouths. They sat in judgment.

One person the citizens of Eaton are inclined to judge is Janie Crawford, who has married three men and been tried for the murder of one of them. Janie feels no compulsion to justify herself to the town, but she does explain herself to her friend, Phoeby, with the implicit understanding that Phoeby can "tell 'em what Ah say if you wants to. Dat's just de same as me 'cause mah tongue is in mah friend's mouf."

Hurston's use of dialect enraged other African American writers such as Wright, who accused her of pandering to white readers by giving them the black stereotypes they expected. Decades later, however, outrage has been replaced by admiration for her depictions of black life, and especially the lives of black women. In Their Eyes Were Watching God Zora Neale Hurston breathes humanity into both her men and women, and allows them to speak in their own voices. --Alix Wilber

Six Out Seven: A Novel

Jess Mowry

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 10 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The thirteen-year-old Corbitt Wainwright's adolescence is abruptly cut short when his father is imprisoned for attacking a white man.  Tragically, dreams of success through good grades and hard work are wiped aside as white society shows him, out of both kindness and malice, that poor black kids in Mississippi don't have much of a hand in creating their own destinies.  Refusing to accept this allotted role, and after a deadly confrontation with his father's accuser, Corbitt sets out for California, the land of opportunity and racial equality. Upon his arrival in West Oakland, a whole other world awaits.  This is a world populated by gangs and crack dealers, violent cops and street kids, and one where the future seems even bleaker than it does back at home.  Against the odds, he helps some of the local homeboys overcome one of their many predators and discovers the power of his African heritage.  Finally, he learns to trust his own strength.

Filled with a remarkably diverse cast of characters and written with gut-wrenching immediacy, cutting-edge street slang, and a haunting lyricism, Six Out Seven is a brutally honest novel about what it means to be a black teenager in America today.

CRY, THE BELOVED COUNTRY by Alan Paton

Alan Paton

By: Scribner Paperback Fiction Amazon Marketplace: 386 new & used starting at $0.01

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 247 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

It's on my Top 10 5 out of 5 stars.
15 of 20 people found this review helpful.

How much can a man love his country? How much can he love his son? His God? Can justice prevail when man cannot? What is forgiveness? Redemption? Grace? To consider all these elements in one novel is not possible. Or is it?

"Cry, the Beloved Country" is all these things and more. It is forgiveness writ large. It is agape love in the doing. It is the story of two fathers, each with a son. One son is the victim of apartheid and is lost. The other is also a victim of apartheid but of the other side. He seeks to find a way to make things better, to make things right. The lost one kills the seeking one. One is African, the other is Afrikaaner, and therein lies the difference and the ultimate. This difference, this ultimate, this absolute are what drove Alan Paton in the writing of South Africa's most famous, most searing novel of the separation of races in all ways.

Absalom Kumalo's life is limited in all ways because he is black South African. Arthur Jarvis is an engineer and has all the privileges of white South Africa, yet he is keen on social justice and works to bring it to pass. What irony then that the one without kills the one seeking to bring justice. However, it is this very irony that brings their fathers to friendship, to a bonding of black man and white man.

Umfundisi is the black priest (not Catholic) of a simple, poor church in a village located near the home of the rich landowner and farmer, James Jarvis, who really does not know his son until he is dead. It is the getting to know his son that he connects with the African, and the father becomes the son in the ways of love and forgiveness. The umfundisi is one of my favorite characters in all literature I have read because of his humility and reverence.

This novel, published in 1948, remains as one, even today, apropos to race relations, to their very real potentials and actualities. Mutual respect, sincerity, forgiveness, and grace all come to the fore in this most magnificent, lyrical novel.

It would be on my Top 10 list of books I would take if marooned on the proverbial deserted island.

Tar Baby (Contemporary Fiction, Plume)

Toni Morrison

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 53 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

totally different than i envisioned- in a really great way 5 out of 5 stars.
7 of 8 people found this review helpful.

When I began reading TarBaby I had no idea what it was about. I borrowed it from a high school classroom while I was student teaching and couldnt believe the difference between it and other Morrison novels while the language is beautiful and that is what makes it uniquely a Toni Morrison masterpiece. However, the love story between a black man and a woman who is black yet not, surprised me. Their love was so deep and so poignant - yet totally overwhelming and surprising at the same time.

The other story that is intertwined (that of Valerian Street and his dysfunctional upper-class white family) also startled me. I could not identify with the characters and found myself trying so hard to do so.

The ending of the novel left me wanting more. While it is not in Morrison's nature to write a sequel, I sincerely hope we find out what happens to Jadine, Son, and the Street's as their futures are left open-ended. Perhaps that is the point, and while I felt like the book could've gone on, I loved it nevertheless. Please read this book - it is one of Morrison's best!

Editorial Review:

A magnificent novel from the Nobel Prize-winning author of Beloved. Morrison probes deeply and sensitively into the realtionships between blacks and whites, blacks and blacks, and women and men, in this raw, emotionally intense narrative set in a rainforest paradise.

Black Boy (American Hunger : a Record of Childhood and Youth)

Richard Wright

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 156 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

incredible intelligence that can't be stopped. 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

The best autobiography EVER, in fact I am not even sure it should be called autobiography because it is much more than that for many reasons. Autobiographies are often flat and either self pitying or glorifying, but this one is completely at another level. I was so impressed by the brilliant mind that shines through all obsacles, and his writing is just so natural, logical and insightful, not just about his personal life experiences, but about human suffering, senseless oppression, and unyiedling human spirit. Wow!

Surprisingly good 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Often when you see books written about the life of black people in any point and time before the 1960's its main message is "My life was hard because white people are terrible," and that gets very redundant. However this was quite refreshing, as he did not harp on racism on every page. This is a very well written and intresting account of this man's unique life experiences and all the strange, crazy people he encountered within his family and outside them as well. People who have a few or several nuts on their family tree will be able to relate to Black Boy.

Editorial Review:

In a new edition of this classic autobiography, the author of Native Son chronicles his experience growing up black in the Jim Crow South. Reprint. NYT.