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by Nikki Grimes

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Michael L. Printz Honor Book
Robert F. Sibert Informational Honor Book
Boston Globe/Horn Book Nonfiction Honor Book
Arnold Adoff Poetry Award for Teens

Six Starred Reviews-★Booklist ★BCCB ★The Horn Book ★Publishers Weekly ★School Library Connection ★Shelf Awareness

A Booklist Best Book for Youth * A BCCB Blue Ribbon * A Horn Book Fanfare Book * A Shelf Awareness Best Children's Book * Recommended on NPR's "Morning Edition" by Kwame Alexander

★ "Ordinary Hazards is a gorgeous piece of writing that also serves as powerful inspiration for any reader who has struggled and sought grace. Grimes's triumph over adversity is matched only by her skill with the written word-her memoir is accessible to poetry enthusiasts and detractors alike, and will linger long after the final lines."-Shelf Awareness, starred review

★ "With Ordinary Hazards, Grimes delivers a memoir in the form of a powerful and inspiring collection of poems. She details her early life through adulthood, and she unabashedly explores the highs as well as the lows. Young adults will identify with and connect to the many challenges explored in Grimes' work, which delves into issues of love, family, responsibility, belonging, finding your place in the world, and fighting the monsters you know-and the ones you don't. The memoir has heartbreaking moments-even soul-crushing ones-that will make readers ache for young Grimes and teens grappling with similar circumstances. But inspiring moments bolster her raw, resonant story, showing that there is always light at the end of the darkest of tunnels."-★ "Grimes potently conveys the way reading and writing can become ways not just to express oneself but to construct oneself, to articulate one's identity, to map one's mental and emotional territory. Readerly readers will find young Nikki inspiring company..." -The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, starred review★ "As poetically written as Woodson's Brown Girl Dreaming with a story as hard-hitting as Sapphire's Push....the striking free-verse poems powerfully convey how a passion for writing fueled her will to survive and embrace her own resilience.... (a) must-read for aspiring writers."- "Grimes presents a gripping memoir in verse constructed from imperfect recollections of the hardship and abuse she endured as a child. Underlining the idea that 'a memoir's focus is on truth, not fact,' Grimes courageously invites readers to join her on a journey through the shadows of her past..."-Publishers Weekly, starred review
(W)ritten in highly readable verse and delivers a relatable message characterized by pathos and resilience... this book is an homage to the fortifying effect of written expression. School counselors can use this text as bibliotherapy for students in similar situations (and it) can also act as mentor text in classroom lessons on memoir writing or when teaching confessional poetry."-School Library Connection, starred review"For award-winning children's and YA author Grimes, writing, faith, and determination were the keys to surviving her tumultuous childhood. Grimes recounts her story as a memoir in verse, writing with a poet's lyricism through the lens of memory fractured by trauma. Fans of her poetry and prose will appreciate this intimate look at the forces that shaped her as an artist and as a person determined to find the light in the darkest of circumstances. A raw, heartbreaking, and ultimately uplifting story of trauma, loss, and the healing power of words."-Kirkus Reviews

"Grimes offers young adult readers the special treat of literary ingenuity in her new memoir... that doesn't demand a time line. This nontraditional memoir from a long-working and highly acclaimed author will speak deeply to young readers harboring their own interest in writing or otherwise squeezing art out of life's spiky fruit."-School Library Journal

"This book is... a gut-wrenching testimony of pain, loss, resilience, and grace. Nikki is open about her truth and wrote it to make it accessible to readers of all ages. This book will heal hearts and open a lot of eyes. It will keep some kids alive and it will wake up some adults. This powerful story, told with the music of poetry and the blade of truth, will help your heart grow."
-Laurie Halse Anderson, author of Speak and Shout

"In Ordinary Hazards, Nikki Grimes has given us an intimate look into her life as a young person who found writing as a way to buoy herself in the choppy waters of her childhood. Giving us a glimpse into addiction, abandonment, foster care, and abuse, Grimes poetically guides us to her eventual acceptance and amazement. This is a testimony and a triumph."
-Jason Reynolds, author of Long Way Down

"Life, as Nikki Grimes so well puts it, is full of ordinary hazard s, only she creates and accepts them in poems. Sometimes you want to cry... sometimes to laugh... but always at all times are you glad you are alive and lived with it and through it. Ms. Grimes writes, but some of us sing, bake, or build buildings or play sports. These, too, can be hazardous. But none of them is ordinary."
-Nikki Giovanni, Poet

"Each verse is a gift, showing us how to find beauty even in brokenness."
-Renée Watson, author of the New York Times best seller Piecing Me Together

"In Ordinary Hazards Nikki Grimes gives us her raw, desperate, joyful, lyrical truth, while celebrating the life-changing, and life-saving,power of words. Whoever you are, there's something in Ordinary Hazards for you." -Chris Crutcher, author of Whale Talk and Losers Bracket

" Ordinary Hazards is an extraordinary book, a stunning memoir in verse that celebrates the power of the written word and the human spirit. Nikki's story will be a life-saving read for teens who need to know that there is hope on the other side of the struggles they're facing today."
-Kate Messner, author of Breakout and The Seventh Wish

"Can I use just one word in a blurb? Then it's WOW! If two: Incredibly moving. If three: Poetry saved her. Four: That's too easy. Instead I'll tell you that if you read one book of poetry this year, or one memoir, make it this one. How the poet came out of her childhood with grace and good words is a miracle. How she wanted to share is a second one. That she did-a third. Just WOW."
-Jane Yolen, sometime poet, author of over 375 published books

"Memory is a capricious dance partner. Sometimes it overwhelms our brain, stomping with bold, defined images and thoughts, and sometimes it simply tiptoes around the edges of a whisper, a dream, a forgotten touch or glance. Nikki Grimes's powerful memoir does both as she uses words, her constant source of strength, to tell the story of her childhood, which at times was both traumatic as well as triumphant. The strength that carried the child who would become the writer, the poet, the visionary was built on the power of words. She constantly and faithfully wrote in journals and notebooks and on scraps of paper because the words were her wings. Poetry became a necessary tool of survival for her mind and body and soul. This memoir, which she calls Ordinary Hazards, far exceeds the title. It is extraordinary." -Sharon M. Draper, author of the New York Times best seller Out of My Mind

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Ordinary Hazards by Nikki Grimes: 9781635925623 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

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In her own voice, acclaimed author and poet Nikki Grimes explores the truth of a harrowing childhood in a compelling and moving memoir in verse. Growing up with a mother suffering from paranoid schizophrenia...

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Oscar Winning short film

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The Silent Child | Oscar® Winning Short Film

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Jeff Zentner

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In the Wild Light by Jeff Zentner | Penguin Random House Canada

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From the author of The Serpent King comes a sharp and poignant story of two teens from the impoverished south struggling to fit in at an elite Connecticut prep school.

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by Justina Ireland

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John Rocco

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&"Mixed-media and digital artwork in saturated color intensifies both the building storm and the comity of the community."—Booklist, starred review

"This is exactly told, down-to-earth story about folks coming together in troubled times will evoke readers’ empathy. The excellent, realistic illustrations, rendered in pencil and watercolors, enhance the already accessible, satisfying reading experience."—Kirkus

"Naturalistic spreads in Rocco’s signature style capture the peace of the child’s world and the drama of the hurricane’s arrival and aftermath."—Publisher Weekly

*"Rocco’s dramatic, naturalistic digitally colored watercolor illustrations, a mix of panels, single pages, and spreads, show the impending storm approaching and the community’s preparations of boarding up houses and taping windows….As in the author’s Blizzard, it is the human response to a weather event that informs this strikingly illustrated, straightforwardly told book’s theme."
—Horn Book, starred review

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A gorgeously-illustrated picture book about the power of community from Caldecott-Honoree John Rocco That night the wind roars and rumbles, l...

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by Austin Channing Brown

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"Powerful . . . Brown calls on readers to live their professed ideals rather than simply state them." -Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Takes readers on a journey through the racial divide in a way we've truly never seen before. Powerful, haunting, and absolutely impossible to put down, [Brown's] account of what it's like to grow up black, middle-class, and female in modern America is not to be missed."

"A deeply personal celebration of blackness that simultaneously sheds new light on racial injustice and inequality while offering hope for a better future."
"Moves the race conversation forward . . . Brown offers a powerful perspective on race with her first-hand account."
"I read Austin Channing Brown's incredible book in one sitting. This is one that every black woman needs to read to be validated and every white person needs to read to receive some perspective . . . Brown has concisely articulated the burdens, questions, and frustrations that I find myself experiencing daily as a black woman." -Sojourners

"What a stunning debut from a seasoned racial justice leader. Austin does double duty by fiercely affirming blackness while simultaneously unveiling and demystifying the subtle effects of white supremacy among Christians. I trust Austin, I listen to Austin and I learn from Austin. I hope you will too." -Christena Cleveland, professor at Duke University and author of Disunity in Christ

"Austin Channing Brown introduces herself as a master memoirist, delivering a manifesto on racism in America that will live on shelves besides Ta-Nehisi Coates and Michelle Alexander. This book will break open hearts and minds. It's an example of how one woman can change the world by telling the truth about her life with unflinching, relentless courage." -Glennon Doyle, bestselling author of Love Warrior and Carry On, Warrior, and president of Together Rising

"I have laughed, I have held back tears, I have reflected with joy, hope, and hurt while reading. Austin captures perfectly the sentiment of many black people in America. She's not only telling her story, she's telling our story. Austin is a gift to the body and the culture." -Lecrae, Grammy award-winning artist and bestselling author of Unashamed

"Austin is one of my most important teachers. I'm Still Here is devastating, beautiful, and haunting and it leaves no room for a tepid reaction. Her crystal clear voice will move you, push you, and break your heart. Prophetic and tender, I plan to put this book in every pair of hands I know and join her in the dismantling of white supremacy. She's still here and I'm with her." -Jen Hatmaker, New York Times bestselling author of Of Mess and Moxie and For the Love

"The movement toward diversity and forgiveness, [Brown] points out, too often involves white people seeking credit for recognizing the crimes of the past even as they do nothing to fix things today, and black people being required to provide endless absolution and information while calmly enduring dignity-eroding and rage-inducing injustices." -Library Journal (starred review)

"Brown passionately rejects facile reliance on 'hope,' stating that 'in order for me to stay in this work, hope must die' and 'the death of hope gives way to a sadness that heals, to anger that inspires, to a wisdom that empowers me.' An eloquent argument for meaningful reconciliation focused on racial injustice rather than white feelings."

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I'm Still Here by Austin Channing Brown: 9781524760854 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK * From a leading voice on racial justice, an eye-opening account of growing up Black, Christian, and female that exposes how white...

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by A.S. King

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★ ”Timely and extraordinary, teen readers will find themselves immersed in this timeless world.”—SLJ, starred review

★ “An unsettling but emotionally resonant novel for our own unsettling times.”—Bookpage, starred review

★  “King explores the meaning of time and the toxicity of family secrets. This inventive, surreal novel’s dedication, ‘For the class of 2020,’ makes a direct address to real-life teens’ ‘lost’ COVID-19 year.” —Horn Book, starred review

“A work of literary genius.”—Booklist

“Printz Award winner King returns with another surrealist masterpiece.”—Kirkus

“Poignant, propulsive, and profound.”—Publishers Weekly A BookPage Best Book of 2021
A Chicago Public Library Best Book of 2021

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May 10, 2022 | ISBN 9780525555537

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Switch by A.S. King: 9780525555537 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

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A surreal and timely novel about the effects of isolation and what it means to be connected to the world from the Printz Award-winning author of Dig. Time has stopped. It’s been June 23,...

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Ghostly Matters: Hauntings and the Sociological Imagination

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Ghostly Matters: Hauntings and the Sociological Imagination

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by Avery F. Gordon

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One of the most courageous works of the last decade, Ghostly Matters is nothing less than an eloquent demonstration that modern knowledge practices are not only embedded in social forms of domination, but that such practices work to conceal, rather than to disclose, the relationship between knowledge and power.

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A new edition of this widely influential and innovative work of social theory-with a new introduction and foreword

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by Martîn Espada

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READER

STUDENT

EDUCATOR

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Winner of the 2021 National Book Award for Poetry From the winner of the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize come masterfully crafted narratives of protest, grief and love., Floaters, Poems, Martín Espada, 9781324021810

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by Eddie S. Glaude Jr.

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" Begin Again is a groundbreaking and informative guide to Baldwin and his era." -The Washington Post

"A rugged literary miracle." -Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy

"Even if you don't agree with Glaude's interpretations, you'll find yourself productively arguing with them. He parses, he pronounces, he cajoles. He spurs you to revisit Baldwin's work yourself." -The New York Times

"Not only is Baldwin brought rushing forth from the page, with all the beauty of his prose and complexity of his thought, but Glaude's voice joins him with a force and clarity of its own. . . . Baldwin and Glaude offer us a path forward that is both exceedingly difficult and genuinely hopeful." -The Post and Courier

"In the midst of an ugly Trump regime and a beautiful Baldwin revival, Eddie Glaude has plunged to the profound depths and [soared to the] sublime heights of Baldwin's prophetic challenge to our present-day crisis." -Cornel West, author of Democracy Matters and Race Matters

" Begin Again is . . . a timeless and spellbinding conversation between two brilliant writers." -Edwidge Danticat, author of Brother, I'm Dying and Everything Inside

"One need not agree with everything in these pages to learn much from them, and for Americans seeking to understand our past, our present, and the possible futures before us, Begin Again challenges, illuminates, and points us toward, if not a more perfect union, at least a more just one." -Jon Meacham, author of The Soul of America and Destiny and Power

"Glaude's work is urgent, pained, and strangely hopeful. He is issuing a call to reckoning: not just with the dishonesty of America's founding promises, but with the tolls that its intrinsic racism has taken on the artists and thinkers who have come before." -Rebecca Traister, author of All the Single Ladies and Good and Mad

"James Baldwin is a man for our moment: in a time of Black Lives Matter, we've come to think about our past, our colonial history, enslavement, matters of race and identity. You're left with an understanding of the extraordinary modernity, relevance, and the immense power of James Baldwin. It's a simply wonderful book." -Philippe Sands, author of East West Street

"The magic of Begin Again is that it allows us to ponder Baldwin both in his perilous era and in our own. Remarkable, and remarkably relevant." -Tracy K. Smith, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Life on Mars

" Begin Again is an unparalleled masterpiece of social criticism. Glaude thinks alongside America's finest essayist, matching the master's firepower, brilliance, courage, and sensitivity at every turn." -Imani Perry, author of Breathe and Looking for Lorraine

"In this powerful and elegant book, Glaude weaves together a biography, a meditation, a literary analysis, and a moral essay on America. . . . " -Walter Isaacson, author of Steve Jobs and Leonardo da Vinci

BCALA Literary Award WINNER 2021

Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters - Nonfiction WINNER 2020

Stowe Prize WINNER 2021

Hooks National Book Award FINALIST 2020

Goddard Riverside Stephan Russo Book Prize for Social Justice SHORTLIST 2020

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Begin Again by Eddie S. Glaude Jr.: 9780525575337 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

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" Begin Again is a groundbreaking and informative guide to Baldwin and his era." -The Washington Post "A rugged literary miracle." -Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy "Even if you don't agree with Glaude's interpretations, you'll find yourself productively arguing with them. He parses, he pronounces, he cajoles.

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from Colson Whitehead's book

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Please join me for this live, three-hour poetry session. I'll pull from decades as a literature and poetry professor and tackle many of the enduring questions around how to create and write poetry.

What's going on in the poet's mind when he or she is actually composing a poem? Is it Life and Death? Beauty? Truth? The Environment? I think the answer for me and many other poets is that there is no room in our heads for such big, capitalized subjects when a poem is underway. We are mostly thinking about how to keep the poem alive by advancing it line by line, and eventually, how to find an interesting place to stop.

Whether you are a practicing poet yourself, an interested reader of poetry, or both, having access to the inner workings of a poem by seeing the poem from the writer's point of view will sharpen your abilities as a poet and add to your appreciation as a reader.

Poems arrive in their readers' hands fully done, cooked, and set in no longer moveable type. But every poem-even a Shakespeare sonnet-was once a work in progress, a living thing that the poet was still working on, perhaps not having a clue what should come next.

So: what I am offering here is an opportunity to enter poems in a fuller, more imaginative way by beholding their inner workings and by imagining the compositional process the poet might have gone through as the poem evolved from an inky mess on a page to a varnished thing.

We will look at a mix of poems- old and new, familiar and odd. I will offer some of my own as examples; after all, I was right there when they were written. We will look at a still unfinished poem of mine, one where the paint is still wet.

This will be an interactive experience, not a lecture on poetry. Your comments and questions, delivered in real time, will give our gathering its vitality

I hope you will sign-up for this poetry safari. Pith helmets and insect repellent not required.

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Billy Collins is an American phenomenon. No poet since Robert Frost has managed to combine high critical acclaim with such broad popular appeal. He is frequently referred to as the bestselling American living poet. Get your ticket now for admissio...

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Run The World | Official Trailer | STARZ

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Dear Friend,

If you'd like to take better photos with your iPhone than most people can take with a DSLR, this might be the most important page you're going to read in a long time...

That's because I'm going to share a story about how I went from taking boring iPhone photos to creating incredible photos that most people don't even believe were taken with the iPhone...

And you're going to discover how you can do the same with your own iPhone photos!

I shot and edited these photos with my iPhone...
And you too could be taking photos like this with your iPhone not too long from now!

I Think I'm A Lot Like You...

I wasn't always the guy teaching thousands of people how to take incredible photos with their iPhone...

And frankly, not too long ago I didn't know how to take interesting photos myself.

The truth is that I was never much of an artist... I couldn't draw, I couldn't write poetry, so the traditional art forms were always out of my reach. But I wanted to express myself and develop the creative side of my personality, and that's why photography has always appealed to me.

It's so rewarding when a photo you take - a photo that didn't exist just a moment ago - shows other people the unique and beautiful things that you see in the world around you. It could be the amazing places you visit while traveling, the great times you have with your family, or the unique moments that nobody else would be able to enjoy without you taking a photo.

And it gets even more rewarding when you can look back at these moments years later when the memories are long gone... And with photos you can experience these memories again.

You see, I always loved photography. But things didn't really work out as I wish they did...

My Camera Was Never There
When I Needed It The Most

If you've been taking photos for a while now, you've probably had times when you wish you had your big camera with you, and you've probably missed a lot of great photos. And often when that moment is gone, it's gone forever, and there's nothing you can do to recreate it.

This is a problem I was facing all the time. There were often beautiful things or unique moments that I wanted to capture, and it seemed like my camera was never there when I needed it the most. And that's probably true, because my camera didn't leave the shelf on most days...

I wanted to do more photography, but it just wasn't practical to carry a camera around with me at all times. And that's not to mention the lenses, tripods and all the other heavy equipment...

The Best Camera Is The One
That's Always In Your Pocket

When I got my first iPhone nine years ago, I quickly recognized that one of the most essential features of the device was its camera, because for the first time ever, I had a camera that was always in my pocket. Gone were the days when I wished I had my big camera with me.

Well, sort of...

I knew that the iPhone could take great photos... In fact, I saw it every day when I was looking at the photos other people were sharing on Instagram (back then the average photo quality on Instagram was higher because it attracted more serious iPhone photographers).

But that didn't change the harsh reality: the photos that I was taking with my iPhone didn't live up to my expectations. They were never as good as the photos that my favorite photographers were sharing. They just didn't look right to me, and I didn't know what I was doing wrong.

Of course, I knew that the iPhone wasn't as good as high-end DSLRs.

But that's besides the point, because...

The iPhone, Just Like Any
Other Camera, Is A Tool

And it's a tool that can be used to take both poor and amazing photos.

There were people out there who were taking better photos with their iPhone than I could ever take with my DSLR. Their photos always made me speechless...

It was so hard to believe that these photos were taken with the iPhone! In fact, I couldn't even understand how anyone could take such incredible photos using any camera!

And to be frank, it's not that using the iPhone made their photos that much better. These people simply preferred to use the iPhone because it was the camera they always had with them.

They could take incredible photos with ANY camera they wanted to use, because...

The Content Of Your Photos Is More
Important Than The Camera You Use

Let me put this another way... If you were writing a novel, would getting a new pen make you a better writer? Or should you spend your time improving the content of your novel?

The photography industry makes BILLIONS by making you believe that you need the latest and greatest photography gear to take stunning photos, while nothing could be further from the truth...

And while I knew all of that, I was still struggling to take interesting photos with my iPhone. They just never turned out the way I wanted them to look. I couldn't look back at them proudly.

I knew I was doing something wrong, and I desperately wanted to fix that.

So I went on a learning spree...

I Spent The Next Nine Years Of My Life
Learning Everything There Is To
Know About iPhone Photography

I read every iPhone photography book, but most of them were out of date the moment they hit the printing press. That's because the iPhone camera and the software behind it goes through dramatic changes every year, and the books just can't keep up with the technology.

I bought every iPhone photography course, and unfortunately the same was true for them. Even though Apple has now released iOS 15, you'd be lucky to find a course that's updated for iOS 10 which came out more than five years ago featuring radically different camera controls.

With no other options, I turned to general photography advice, and while some of the concepts covered there were useful, a lot of it was not directly applicable to iPhone photography.

Finally, I realized that the only way to get as good as my favorite iPhone photographers was to learn from them directly and to understand what it is that makes their photos so special...

So I Interviewed Dozens Of My Favorite
iPhone Photographers And Reviewed
22,000 Incredible iPhone Photos

Wait, how could I do something like that?

I decided to leverage a small iPhone photography blog that I had, and I started to approach my favorite iPhone photographers asking if they would be interested in doing an interview...

You may have heard of this blog... Today it's read by 1,193,413 people per month.

While interviewing some of the best iPhone photographers in the world was definitely fun, they weren't always open about sharing the techniques that made their photos so powerful...

Or they simply didn't know what they were doing because they were taking photos intuitively.

So I also created a photo contest where between 200 and 500 excellent iPhone photos would be submitted every week. My job was to carefully review these photos to select the winners.

And that's when I finally started to figure it out...

The Best iPhone Photographers
Look At The World Differently

They don't just look for scenes that look great in real life, because they know that even the most beautiful views can result in poor photos unless they're photographed correctly.

They take photos from unique angles that most people would never even consider, and when other people see these photos, they don't understand how it's possible to take such photos.

They don't just take pretty photos because they look good. Instead they take photos that tell powerful stories and express emotion. Photos they're proud to look at years later.

They don't take any chances with the camera settings. Instead they take full control of the camera of their iPhone, which allows them to predictably take high-quality photos.

They don't just take a whole bunch of photos hoping that some will turn out great. They already know whether the photo is going to work (and why) before they pick up their iPhone.

They see great photo opportunities wherever they go, because they know what to look for.

And you too could be an excellent iPhone photographer not too long from now. Even if you think you've tried everything, you can experience huge improvements in next to no time because...

There Are Specific Techniques That
All Great iPhone Photographers Use

And anyone can become an excellent iPhone photographer by applying these techniques.

I know this because after I discovered the exact techniques that the pros are using and started applying them to my own photos, my iPhone photography was never the same again.

Taking photos with my iPhone is no longer frustrating. Now it's fun and rewarding, and the photos that I take with my iPhone are better than the ones I used to take with my DSLR!

But there were also some consequences that I wouldn't have predicted...

Thousands of people started following me on Instagram, and I started getting compliments for the quality of my iPhone photos... which had never happened before!

Some People No Longer Even Believe That
My Photos Were Taken With The iPhone!

Now, you might be thinking that this won't happen to you because you're not talented...

And honestly, I'm not surprised to hear that... because that's exactly how I felt!

I used to think that the best iPhone photographers are naturally talented, and that I would never become a great photographer since I didn't have this kind of talent. And indeed, some people are born with an eye for taking great photos, but unfortunately I wasn't one of them.

But the truth is that...

You Don't Need Talent For
Taking Incredible iPhone Photos

When I started applying the techniques that the pros were using in their photos, people on social media starting telling me that I was a talented photographer, which is something I had never heard before. You don't have to be talented - you just have to know what you're doing!

Now, you're probably wondering how you too could start taking outstanding iPhone photos...

And for a long time, I didn't have an easy answer for people like you.

You could read boring books, buy outdated iPhone photography courses, interview your favorite iPhone photographers and carefully analyze tens of thousands of photos. And if you can put all the pieces together, your iPhone photos are going to improve over the next nine years.

That's what I did, and it worked for me. But it definitely wasn't easy...

In fact, it was so hard that I wanted to create an easier option for people like you who want to greatly improve the quality of their iPhone photos in a fraction of time that I had to spend.

And that's why I created something absolutely unique...

Introducing iPhone Photo Academy

iPhone Photo Academy is an in-depth online course that will show you how to take incredible iPhone photos that everyone adores and that you'll be proud to look at years later.

Most iPhone photography courses focus on showing you which buttons to press, and iPhone Photo Academy does that too... While ALSO showing you how to see the world through the eyes of an experienced photographer (which is something most other courses ignore).

Now, if you're like most people, you probably never leave home without your iPhone, but that still doesn't mean you're not going to miss that perfect shot. In fact...

You Will Still Miss Your Best Photos If You Don't Know How To Use Your iPhone Correctly

You see, having the iPhone with you is only half of the equation. The other half is knowing how to use it to take outstanding photos.

Some people think that buying expensive gear will make them better photographers, and that's what camera manufacturers want you to think. But even the most expensive camera won't make you a better photographer, just like buying an expensive pen won't make you a better writer.

And just like any other camera, your iPhone is just a tool, and it's a tool that can be used to take both poor and amazing photos...

But with the right knowledge the iPhone can be used to take photos that are so good that most people would never even believe that they were taken with a phone!

And that's what you're going to learn inside iPhone Photo Academy.

Yes, you're going to learn all the techniques and apps, but more importantly...

You're Going To Love iPhone Photography

You're going to take photos that are so good you'll be surprised not that they were taken with the iPhone... but that it was YOU who took these photos.

You're never going to run out of interesting things to take photos of, because you'll know how to recognize amazing photo opportunities wherever you go.

And you're going to have confidence in your iPhone photography.

You'll be taking photos with the iPhone not because you forgot your big camera at home, but because you'll know how to use your iPhone to predictably get high-quality photos every time you press the shutter.

I know these are big promises, but I also know I can deliver...

Because 229,959 happy students have already completed iPhone Photo Academy and forever changed the way they take photos with their iPhone!

iPhone photo by Yvonne Nagel, an iPhone Photo Academy graduate from Waldkirch, Switzerland

A Similar College Course Would
Cost You Thousands Of

And that's assuming you could find a college course teaching iPhone photography.

Now, if you were to hire a photography teacher, that would cost you about an hour...

There are 10 hours of excellent video lessons in iPhone Photo Academy, so those lessons alone would cost you at least (and that's excluding worth of free bonuses).

The good news is that you won't have to pay to join this course...

But first, I have to warn you about something:

So if you want to take incredible photos with your iPhone, now is the time to take action.

Just a few short weeks from now you could be taking photos that are so good that nobody will even believe they were taken with the iPhone...

Or you can keep doing what you're doing now.

The choice is yours.

iPhone Photo Academy Comes With A
30-Day Money-Back Guarantee!

30-Day Money-Back Guarantee

Here's What My Students Are Saying...

Module 1: The Essentials Of iPhone Camera

In this module you're going to discover how to take control of your iPhone's camera, which will help you take perfectly sharp photos every time you press the shutter. We're going to start with the basics, but even advanced users will discover some hidden tricks in this module.

So here's exactly what you're going to discover in Module 1:

iPhone photo by Susan Couch, an iPhone Photo Academy graduate from Wolftown, Virginia, USA

Module 2: Additional iPhone Camera Features

In this module you're going to discover additional iPhone camera techniques that will help you take full control of your iPhone's camera. While these techniques are relatively simple, they will help you take high-quality iPhone photos that you wouldn't be able to take otherwise.

So here's exactly what you're going to discover in Module 2:

Simple technique for capturing high-quality action shots with your iPhone

How to always capture the exact right moment when taking photos of people

What is HDR (and how to use this technique for perfectly exposed iPhone photos)

Trick for taking photos in which a person appears more than once (no editing required)

How to capture up to 10 iPhone photos per second (and what to do with them later)

Step-by-step method for taking jaw-dropping panoramic photos with your iPhone

How to sort through hundreds of Burst photos to quickly pick your favorites

iPhone photo by Lynn Park, an iPhone Photo Academy graduate from Dilworth, Minnesota, USA

Module 3: The Principles Of Great Photography

This is one of the most important parts in the course, because if you don't follow these timeless principles of great photography, nothing else will even make a difference. So after mastering the technical aspects of the iPhone camera, it's time to take your iPhone photography to the next level by focusing on these fundamental principles behind all great photography.

So here's exactly what you're going to discover in Module 3:

iPhone photo by Eirik Fung, an iPhone Photo Academy graduate from Sha Tin, Hong Kong

Module 4: Creative iPhone Photography Techniques

The difference between OK photos and great ones is not in how sharp they are, but in the story and emotion these photos convey. This module will help you transition from simple snapshots to powerful images that express emotion and tell stories. It's actually easier than you think...

So here's exactly what you're going to discover in Module 4:

3 simple and highly effective techniques for taking creative iPhone photos

How to tell stories and convey strong emotion through your iPhone photography

The exact techniques I used to create my best photos with over 1000 likes on Instagram

Why the best photos make an emotional impact (and how you can do it in your own photos)

The most important principle in visual storytelling, and how you can use it in your photos

My all-time favorite iPhone photography technique (and everything you need to know to take outstanding iPhone photos using this simple trick that leaves everyone speechless)

How to take beautiful silhouette photos with your iPhone (it's much easier than you think)

The #1 mistake in silhouette photography (and how you can avoid making that mistake)

The secret behind "the lost shadow" technique (and how to use it to engage the viewer)

Why the camera of your iPhone sees the world differently than the human eye (and how you can use these differences to capture the world like people have never seen it before)

iPhone photo by Mary Lou Johnson, an iPhone Photo Academy
graduate from Longboat Key, Florida, USA

Module 5: Common iPhone Photography Scenarios

In Module 5 we're going to take everything you've discovered so far and apply it to some of the most common iPhone photography scenarios. You're going to get practical advice and step-by-step instructions for taking stunning iPhone photos in any situation you find yourself in.

So here's exactly what you're going to discover in Module 5:

iPhone Photo Academy Comes With A
30-Day Money-Back Guarantee!

30-Day Money-Back Guarantee

Free Bonus Module: The Advanced Camera Features Of The Latest iPhone Models

The latest iPhones have advanced camera features that aren't available on older iPhones.

With two or three cameras on the back of the iPhone, you can easily switch between ultra-wide, wide and telephoto lenses. I'll show you how to pick the right lens for each photo you take.

The brand-new Night Mode will capture better night photos than the iPhone could ever capture before. It works great automatically, but you can get even better results with manual controls.

Thanks to Portrait Mode, you can now take exceptional portraits with a soft, beautifully blurred background. With Portrait Lighting, you can take well-lit portraits that look like they were taken in a studio. And finally, you can even adjust the background blur of the photos you've taken.

So in this bonus module you'll discover all of the following:

If you don't have one of the latest iPhone models (or if your iPhone has only one lens), that's totally fine. You'll still be able to take stunning iPhone photos in just a few weeks from now.

But if you have one of the latest iPhones, then you're going to love this bonus module!

Free Bonus Module: Expanding
Your Creativity With Live Photos

When you take a photo with Live Photos feature enabled, your iPhone also records a short video just before and after the shot, which allows you to bring your memories to life in a really powerful way. It's amazing how much emotion can be conveyed in these short videos!

Besides playing back these short videos, Apple has just introduced some really creative ways to use your Live Photos. You can now turn your Live Photos into a never-ending video "Loop" or a unique "Bounce" clip, or even convert them into outstanding long exposure photos!

So in this bonus module you'll discover all of the following:

How to use Live Photos for capturing the most beautiful moments of your life

When you should and should NOT have Live Photos enabled (if you leave Live Photos on all the time, it will reduce battery life, take up storage and even slow down your iPhone)

How to change the key frame of your Live Photos (so that it shows the exact right moment)

A simple step-by-step method for making sure your Live Photos always turn out amazing

How to use Live Photos to create stunning long exposure photos (this allows you to easily create those stunning images where water is blurred out as it flows down a waterfall)

How to quickly convert your Live Photos into unique "Bounce" and "Loop" clips

Free Bonus Module: How To Manage,
Share And Print Your iPhone Photos

When you enroll in the course and your iPhone photography turns into a fulfilling hobby, you're probably going to experience certain challenges related to managing, sharing and printing your best iPhone photos.

If you value your iPhone photography (and your memories), it's absolutely essential that all your photos are backed up. If you're not backing up your photos, you could lose your entire photo library and a lifetime of memories tomorrow. This happens more often than you think.

And if you don't preserve the full resolution of your iPhone photos (or if you don't know how to do that), you won't be able to print and exhibit your best iPhone photography in the future.

That's why I created a free bonus module covering all of these topics:

Free Bonus: Video Analysis
Of 459 iPhone Photos

When you're taking photos with your iPhone, you're sometimes going to make mistakes.

Everyone does.

Of course, you have the opportunity to learn from your mistakes (if you know how to recognize them) and your iPhone photos will slowly get better once you learn to avoid these mistakes.

But what if you could take a MASSIVE shortcut and instead of making all the mistakes yourself you could simply learn from the mistakes of others?

That way you wouldn't be ruining your own photos...

Well, I have great news for you!

I've recorded an in-depth video analysis of 459 iPhone photos where I point out the mistakes these photos make... and how you can improve your own photos by not making these mistakes.

These videos will save you hours upon hours of practice... and thousands of ruined photos that you might never have a chance to take again.

The best part?

You'll get the in-depth video analysis of these 459 photos for free when you join iPhone Photo Academy today. This bonus alone has 10 hours of video content that will save you hundreds of hours of practice as you learn from the mistakes made by other photographers.

Free Bonus: Lifetime Membership
In Our Private Online Community

All my students are invited to participate in a private Facebook community where they share their best photos, provide feedback and talk about all things related to iPhone photography.

This community is extremely active. On most days dozens of photos and hundreds of comments are posted in this group - all by your fellow students.

Unlike other online photography communities, this group is friendly and encouraging, allowing iPhone photographers of all levels to share their best work and get invaluable feedback.

Many great friendships have been formed through this community, both online and in real life!

If you don't use Facebook, that's totally fine. You don't need Facebook to take my course.

But if you give it a try, you're going to absolutely love this online community!

Value: /year (/month)
Yours: FREE for life

Total Bonus Value:

FREE When You Join
iPhone Photo Academy Today!

iPhone Photo Academy Comes With A
30-Day Money-Back Guarantee!

30-Day Money-Back Guarantee

Here's What My Students Are Saying...

iPhone photo by Avis Begoun, an iPhone Photo Academy graduate from San Carlos, California, USA

iPhone photo by Petur Magnusson, an iPhone Photo Academy graduate from Kopavogur, Iceland

iPhone photo by Linda Steinberg, an iPhone Photo Academy
graduate from Amherstview, Ontario, Canada

Here's What My Students Are Saying...

iPhone Photo Academy Comes With A
30-Day Money-Back Guarantee!

(Plus Worth Of Free Bonuses)

30-Day Money-Back Guarantee

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iPhone Photo Academy | iPhone Photography Online Course

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Dear Friend, If you'd like to take better photos with your iPhone than most people can take with a DSLR, this might be the most important page you're going to read in a long time...

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Introduction

Chapter 1: Naming It All
Why Do We Need to Take This Approach in the Classroom? Values of Social Justice Teaching Traits of Textured Teaching Bias in Teaching Racialized Imaginations A Radical Teaching Stance
Context Is Important

Chapter 2: Student Driven and Community Centered
The Identity Work The Land Work Community Centered Classroom Community Classroom Texts and Libraries
Culture and Behavior Work Cautions and Challenges
Adding a Layer of Texture

Chapter 3: Interdisciplinary
Demystify and Destigmatize
Discussions and Conversations
Build Background and Research
Supplement and Think Critically
Collaborating with Colleagues
Synthesizing and Debriefing with Students
Cautions and Challenges
Adding a Layer of Texture

Chapter 4: Experiential
The Community as a Resource
Creating Experiences for Students
Bringing the Text to Life
Sensitivity and Intentionality
An Example from My Class
Experiencing Truth xx Cautions and Challenges
Adding a Layer of Texture

Chapter 5: Flexible

Strategizing for Flexibility
Strategy #1: Being Flexible with Students
Strategy #2: Being Flexible with Processing Sheets
Strategy #3: Being Flexible with Assessments
Strategy #4: Being Flexible with Grading
Strategy #5: Including Out-of-School Literacies
Assessments and Learning Challenges
Cautions and Challenges
Adding a Layer of Texture

Chapter 6: Conclusion: Textured
If Only My Teachers Had Known
A Tool for You: Unit Template
The Texture We Already Have
It's Time

"Lorena Escota Germán walks us through a framework that is realistic, wholistic, liberating, and necessary! Textured Teaching is THE book every teacher should read. Not only does the book guide us into meeting our students where they are and learning who they are, it also helps us [the educators] to grow and become the teachers we are meant to be. Centering education in love, community, justice, truth, and knowledge, Germán pushes us to go beyond ourselves and to be present and to open our hearts to the possibilities of justice centered learning." --Tiffany Jewell, author of the #1 New York Times Bestseller, This Book Is Anti-Racist

"Textured Teaching is a combination of affirmation, culturally relevant practices, culturally sustaining teaching, and liberating pedagogies. It is love. It is truth-telling. It is nuanced. It is hopeful. It is necessary in its stance and commitment to dismantle harmful schooling practices through pedagogical restoration, equity, and justice. In fact, it is Lorena Escoto Germán's commitment to anti-oppressive and anti-racist teaching which is felt on every single page of this book, that should encourage us to reimagine teaching as a Project in Humanization that positions teachers as learning partners alongside students. What a beautiful text. What a layered teaching framework. What a textured book. Read it and be left inspired!" --Valerie Kinloch, Renée and Richard Goldman Dean & Professor, School of Education at the University of Pittsburgh

"As this country becomes more divided, this book helps educators step into the liberation work with both feet. Germán has written the teaching book that will hopefully push teachers and their classrooms to more justice-centered practices and orientations." --José Luis Vilson, Executive Director of #Educolor, NYC math educator, and author of This Is Not a Test

"The craft of teaching is both science and art, but textured teaching suggests that it also wisdom and discovery. The wealth of this approach, subtle in its implication, transformative in its intent, is found at the fertile intersection of where profound education work sits in the lives of youth, to equally empower, enhance, and sustain them while fostering conditions that promise they will grow." --David E. Kirkland, Executive Director, NYU Metro Center and Professor of Urban Education, New York University

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With Culturally Sustaining Practice as its foundation, Textured Teaching shares lesson design strategies that build traditional literacy skills while supporting

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Advancing Racial Literacy in Teacher Education

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Advancing Racial Literacy in Teacher Education

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Detra Price-Dennis & Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz

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Advancing Racial Literacies in Teacher Education

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"Price-Dennis and Sealey-Ruiz move toward a new vision of racial literacy which must include digital literacy to be relevant to students and effective as activism. Their compelling and concrete examples push forward current scholarship at the intersection of culturally relevant pedagogy, racial literacy, and digital literacy, and successfully lay the groundwork for a new set of priorities in teacher education."

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Life, Literature, and the Pursuit of Happiness: Supporting Our Immigrant and Refugee Children Through the Power of Reading

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Life, Literature, and the Pursuit of Happiness: Supporting Our Immigrant and Refugee Children Through the Power of Reading

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by Don Vu...and if you use Amazon.com please use smile.amazon.com and designate the Book Love Foundation as your nonprofit. We give every dollar away to teachers!

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A call to action for building a culture of literacy for all students in their pursuit of the American Dream.

Award-winning principal and literacy advocate Don Vu examines six conditions of a school's culture of literacy (Commitment, Collection, Clock, Conversation, Connection, and Celebration), showing how to create an environment where all students-especially immigrant and refugee children-can thrive. Vu's work is a testament to the transformative power of reading-a key to opening the door for all to realize the American Dream.

Endorsements
"Don is a wonderful storyteller, and his honest essays about himself and his family, their escape from the Vietnam days before Saigon fell, his life as an immigrant child, and his experiences and memories of reading illustrate the lasting influence of families, teachers, and books. Don is also an inclusive and responsive school leader, and credits school staff and families with driving change at the school. He stresses that any shift or initiative in a school's culture driven solely by its leaders is unsustainable.

Life, Literacy, and the Pursuit of Happiness is rich in practical strategies, thought-provoking conversation topics, student and teacher voices, and inspiration. It is possible for all children to experience reading joy and succeed on short-term measures of success like standardized tests, but Barrett Ranch and schools like it show that when we focus on engaging and supporting readers and their families, children succeed and retain an appreciation for reading. Don Vu and the Barrett Ranch community have given us a gift-a glimpse into the messy but gratifying process of reimagining what reading looks like in our schools."
- DONALYN MILLER, award-winning teacher, staff development leader, and author of The Book Whisperer, Reading in the Wild, and Game Changer!: Book Access for All Kids

" Life, Literacy, and the Pursuit of Happiness is one of the most important books for educators today. Don Vu helps us reimagine what is possible when we create a culture of literacy and commit to student choice, agency, and independent reading. He weaves in personal story throughout, which helps illuminate the challenges and triumphs of the immigrant and refugee experience. The stories and strategies Vu shares, as well as the trade books he recommends, will help educators at all levels create the best environments possible for our immigrant and refugee children to thrive as readers, writers, and learners."
- FRANKI SIBBERSON, 2020 President, National Council of Teachers of English; Teacher, Librarian, Author

"I love this book with all my heart. Don's expertise and personal journey make Life, Literacy, and the Pursuit of Happiness an instant standout in the world of literacy leadership. With poignant stories, a powerful refugee perspective, and practical strategies, it will help you deliver on the promise of making education the great equalizer."
- BRAD GUSTAFSON, National Distinguished Principal, Author of Reclaiming Our Calling

"America is at a crossroads, yet Life, Literacy, and the Pursuit of Happiness tells us that a path to a better America can be made in our very own schools, with compassion, hope, and Vu's six conditions for a culture of literacy for all. This master storyteller weaves together his own immigrant story, his school's successes, and reading research into a beautifully inclusive fabric. This book will not only help you grow professionally, but truly touch your soul!"
- JOANNE DEVINE, Past President of the California Reading Association and Placer Area Reading Council, Lifelong Educator and Reading Specialist Reading

"There are few books I've read that speak as deeply to my heart as Life, Literacy, and the Pursuit of Happiness. Don Vu takes you on a personal journey that is incredibly accessible and filled with takeaways for all educators who care deeply about equitable education. This is a book I'll give to educator friends because I believe it's a book we all need, not only for our own hearts but also for our students'."
- TODD NESLONEY, Director of Culture & Strategic Leadership, Texas Elementary Principals and Supervisors Association; Author of When Kids Lead: An Adult's Guide to Inspiring, Empowering, and Growing Young Leaders

"Vu intimately understands the power books have to shape identity, particularly for young newcomers who seek belonging. Life, Literacy, and the Pursuit of Happiness is a compassionate and creative guide that challenges teachers to reimagine the role and importance of books in the lives of their immigrant students. Weaving in stories of his own, from growing up as a refugee in the United States to his years of success in classrooms and as a principal, Vu is a vital voice for educators."
- JESSICA LANDER, Teacher of recent immigrant and refugee students, Author of Driving Backwards, and Coauthor of Powerful Partnerships: Engaging Families for Student Success, co-founder (with her former students) of the national We Are America Project

"As our student population continues to grow more diverse, this book is needed on every educator's shelf. Don has tackled some of the realities our immigrant youth experience and gives practical strategies to educators. Honest, timely, and an insight on what it is to live a true literacy American Dream."
- LYNMARA COLÓN, Director of English Learner Programs and Services, Prince William County Schools; Author of Empower Our Girls: Opening Doors for Girls to Achieve More

"What a gem of a book! Elementary principal Don Vu speaks from the trenches and from the heart, providing a pathway to inspiring all children to read, especially those from diverse language backgrounds. He encourages us to examine our potential blind spots on equity, race, and poverty, while guiding us to make important shifts that impact students' achievement and lives."
-LORI OCZKUS, Author and Literacy Consultant

"In this exhilarating text, Don Vu shares his immigration story as the impetus for educators and families to create rich, literacy lives with 'books everywhere.' He convincingly argues that achieving the American dream is only possible for refugees, immigrants, and other vulnerable groups if all 'kids are educated and liberated.' To that end, in Life, Literacy, and the Pursuit of Happiness, Vu brilliantly describes how to create and sustain compassionate schools and classrooms where all languages and cultures are celebrated and all literacy learners thrive."
- REGIE ROUTMAN, Educator and Author of Literacy Essentials: Engagement, Excellence, and Equity for All Learners

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Life, Literacy, and the Pursuit of Happiness: Supporting Our Immigrant and Refugee Children Through the Power of Reading

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Amazon.com: Life, Literacy, and the Pursuit of Happiness: Supporting Our Immigrant and Refugee Children Through the Power of Reading: 9781338769364: Vu, Don: Books

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Raising Free People: Unschooling as Liberation and Healing

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Raising Free People: Unschooling as Liberation and Healing

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by Akilah S. Richards

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"This is an insightful, brilliant book by one of today's most inspiring leaders in the realm of Self-Directed Education. We see here how respecting children, listening to them, and learning from them can revolutionize our manner of parenting and remove the blinders imposed by the forced schooling that we nearly all experienced. I recommend it to everyone who cares about children, freedom, and the future of humanity."-Peter Gray, research professor of psychology at Boston College, author of Free to Learn

"Akilah's voice is so warm and personal that sometimes I don't notice how seriously radical and impactful her words are-that is, until I catch myself speaking and listening to my own child with noticeably more humility, curiosity, and respect. Raising Free People pulls off that rare miracle: it's a book for everyone, offering fresh and significant insights to people like me who've spent decades learning about unschooling, while simultaneously welcoming and engaging the parent who has never previously stopped to question the validity or importance of school. And, Akilah's vision is unsurpassed when it comes to drawing the connections between collective liberation and personal freedom. Her clarity on this and similar issues has already deepened the communal wisdom of the Self-Directed Education movement, and I hope that her book reaches millions of parents, so that millions of children may grow up knowing, trusting, and fully inhabiting their own unique gifts."-Grace Llewellyn, author of The Teenage Liberation Handbook and founder of Not Back to School Camp

"It is uplifting to experience this message delivered with such clarity and such a practical and inviting manner that would naturally encourage and draw families to want to take this first step toward living this. I want to thank Akilah for this and encourage any families that are thinking more about learning to raise free adults, to jump right in and take this journey of learning with Akilah. Her care, empathy, presence, and insight are at the very forefront of how families can experience living together in a healthy, integrated and harmonious manner where learning is an ongoing journey to deepening their connections."-George Kaponay, world traveler, storyteller, writer, social entrepreneur, and cofounder of the Family Adventure Academy

"It's becoming more common for parents to recognize the inefficiencies and irrelevance of conventional schooling and to desire something better for their children. Yet, few have had the courage and the commitment to forge a new path for their family based on freedom, liberation, autonomy, and love like Akilah S. Richards. Even fewer have been able to share such deep insights and empowering narratives about reclaiming our lives and trusting our children to create their own."-Tomis Parker, Agile Learning Facilitator at ALC Mosaic and board member of The Alliance for Self-Directed Education

" Raising Free People is the book that those of us navigating unschooling through a decolonisation and social justice lens have been waiting for. Akilah's straight up rich and honest descriptions and insights on the many highs and lows of living with authenticity and in raising free people resonate completely. There are so many 'What? How did I not notice that before?' moments. It is priceless that we get to journey with the Richards as they navigate overcoming their schoolishness and fears towards liberation and community accompanied by the insight, guidance, and encouragement in constantly checking our mind-sets to do the inner liberation work to make the outer liberation a reality."-Zakiyya Ismail, convener of the Learning Reimagined Unschooling Conference, Johannesburg, South Africa

From the Publisher

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Raising Free People: Unschooling as Liberation and Healing Work|Paperback

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No one is immune to the byproducts of compulsory schooling and standardized testing. And while reform may be a worthy cause for some, it is not enough for countless others still trying to navigate the tyranny of what schooling has always been. Raising Free People argues that we need...

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they said this would be fun: Race, Campus Life, and Growing Up

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they said this would be fun: Race, Campus Life, and Growing Up

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Eternity Martis

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NATIONAL BESTSELLER
Winner of the Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for Nonfiction
Nominated for the Evergreen Award

A powerful, moving memoir about what it's like to be a student of colour on a predominantly white campus.

A booksmart kid from Toronto, Eternity Martis was excited to move away to Western University for her undergraduate degree. But as one of the few Black students there, she soon discovered that the campus experiences she'd seen in movies were far more complex in reality. Over the next four years, Eternity learned more about what someone like her brought out in other people than she did about herself. She was confronted by white students in blackface at parties, dealt with being the only person of colour in class and…

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NATIONAL BESTSELLER Winner of the Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for NonfictionNominated for the Evergreen AwardA powerful, moving memoir about what it’s like to be a student of colour on a predominantly white campus.A booksmart kid from Toronto, Eternity Martis was excited to move away to Weste…

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What Happened to You: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing

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What Happened to You: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing

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Dr. Bruce Perry & Oprah Winfrey

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#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

Our earliest experiences shape our lives far down the road, and What Happened to You? provides powerful scientific and emotional insights into the behavioral patterns so many of us struggle to understand.

"Through this lens we can build a renewed sense of personal self-worth and ultimately recalibrate our responses to circumstances, situations, and relationships. It is, in other words, the key to reshaping our very lives." -Oprah Winfrey
This book is going to change the way you see your life.
Have you ever wondered "Why did I do that?" or "Why can't I just control my behavior?" Others may judge our reactions and think, "What's wrong with that person?" When questioning our emotions, it's easy to place the blame on ourselves; holding ourselves and those around us to an impossible standard. It's time we started asking a different question.

Through deeply personal conversations, Oprah Winfrey and renowned brain and trauma expert Dr. Bruce Perry offer a groundbreaking and profound shift from asking "What's wrong with you?" to "What happened to you?"

Here, Winfrey shares stories from her own past, understanding through experience the vulnerability that comes from facing trauma and adversity at a young age. In conversation throughout the book, she and Dr. Perry focus on understanding people, behavior, and ourselves. It's a subtle but profound shift in our approach to trauma, and it's one that allows us to understand our pasts in order to clear a path to our future-opening the door to resilience and healing in a proven, powerful way.

Related collections and offers

Product Details

ISBN-13:

9781250223180

Publisher:

Flatiron Books

Publication date:

04/27/2021

Pages:

304

Sales rank:

2,258

Product dimensions:

5.70(w) x 7.60(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Over the course of her esteemed career, Oprah Winfrey has created an unparalleled connection with people around the world. As host and supervising producer of the top-rated, award-winning The Oprah Winfrey Show, she entertained, enlightened, and uplifted millions of viewers for twenty-five years. Her continued accomplishments as a global media leader and philanthropist have established her as one of the most influential and admired public figures in the world today.

Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D., a child psychiatrist and neuroscientist, is the principal of the Neurosequential Network, senior fellow of the ChildTrauma Academy and an adjunct professor of psychiatry at the Northwestern University School of Medicine in Chicago. He is the author, with Maia Szalavitz, of The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog, a bestselling book based on his work with maltreated children, and Born for Love, about the essential nature of empathy.

Table of Contents

A Note from the Authors 9

Introduction 10

Chapter 1 Making Sense of the World 18

Chapter 2 Seeking Balance 42

Chapter 3 How We Were Loved 68

Chapter 4 The Spectrum of Trauma 94

Chapter 5 Connecting the Dots 120

Chapter 6 From Coping to Healing 152

Chapter 7 Post-Traumatic Wisdom 184

Chapter 8 Our Brains, Our Biases, Our Systems 210

Chapter 9 Relational Hunger In The Modern World 244

Chapter 10 What We Need Now 272

Epilogue 288

Resources 299

Credits And Acknowledgments 302

Editorial Reviews

"Where Hope Lives:

What we experience in childhood shapes us forever-and that is especially true for young victims of trauma. It's a lesson Oprah learned as a child being raised by an abusive grandmother. She developed 'a keen sense of when trouble was brewing'-when she would be subjected to 'whuppings' at times so brutal, the welts left behind would bleed through her clothing.

As a result of this and other abuse she suffered, Oprah has had a lifelong interest in understanding and overcoming the profound effects of early trauma-and helping others do the same. Now, she's teamed up with neuroscientist and child trauma expert Bruce Perry, MD, PhD, on this essential book. Revealing, intimate, and educational, it's a testament to the authors' wish for readers to come to grips with, and let go of, the past-and to move forward into 'post-traumatic wisdom.'"

-Leigh Haber, O Magazine

From the Publisher

2021-05-17
A collaborative look at brain trauma and methods to alleviate the potentially lifelong effects.

Child psychiatrist and neuroscientist Perry teams with Winfrey to examine traumatic injury caused by an abusive childhood. The book is formatted in a conversational interview format, with Perry sharing his insights on stress, brain biology, and physiological response, offering new approaches to emotional and psychological pain. Using medical models, Winfrey's personal experience, and Perry's years of research, the authors demonstrate the brain's resilience and ability to adapt to traumatic situations, particularly when paired with psychopharmacological remedies, natural interventions, and behavioral treatments. This process of neural recalibration works wonders in instances of deeply embedded trauma and abuse, allowing people to live better lives through newly invigorated self-worth. Winfrey candidly shares difficult memories of a childhood where regular whippings (as early as age 3) were "accepted practice" and there were expectations of silence and a smile in their aftermath. In addition to this early trauma, she recounts her difficult adult relationship with her mother, which culminates in a powerful scene in a nursing home when Winfrey froze at her mother's bedside, unable to address her. She admits that while collectively these events manifested into her adult relationships and behavior, she eventually processed and embraced the trauma as an opportunity for healing and a way to move forward. With proactive conviction, the authors help readers to recognize their own internalized trauma and encourage the reshaping of personal paths toward wellness and "to excavate the roots that were put down long before we had the words to articulate what was happening to us." Through therapeutic frameworks and the curative power of community, belonging, human connection, and mindfulness, the authors show how renewal of mind and spirit is attainable. Though many of these issues have been addressed before, Perry and Winfrey's partnership is notable, and their book is worthy of attention.

A candid guidebook to exorcising mental trauma.

Kirkus Reviews

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What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing|Hardcover

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1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Our earliest experiences shape our lives far down the road, and What Happened to You? provides powerful scientific and emotional insights into the behavioral patterns so many of us struggle to understand. "Through this lens we can build a renewed sense of personal self-worth and ultimately recalibrate our responses to circumstances, situations, and relationships.

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Octavia Butler

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#1 New York Times BestsellerWinner of the 2018 Eisner Award for Best Adaptation from Another Medium Octavia E. Butler's bestselling literary science-fiction masterpiece, Kindred, now in graphic novel format. More than 35 years after its release, continues to draw in new readers with its deep exploration of the violence and loss of humanity caused by slavery in the United States, and its complex and lasting impact on the present day. Adapted by celebrated academics and comics artists Damian Duffy and John Jennings, this graphic novel powerfully renders Butler's mysterious and moving story, which spans racial and gender divides in the antebellum South through the 20th century. Butler's most celebrated, critically acclaimed work tells the story of Dana, a young black woman who is suddenly and inexplicably transported from her home in 1970s California to the pre-Civil War South. As she time-travels between worlds, one in which she is a free woman and one where she is part of her own complicated familial history on a southern plantation, she becomes frighteningly entangled in the lives of Rufus, a conflicted white slaveholder and one of Dana's own ancestors, and the many people who are enslaved by him. Held up as an essential work in feminist, science-fiction, and fantasy genres, as well as a cornerstone of the Afrofuturism movement, the intersectionality of race, history, and the treatment of women addressed in the book still remain critical topics in contemporary dialogue, both in the classroom and in the public sphere. Frightening, compelling, and richly imagined, Kindred offers an unflinching look at our complicated social history, transformed by the graphic novel format into a visually stunning work for a new generation of readers.

Related collections and offers

Product Details

ISBN-13:

9781419728556

Publisher:

ABRAMS

Publication date:

07/24/2018

Edition description:

Reprint

Pages:

256

Sales rank:

41,953

Product dimensions:

6.40(w) x 9.40(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Octavia Estelle Butler (1947-2006), often referred to as the "grand dame of science fiction," was born in Pasadena, California, on June 22, 1947. She received an Associate of Arts degree in 1968 from Pasadena City College, and also attended California State University in Los Angeles and the University of California, Los Angeles. Butler was the first science-fiction writer to win a MacArthur Fellowship ("genius" grant). She won the PEN Lifetime Achievement Award and the Nebula and Hugo Awards, among others. John Jennings is the curator of the Megascope list and illustrator of the graphic novel adaptations of Octavia E. Butler's Kindred and Parable of the Sower. He is a professor of media and cultural studies at the University of California, Riverside and was awarded the Nasir Jones Hiphop Fellowship at Harvard's Hutchins Center for African & African American Research. He also co-edited the Eisner Award-winning anthology The Blacker the Ink: Constructions of Black Identity in Comics and Sequential Art. Damian Duffy, cartoonist, writer, and comics letterer, is a PhD student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Graduate School of Library and Information Science, and a founder of Eye Trauma Studios (eyetrauma.net). His first published graphic novel, The Hole: Consumer Culture, created with artist John Jennings, was released by Front 40 Press in 2008. Along with Jennings, Duffy has curated several comics art shows, including Other Heroes: African American Comic Book Creators, Characters and Archetypes and Out of Sequence: Underrepresented Voices in American Comics, and published the art book Black Comix: African American Independent Comics Art and Culture. He has also published scholarly essays in comics form on curation, new media, diversity, and critical pedagogy.

Editorial Reviews

Awash in burnished ambers and potent violets, this illustrated adaptation of Butler's 1979 time-traveling classic about a black woman from '70s California suddenly transplanted to the 19th-century South amplifies the original's visceral grace.

The Oprah Magazine O

Adapting any prose novel to the graphic format is an audacious undertaking at the best of times, but translating Octavia E. Butler's fearsomely powerful work in particular must surely have been a herculean task. Yet Damian Duffy and John Jennings have managed it with their version of Kindred ...giving her most accessible novel...fresh life...Duffy and Jennings's adaptation retains the spare, almost baroque feel of Butler's narrative, down to its ominous chapter headings...The art here, which is angular and line-heavy and somehow apocalyptic, fits the weight of the material perfectly...The adaptation does not flinch from the ugliest parts of Butler's text. (Parents hoping that the graphical format may work better for teenagers, take warning.) A worthy and powerful supplement to a classic.

The New York Times Book Review - N. K. Jemisin

11/07/2016
Dana, an African-American woman in the 1970s, is thrust backward in time to a 19th-century Maryland plantation. Over many visits to the past, she realizes that the spoiled son of the plantation owner is her ancestor, destined to father children with a slave, and she must protect his life to ensure her own existence. Butler's celebrated 1979 novel, here adapted into a graphic novel, starts with a gripping idea and builds skillfully, as both Dana and her white husband in the present are warped by slavery and become complicit in its evil. This graphic novel recaps the classic source material faithfully without adding much to justify the adaptation, although it may find some new readers. The blocky artwork lacks the subtlety to evoke the complexity of the novel or the vividness of its historical settings (in addition to the antebellum South, the adaptation preserves the 1970s setting of the "present-day" sections). It's an effective recap, clearly produced with great love and respect, but the book remains the gold standard. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

"A glorious tribute to Octavia Butler's masterpiece. Extraordinary."

Pulitzer Prize-winning author - Junot Díaz

" Kindred is a perfect candidate for the graphic-novel medium-Damian Duffy's taut adaptation and John Jennings's tense, electric renderings vibrate throughout, pacing and containing, then pushing every ounce of discomfort to the forefront. Comics and science fiction exploit their greatest shared strength by illuminating the mundane that surrounds us, allowing any reader to critique and process our world with new vision."

Eisner-Award winning and New York Times bestselling graphic novelist of March, The Year - Nate Powell

"Wonderful. Captures the essence of Octavia Butler's vision even as it demonstrates the superlative skills of Duffy and Jennings."

author of Skin Folk, The New Moon's Arms, and Sisters Mine - Nalo Hopkinson

"A glorious tribute to Octavia Butler's masterpiece. Extraordinary."

Pulitzer Prize-winning author - Junot Díaz

01/01/2018
As adapted from Butler's iconic novel, Dana is unwillingly wrenched from 1976 back to 1815 and must blend into plantation life as the "slave" of her white husband, Kevin. Here, Dana meets the plantation owner's spoiled son, who rapes his slave-concubine Alice to produce Dana's own ancestors. Butler claimed that her novel sanitized life under slavery, but Dana witnesses and experiences miseries aplenty. Indeed, Dana and Kevin are both changed by the forced culture shock. The 1976 episodes appear in sedate two-toned images, the dystopian plantation society in jarring strong colors. (LJ 4/1/17)

Library Journal

★ 06/01/2017
Gr 9 Up-A searing, painful, but necessary graphic novel adaptation of Butler's classic sci-fi work. It begins with a short glimpse at African American protagonist Dana's beaten physical state in the late 1970s and jumps briefly backward in time as she unpacks in her new home with her white husband Kevin. She is abruptly ripped from her present day to a plantation in antebellum Maryland, called there by the pained cries of her white ancestor Rufus. While Dana is in the past, time passes quickly, and she has to learn how to survive in horrendous conditions in order to protect her own future existence. She inexplicably returns to the present, where only a short time has passed, and eventually transports her husband to the past, where the white and black characters can't understand their interracial marriage. The couple continues to be torn apart by the sporadic time travel, and each time Dana hopes to reform Rufus as he grows older, but to no avail. The graphic scenes of violence, including intimations of rape, might shock readers, but they also serve to put history in stark and realistic light. Jennings's muted palette for the scenes in the 1970s and more vibrant hues in the mid-1800s serve as visual reminders of setting. The variation of the panels will catapult readers forward as the heroine slowly begins to understand how to manipulate the time travel. Inner monologues present Dana's own battles with complacency in a heartbreaking way. Strong language is appropriate for the horrific situations the characters find themselves in, and important themes of oppression, systemic racism and sexism, and survival are explored. VERDICT A compelling, masterly graphic novel for all libraries serving teens.-Shelley M. Diaz, School Library Journal

School Library Journal

"A glorious tribute to Octavia Butler's masterpiece. Extraordinary."--Junot Diaz "Pulitzer Prize-winning author "

" Kindred is a perfect candidate for the graphic-novel medium--Damian Duffy's taut adaptation and John Jennings's tense, electric renderings vibrate throughout, pacing and containing, then pushing every ounce of discomfort to the forefront. Comics and science fiction exploit their greatest shared strength by illuminating the mundane that surrounds us, allowing any reader to critique and process our world with new vision."--Nate Powell "Eisner-Award winning and New York Times bestselling graphic novelist of March, The Year "

"Wonderful. Captures the essence of Octavia Butler's vision even as it demonstrates the superlative skills of Duffy and Jennings."--Nalo Hopkinson "author of Skin Folk, The New Moon's Arms, and Sisters Mine "

From the Publisher

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Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation|Paperback

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1 New York Times BestsellerWinner of the 2018 Eisner Award for Best Adaptation from Another Medium Octavia E. Butler's bestselling literary science-fiction masterpiece, Kindred, now in graphic novel format. More than 35 years after its release, continues to draw in new readers with its deep exploration of the violence and loss of humanity caused by slavery in the United States, and its complex and lasting impact on the present day.

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by Victoria Jamieson & Omar Mohamed

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When Stars Are Scattered by Victoria Jamieson, Omar Mohamed: 9780525553915 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

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A National Book Award Finalist, this remarkable graphic novel is about growing up in a refugee camp, as told by a former Somali refugee to the Newbery Honor-winning creator of Roller Girl. Omar and…

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co-authored with Kelly Gallagher

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co-authored with Kelly Gallagher

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Section One: Planning Decisions

Start with Beliefs

Establish Daily Practices

Map a Year of Reading

Map a Year of Writing

Balance Feedback and Evaluation

Section Two: Teaching Essential Discourses

Narrative

Informational

Argument

Multigenre Research Projects

This book is divided into two sections. Section 1, "Planning Decisions," takes you through the process we used-and you might consider-to plan a year of teaching. The section includes five chapters:

Start with Beliefs

Establish Daily Practices

Map a Year of Reading

Map a Year of Writing

Balance Feedback and Evaluation

Section 2, "Teaching Essential Discourses," begins with an introduction that explains the general framework for planning a unit of study in a specific writing discourse. Then, in the four chapters that follow, we detail the decisions we made in four discourse studies: narrative, informational, argument, and multigenre. Our hope is that by reading about the decisions we made as we planned together, you will be inspired to reimagine the beautiful possibilities for your teaching.
- Introduction

This book is a brilliant work of architecture-the making of an English course. How do you shape the movement of the 180 days, balancing open space and structure, individuality and assessment, breadth and depth (not to mention managing the damn thing). Two of our country's most innovative teachers, Penny Kittle and Kelly Gallagher take on this challenge in a cross-country collaboration, exploring the art of the possible. This book-and its amazing video accompaniment-illustrates not so much the fixed course everyone should teach (even they don't totally agree on that), but how to think through the making, and the principles that should be its foundation.-Thomas Newkirk

Spending 180 days on the job and in the world with Penny Kittle and Kelly Gallagher is like apprenticing yourself to a year in the kitchen with two master chefs who speak honestly and passionately about the challenges we face and the choices we must make every day in our own classrooms. I learned something new on every page, verbally annotating just about every suggestion with a mental "Yes!" or "Try this!" At every turn, they acknowledge and address the constraints, especially of time, we all face in our classes-then show us how they manage to teach their students so much and so well despite those constraints.-Jim Burke, author of The English Teacher's Companion

"This book is everything. I mean this whole-heartedly and without exaggeration - this book is everything. It is everything I needed when I began teaching, and it is exactly what I need now to reflect on my practices, my curriculum, and my kids. The depth of knowledge and experience here, living alongside the breadth of thinking across the time and space of a school year, takes my breath away. Thank you, Penny and Kelly. May my children have teachers who have read and used this book."--Kate Roberts, author of A Novel Idea

Who among us hasn't wished to be a fly on the wall of Penny's and Kelly's classrooms? In 180 Days, we aren't just flies-we are invited into their brains, their plan books, and their friendship as they answer the question that plagues every teacher: how to do it all in one year? This book is not about how to find time where time doesn't exist. It's not about turning 180 days into 200 days so you can fit everything in. This book is about making decisions about what really matters enough and how to make the most of the time we are given with our students. It honors teachers as decision-makers and reminds us of the power of professional collaboration to change not only our students' learning but also our own professional lives.-Allison Marchetti and Rebekah O'Dell, coauthors of Writing With Mentors and Beyond Literary Analysis

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180 Days represents the collaboration of two master teachers-Kelly Gallagher and Penny Kittle-over an entire school year: planning, teaching, and reflecting

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co-edited with Tom Newkirk

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co-authored with Don Graves

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May 8, 2021

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first round of book clubs in class this fall

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May 30-31, 2021

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pennykittle.net

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Tennessee teachers will be restricted from discussing systemic racism with their students - or lose state funding - when legislation approved Wednesday becomes law.

The Senate voted 25-7 for the ban one day after the House easily passed the bill along partisan lines in Tennessee's GOP-controlled legislature, following several days of fiery debate.

Gov. Bill Lee is expected to sign the bill into law. The Republican governor has not vetoed a bill since taking office.

Tennessee becomes the latest state on the verge of limiting the depth of classroom discussions about inequality and concepts such as white privilege as part of a conservative backlash to America's reckoning over racism.

The legislation allows the state education commissioner to withhold funds from schools and districts where teachers promote certain concepts about racism, sexism, bias, and other social issues that are part of the nation's history.

Among concepts that teachers will not be able to discuss: that one race bears responsibility for the past actions against another; the United States is fundamentally racist; and a person is inherently privileged or oppressive due to their race.

It's unclear whether or to what extent those specific concepts are being taught in Tennessee public schools. But white GOP lawmakers were anxious to block lessons they view as divisive, cynical, or misguided. They pushed the prohibitions through the General Assembly during their last three days before recessing for the year.

Republicans were especially disapproving of critical race theory, an academic framework that examines how policies and the law perpetuate systemic racism.

The Senate, which initially rejected the legislation on Tuesday, reversed course after adding several provisions. One new provision will prohibit public schools from including or promoting that "the rule of law does not exist but instead is a series of power relationships and struggles among racial or other groups."

"That is the very definition of critical race theory," said Senate Education Committee Chairman Brian Kelsey, a white Republican, calling the ideas "antithetical to everything that we stand for as Americans."

Scholars define critical race theory as the analysis of how race and the pervasiveness of racism affect individuals and society.

Sen. Katrina Robinson, a Black Democrat from Memphis, called the classroom restrictions "a huge step in the wrong direction" and charged that the bill "breathes more life into racism."

"How ironic that a body made up of a supermajority of white, privileged men can determine whether even my grandchildren can see reflections of themselves in the history lessons they have in their schools - to even feel a sliver of significance in their existence," she said on the Senate floor.

Mark Finchum, executive director of the Tennessee Council for the Social Studies, predicted a chilling effect on how educators teach about racism, sexism, and oppression in their social studies, civics, and history classes.

"I think this will cause administrators to put more pressure on teachers, and both administrators and teachers already have enough to worry about without this bill," he told Chalkbeat.

Finchum also has questions about how the state education department will police classrooms to make sure educators are following the law, as well as how much money districts could get dinged if they don't.

Republicans' call for facts-based teaching of Tennessee academic standards came just a few years after lawmakers raised the standards to discourage students from rote memorization of facts. The goal, they said at the time, was to develop critical thinking skills, such as analysis, reflection, and problem-solving.

"Our goal should be to create learning environments that foster dialogue, inclusivity, mutual respect and critical thinking," said a statement from the Education Trust in Tennessee, which advocates for equity in education and criticized the legislature's passage of the bill. "Though touted as a strategy to provide clarity and a focus on the standards, this legislation does neither."

Similar measures have been criticized by other groups, including the Organization of American Historians, the nation's largest professional organization of scholars of U.S. history.

Speaking to Wednesday's conference committee as negotiators ironed out differences between the bill's House and Senate versions, Kelsey singled out The New York Times' "1619 Project." The collection of articles and essays argues the nation's "founding contradictions" emerged in 1619, the year that 20 to 30 enslaved Africans landed in the English colony of Virginia.

Marta W. Aldrich / Chalkbeat

"In Tennessee, we believe that the American government began in 1776, we believe that the Constitution is the law of the land, and we believe in the rule of law," said Kelsey, a Republican from Germantown, near Memphis.

Sen. Brenda Gilmore, a Nashville Democrat and one of two Black legislators on the nine-member negotiating committee, said students need to learn more perspectives - not fewer ones - to understand the complexities and nuances of U.S. history.

"It will be harmful," said Gilmore, who presented a minority report opposing the proposal.

"What we have to do is acknowledge that slavery existed, that today there's still racism," she said. "But there's no way to sweep this under the rug and pretend that it did not happen or to gloss over it."

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Tennessee legislature approves ban on teaching critical race theory in schools

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Tennessee teachers will be restricted from discussing systemic racism with their students - or lose state funding - when legislation approved Wednesday becomes law. The Senate voted 25-7 for the ban one day after the House easily passed the bill along partisan lines in Tennessee's GOP-controlled legislature, following several days of fiery debate.

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More than a decade after the 2010 release of Common Core State Standards in English language arts and mathematics, no convincing evidence exists that the standards had a significant, positive impact on student achievement. My new book-" Between the State and the Schoolhouse: Understanding the Failure of Common Core "-explores Common Core from the initiative's promising beginnings to its disappointing outcomes.

While the book is specifically about Common Core, the failure of that bold initiative can only be understood in the context of standards-based reform, of which Common Core is the latest and most famous example. For three decades, standards-based reform has ruled as the policy of choice for education reformers.

The Theory of Standards-Based Reform

The theory of standards-based reform rests on the belief that ambitious standards in academic subjects should be written first, guiding the later development of other key components of education-curriculum, instruction, assessment, and accountability. By promoting a common set of outcomes, standards-based reformers argue, the fragmentation and incoherence plaguing previous reform efforts could be avoided.

The approach is inherently top-down and regulatory, with standards developed by policy elites and content experts at the top of the system. The other components, all of which are bolted to the academic standards, grow in importance downstream and are often under the control of practitioners. The book focuses on curriculum and instruction, the what and the how of learning. They are key to the production of learning in classrooms.

Despite the theory's intuitive appeal, standards-based reform does not work very well in reality. One key reason is that coordinating key aspects of education at the top of the system hamstrings discretion at the bottom. The illusion of a coherent, well-coordinated system is gained at the expense of teachers' flexibility in tailoring instruction to serve their students. Classrooms are teeming with variation. An assumption of Common Core advocates is that variation in learning occurs primarily because of schools and classrooms possessing disparate, and all too often, indefensibly low standards-that if schools were brought under a common regime of high expectations, children who are falling behind would catch up or never fall behind in the first place.

High Expectations Are Not Enough

That basic notion is wrong. Simply having higher expectations is not enough to drive systemic improvement downstream. One of the most highly replicated findings of education research is that a good predictor of how much students will learn tomorrow is how much they know today. Studies of interventions that simply ratchet up expectations without regard for students' prior knowledge have yielded disappointing results. The "algebra for all" policies of the 1990s and early 2000s placed many unprepared eighth graders in Algebra I courses. They not only failed to learn algebra and fell further behind their peers, but many subsequently took a series of advanced math courses that doomed their high school math careers to repeated failure.

Low standards do not create such disparities. Data from NWEA assessments show that the reading abilities of students entering kindergarten cover about a five-year span, from that of a typical three-year-old to that of a typical eight-year-old (based on the 90th-10th percentile gap). Previous years' slack standards or inept teaching cannot affect the learning of youngsters entering school for the first time. The federal government's Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, a massive study that began with kindergartners in 1998-99 and followed them through eighth grade, found a comparable span of achievement among kids just starting school. The gaps associated with family socioeconomic status (SES) were enormous. As reported in " Inequality at the Starting Gate," test scores of students in the top and bottom SES quintiles differed by 1.24 standard deviations in math and 1.17 standard deviations in reading.

Standards as Written, Standards as Implemented

Another flaw in the theory is that no one knows what standards as written will look like when they are ultimately implemented. Standards must pass through many organizational layers-from state to district to school to classroom-before coming in contact with students. Each transition allows reinterpretation to fit educators' beliefs about how reading and math should be taught. Bill Honig, California's state superintendent of public instruction in the 1980s, oversaw the crafting of the state's 1987 English language arts framework (that era's term for standards). The document did not mention whole language reading instruction, but true believers in that approach put their stamp on the state's policies during implementation. Years later, Honig would charge, "The framework was hijacked by the whole language movement."

Common Core's authors tried to forge a compromise between contrasting reading philosophies, emphasizing the importance of both sound-symbol, code-based instruction and more holistic, comprehension focused strategies. Louisa Moats, co-author of the foundational reading skills section of Common Core, described the English language arts standards as " a political and philosophical compromise." After observing a few years of implementation, Moats concluded that " systematic, cumulative skill development and code emphasis instruction is getting short shrift all around. "

Moats is not the only observer to draw this conclusion. In 2019, Emily Hanford of APM Reports ran a series on classroom instruction with nascent readers and documented widespread use of disproven practices; for example, guessing at a word based on a picture rather than sounding out the word. That same year, a survey conducted by Education Week found that the top five programs used in K-2 literacy instruction frequently "diverge from evidence-based practices for teaching reading or supporting struggling students." Note that both reports were published nine years after the adoption of Common Core.

Political Cover

Officials may also use standards for political cover so that they can adopt unpopular policies. Math reformers have long dreamed of U.S. schools abandoning the traditional high school math sequence that is organized by math domains (beginning with an Algebra I course and ending with calculus or pre-calculus), preferring instead integrated math courses (Math 1, Math 2, etc.) that combine algebra, geometry, statistics, and other math topics into a single course. Common Core provided guidance for either approach, implying equivalence, despite approximately 95% of high schoolers enrolled in the traditional sequence. Utah, North Carolina, and West Virginia switched to integrated math as Common Core was rolled out. The state of Georgia had pushed for an integrated math sequence since 2008, but several local districts resisted, and they were given the option of continuing the traditional sequence. After implementing Common Core, the state eliminated that option. As the popularity of Common Core declined, support for integrated math fell as well. A 2014 survey of Georgia's math teachers revealed 84% supporting the traditional math sequence, driving the final nail in the coffin for integrated math.

Are Educators Simply Reluctant to Change?

Do not allow the integrated math experience in Georgia to persuade you that Common Core failed because teachers refused to change old habits or did not receive enough training on the standards. A lot of money was spent on professional development supporting Common Core, and teachers, in fact, did change some aspects of instruction. Surveys indicate that, compared to pre-Common Core instruction, teachers now place greater stress on reading nonfiction or informational texts over the study of fiction, expository writing assignments requiring the use of evidence over imaginary stories or first-person accounts, and gaining conceptual understanding and learning applications in math over mastering procedures. All of these changes are in accord with Common Core. The real problem is that the research evidence that these reforms boost reading or math achievement is spotty at best.

Recent trends in the educator workforce also suggest that resistance was not a major factor in determining Common Core's fate. At the same time that Common Core was adopted and implemented, a mass exodus of baby boomers from the teaching profession was taking place. (In fact, in the next few years, teachers who have worked under no other standards but Common Core will outnumber those who taught under different standards.) The unwillingness of teachers to change is not the problem.

The Future

What now? The pandemic has placed debates over standards and other education policies on hold. Attention is focused on safely getting schools reopened and teachers and kids back into classrooms. Standards-based reform is a regulatory approach to school improvement. A new approach is needed once this crisis ends, emphasizing the improvement of curriculum and instruction-the technical core of schooling-through careful experimentation and the development of new materials and methods.

The history of modern medicine illustrates the revolutionary impact that scientific advancements can have on an entire field of knowledge. In 1900, the life expectancy of a child born in the U.S. was about 50 years. For a child born in 2000, life expectancy is 80 years. Although regulation of the medical profession has increased a lot since 1900, it's difficult to imagine the quality of today's life without the countless discoveries of 20 th-century medicine, producing effective new tools for treating the sick, and in some cases, completely eradicating diseases that had plagued human beings for centuries.

Replacing Common Core with a different set of standards will solve very little. The United States cannot regulate its way to educational excellence. It's time to invest resources in improving the basic science of education-including the discovery of new, effective instructional strategies and curricula that boost learning. Scientific discovery, not standards-based regulation, should be the dominant theme of the next era of education reform.

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More than a decade after the 2010 release of Common Core State Standards in English language arts and mathematics, no convincing evidence exists that the standards had a significant, positive impact on student achievement. My new book-" Between the State and the Schoolhouse: Understanding the Failure of Common Core "-explores Common Core from the initiative's promising beginnings to its disappointing outcomes.

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Handwriting Engages the Brain More than Typing

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Handwriting Engages the Brain More than Typing

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TORONTO -- A new study out of Norway suggests that handwriting and drawing engages the brain far more than typing on a keyboard, after measuring the brain activity of children and young adults performing these tasks.

The research, published this past summer in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, looked at a small sample size of twelve children and twelve young adults. The authors had studied the topic before in 2017 by looking at the brain activity of 20 students, but this new study is the first to include children.

Audrey van der Meer, a neuroscientist and professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), said in an October press release that due to an increased reliance on the digital sphere, "we risk having one or more generations lose the ability to write by hand.

"Our research and that of others show that this would be a very unfortunate consequence" of increased digital activity, she added.

The 12 children were all in Grade 7 at a school in Trondheim, where they were used to cursive writing and drawing. The young adults who participated in the study were recruited from the NTNU campus, with the average age of roughly 24.

Each person was studied individually for around 45 minutes.

To measure participant's brain activity, researchers used an EEG Geodesic Sensor Net. Although at a glance, it looks like a pebbly hood pulled over the head, it is actually 256 metal sensors, or electrodes, which are placed across the skull to record changes in electrical activity within the brain as it is stimulated by tasks.

While participants were hooked up to the electrodes, they performed the tasks of handwriting, typewriting and drawing.

"Fifteen different words, varying in task difficulty, were visually presented on a screen and the participants used a digital pen to write and draw directly on the touch screen, and a keyboard to type the presented words," the report described.

After analyzing the brain activity taken from the experiment, researchers found that areas of the brain correlated with working memory and encoding new information were more active during handwriting.

This echoes previous studies, such as one often-cited 2014 study called "The Pen Is Mightier Than The Keyboard," which have shown that writing notes by hand allowed participants to retain information better than those who typed on a laptop, even if they wrote less words overall.

"The neural processes involved in handwriting and drawing seem to be more similar to each other compared to typewriting," the report from this new study noted.

The physical act of forming handwritten letters aided with the activation of more complex neural connections, according to researchers, but although typing requires physical movement, it didn't spur the same on-task level of brain activity in this experiment.

"The present findings suggest that the delicate and precisely controlled movements involved in handwriting contribute to the brain's activation patterns related to learning," the report said. "We found no evidence of such activation patterns when using a keyboard."

Researchers noted that the differences between brain activity while handwriting and typewriting were more pronounced for the adults than for the children, but said the findings still "provide support for handwriting practice providing beneficial neuronal activation patterns for learning."

As digital learning becomes more ubiquitous in our world, particularly during a pandemic that has made remote-learning a reality for thousands, this study suggests that educators should take care to still include hand writing as part of the learning process.

"Learning to write by hand is a bit slower process, but it's important for children to go through the tiring phase of learning to write by hand," said Van der Meer in the release. "If you use a keyboard, you use the same movement for each letter. Writing by hand requires control of your fine motor skills and senses. It's important to put the brain in a learning state as often as possible."

This doesn't mean researchers believe keyboards and laptops have no place in writing or education.

"I would use a keyboard to write an essay, but I'd take notes by hand during a lecture," Van der Meer explained.

Part of her concern is that in her country-- Norway -- many schools no longer teach handwriting, according to the release. In Canada, cursive writing has also been de-emphasized over the past decade, with some provinces removing it from their curriculums, and others simply making it optional.

"If we don't challenge our brain, it can't reach its full potential. And that can impact school performance," says Van der Meer.

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New study suggests handwriting engages the brain more than typing

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A new study out of Norway suggests that handwriting and drawing engages the brain far more than typing on a keyboard, after measuring the brain activity of children and young adults performing these tasks.

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Oprah, Reese, Jenna and . . . Steph? As in Curry? Why yes, the NBA star has become the latest literary tastemaker, with a new book club called Underrated. Working with the online platform Literati, the club focuses on, aptly, "underrated authors and stories." For $20 a month, members get an exclusive edition of a hardcover book and access to online discussion groups moderated by Curry or, if they prefer, other less athletic celebrities, including Malala Yousafzai, Joseph Campbell and Richard Branson.

Curry's first pick was "The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates." For November, he's chosen "A Most Beautiful Thing: The True Story of America's First All-Black High School Rowing Team," by Arshay Cooper. (A documentary that accompanies the book was produced by fellow basetball stars Grant Hill and Dwyane Wade and music producer 9th Wonder.)

Since stepping off the court in March, Curry has begun, it seems, rebranding himself: The 32-year-old point guard appeared with his family at the Democratic National Convention and this month launched a YouTube interview series with the likes of Bill Gates and Anthony S. Fauci to discuss, not the three-point shot, but the importance of voting and how to stop the pandemic. Will he be running for office next? By email, he didn't say, but he did talk about his earliest memories of reading, what family downtime looks like at his house and his favorite books, which perhaps not surprisingly aren't about basketball.

( This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)
Q: Why did you call your club Underrated?
A: It's just a mentality I've had since high school. I was overlooked and under-recruited. Underrated is a mindset that I carry with me because even if you have some success, it's part of the journey that led you to that place. I started the Underrated Tour two years ago, and this book club is another opportunity to bring that mind-set to life by picking books about protagonists that have overcome adversity or authors who are underrated in their own right and really just need an opportunity to break through.

Curry launches interview series with Fauci, Abrams and more, as politics push continues

Q: Have you ever been in a book club?

A: No, I've never been in a book club before. Growing up, we went to school book fairs, the library, and it was kind of a consistent thing, but I never signed up for a book club and stuck with it. So now, to be on the other side and create one, being a participant myself and trying to stay up to date on the reading, is pretty fun for me.

Q: Besides the books you've selected, what books have meant the most to you - either as a child or as an adult?

A: I'll start with the Bible, that is an obvious one for me. I was a huge Dan Brown fan. I've read literally every single one of his books, "The Da Vinci Code," "Deception Point," "Digital Fortress," "Angels and Demons." Brown was a huge influence. And now, anything from Malcolm Gladwell. Between Dan Brown and Malcolm Gladwell, those are probably the two authors that have meant the most to me so far.

Q: Does your family like to read together, and if so, what books are some favorites?

A: Our family is starting to develop our own kind of consistent reading habits and doing it together. Before we had kids, my wife and I could find time at the end of the day to read while we were in bed, winding down from the day. Now, as our kids have gotten to the reading age, we have found ourselves reading with them.

With Riley, our 8-year-old daughter, a lot of our reading time is listening to her read to us and to her siblings. That has really bred a new joy around reading together. Every family has their own kind of routines and patterns that they can develop. For Ayesha and me, it's important to instill that joy of reading in our kids. The books and genres can be all over the place, but as long as the kids are having fun doing it, spending time with their parents and in a cool way, that means a lot.

The best sports books to read right now, according to the Post Sports staff

Q: What is your favorite book about basketball?

A: "The Sixth Man," by Andre Iguodala.

Q: What books do you remember liking (or not liking) as a kid?

A: Growing up, I always loved the "choose your own adventure" books. I would read those three or four times each. For some reason, I was never really interested in the books that we were assigned in class; maybe it was because they were assigned to me! But looking back, I now understand that they're all chosen for a reason. Even though I did read them, I started off on the wrong foot. So, I would advise kids not to have that attitude.

Q: Former QB Andrew Luck, I believe, is the only other sports figure to have started a book club. Do you think you have started a trend?

A: I hope this will start a wave in terms of athletes expanding out and being thoughtful with books. There's also another guy named Ekpe Udoh; he was a former teammate of mine and also started one on social media. With his club, they would discuss books of his choice. I wouldn't say I'm starting this trend, but I think I'm trying to approach it in a unique way that allows people to really engage and have thoughtful takeaways from each book I choose.

Q: At least a dozen books have been written about you. Have you read any of them?

A: I've seen all the books that were written about me, which is kind of surreal. The only one that I've read (most of) is "Golden," by Marcus Thompson, a beat writer who is pretty close to my career. It's a pretty weird experience reading about yourself from somebody that did their homework. Eventually, I'll write one about myself and talk about all the craziness of the on- and off-court successes, failures, all the above, but not anytime soon.

Nora Krug  is an editor and writer at Book World.

A note to our readers

We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

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Stephen Curry talks about his latest venture: A book club

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Placeholder while article actions load Oprah, Reese, Jenna and . . . Steph? As in Curry? Why yes, the NBA star has become the latest literary tastemaker, with a new book club called Underrated. Working with the online platform Literati, the club focuses on, aptly, "underrated authors and stories."

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by Matthew Johnson

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Several years ago, the New York Times introduced one of my favorite writing classroom resources: Their Mentor Texts column, where seasoned writers annotate their work with the motivations, methods, and writing moves behind a piece previously published by the Times. Their first annotation, an article about a tiny T. Rex, was an instant hit in my composition class and helped me to solidify many of the themes we'd been working on, ranging from the importance of crafting compelling leads to how to engage in a real writing process.

Last year, this wonderful resource went to the next level, with the column adding a sub-column where the teenage winners of their student writing contests do the same with their winning submissions (see below).

As I read through these students annotating their work, I began to wonder why having students annotate their own work isn't regularly done in the classroom. Requiring students to write margin notes or "talk to the text" during reading is pretty common, but having students do the same with their own writing is incredibly rare. And yet so many positives can come when students unpack and explain their own writing. The act of annotation is the very definition of metacognition and reflection, both of which have been shown to significantly improve student learning outcomes. I also like that asking students to explain their writing recognizes them as purposeful writers making meaningful decisions, which is very different from how student writers are often approached.

It is also worth noting that during these incredibly time-crunched times, having students annotate their work can also be a time-saver for teachers because when the students talk first, the teacher can often simply affirm their choices and add minor nudges or course corrections, which usually takes far less time than trying to trying to decipher student choices or chart a course for them.

With all of this in mind, over the last year I have been experimenting with students annotating their own work in different contexts, and the results have been a bright spot in a year that is desperately in need to them. Here are some of the areas where this self-annotation has been the most effective:

Shorter, Targeted Writing Assignments

So far I have used student annotation the most in regards to targeted writes that focus on building one or two skills. One example of this from this fall was when my classes did a short mini-unit on the tools writers can use for emphasis (colons, dashes, appositives, parallel structure, purposeful fragments, etc.). To assess student understanding of these "emphasizers," I asked them to write a rant on any topic they wanted and then to use the comment feature on Google Docs to annotate and explain what tools they used and why (see example below).

In the past, I have often assessed student understanding of these kinds of grammatical concepts with short, targeted freewrites, but the one persistent issue with this approach was that there were always some students with ambiguous understanding of the concepts. They would use a dash or appositive in a way that was sort-of or mostly correct, and I would have to make a judgment call about whether they actually knew the concept or not.

With annotations though there is far less wiggle room for students to just toss in a colon and hope for the best. Because they have to explain their usage, they really have to know it. Further, because the students identify the areas of emphasis and explain each writing move, providing meaningful, targeted feedback to these assignments is a relative breeze. For example, in the emphasis freewrite assignment above, the students had to highlight each choice they made, meaning I knew exactly where to go in an instant, and in the 95+% of cases where students used the emphasis devices correctly, I simply had to agree with their assessments. Further, when students did have issues in need of attention, building off of what they have already written was far easier and less time-consuming than starting from scratch. In the end, even in my class of 35, evaluating and giving feedback to these took me no longer than 15 minutes.

Peer Response

This semester I also used student annotation as a way to improve peer response. Before we did peer response, students annotated a few of their favorite lines on their papers thus far and made notes about a few areas that they wanted help on. The short notes on their favorite lines acted as a really nice icebreaker, as it established all parties as thoughtful writers, and the notes requesting assistance helped to provide some much-needed structure to the conversations and to reframe the session as peers collaborating to improve their pieces instead of free agents being forced to critique their classmates' work. The resulting conversations were some of the smoothest and best peer responses I've ever had, which is made all the more amazing because they happened over Zoom!

Self-Assessment

The final area I used annotations was when students self-assessed their larger papers. For years, my students have self-assessed their final drafts because it adds an additional layer of reflection and metacognition, acts as a bulwark against students feeling surprised or blindsided by a grade given by a teacher, and saves time because instead of me covering final drafts with comments justifying the grade I assigned, assessment instead becomes a conversation.

I started to use annotation in this process this year (see below), and like with peer response and assessing targeted writes, it has helped my students' self-assessments go deeper and become more targeted.

Similar to when I first encountered the idea of mentor texts or not marking every error on a paper, coming across the idea of having students annotate their work was one of those How did I not see this earlier? moments. Annotation is such a classic tool for helping students understand the writing of others, so it only makes sense that it would also be a potent tool for helping students to better understand their own writing.

But even more than that, students annotation of their work is a really powerful tool when it comes to reframing their identity as writers. I have written about this before, but by the time young writers come to secondary and postsecondary grades, they have often been thoroughly trained that they are not really writers, a belief that will hamper their writing growth if allowed to persist.

Regularly asking about their choices and concepts and tools used flips that narrative on its head. Far from students being novices who are helpless without the guidance of a wise-sage teacher, it frames the students as experts in their own writing, with the teacher playing the role of a facilitator who helps them move forward towards their best self!
Note from Matt: As usual, I'm sure that some of you have beat me to the idea of student annotation of their own work. A few weeks ago I was delighted to see this post in Moving Writers from Kenneth Bui that mentioned it, and I bet he isn't the only one. If you are doing wonderful things in this area, leave a comment or contact me, as I'd love to share them with my readers.
Thanks for reading, and yours in teaching,

Matt

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Matt is a father, husband, and English teacher at a public magnet school in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He is also the author of Flash Feedback: Responding to Student Writers Better and Faster -- Without Burning Out and has written for EdWeek, Edutopia, Educational Leadership, and the National Writing Project. His weekly thoughts about finding balance and success as a writing teacher can be found on his blog at https://matthewmjohnson.com/blog/. When not at a keyboard, he is likely out in his garden or constructing elaborate forts with his two little children. View all posts by Matt

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Annotated by the Author: Why Having Students Annotate Their Own Writing Is My New Favorite Writing Instruction Tool

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Photo by RF._.studio on Pexels.com Several years ago, the New York Times introduced one of my favorite writing classroom resources: Their Mentor Texts column, where seasoned writers annotate their work with the motivations, methods, and writing moves behind a piece previously published by the Times. Their first annotation, an article about a tiny T.

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N3W Clock by A.S. King

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Kim Stafford

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There's the story that the young student of J.S. Bach asked the master, "Where do you find your melodies?" and Bach replied, "My child, I stumble over them getting out of bed in the morning."

What shall we make of that? Do some geniuses have a mainline to the fountain of creation, while the rest must struggle for a few good notes? I once had this contention with a devoted reader of my father's work, who said, "Let's face it-he was a genius."

"Not so fast," I said. "Maybe his process was genius, and by writing every day, he cultivated access to the font of creation."

Well, which is it-genius in the writer, or a spell for genius cast by the daily writing practice? Is the world of writing divided into those with a gift and those without? Or can we turn from some form of literary aristocracy to a more inclusive and dynamic approach to the creative life?

On reflection, I have realized there may be only one way to find out about the source of earned good luck: Have many people carry out a daily writing practice faithfully over many years, and then see what we have. This bold experiment is what this book has set out to arrange. I'm counting on you to be part of this long study by establishing and sustaining a writing practice, inspired by the world as only you can experience it, and literature as only you can compose it.

For my part, I had been writing for years, by fits and starts, when my father's death opened a new path for my life as a writer, and as a human being, as a seeker. To that point, writing for me was most often an occasional project-when I "got inspired"-to express my inner feelings or tell my experience in the world. But then by my father's last will and testament, I inherited the care of his twenty thousand hand-written pages of daily writing from the 1950s through the day of his death in 1993. And as I handled his pages, I had a chance to survey the whole life of a supremely active writer. What I found was a readiness to range far and wide on the hospitable page in ways I will explore in the chapters to follow. In the end, it seems to me, a buoyant writing practice is a place where the two realms join as one: internal personal response meets external experiences, discoveries, and events in the wide world.

William Stafford's writing practice had been invisible to me when he was alive, because he rose before dawn to write, and I did not. All through childhood, I would see the literary magazines where his poems were published appear on the coffee table-Crazyhorse, Poetry, Cimarron Review-and every year a book or two would come forth. When people would ask him, "Bill, when is your next book coming out?" he would often answer, "Which one?"

How did he do that? Simple: he wrote something every day, and his books were made from about one day's writing out of eight that he found worthy.

A few weeks after my father died, I started to carry the reams of his scribbling down from the attic, and leaf through his pages one by one. His scrawl was a challenge, and I sometimes needed a magnifying glass to examine the tangle of feral words to tease the meaning forth. But overall, I began to see four elements in his practice that worked together in a way both sternly practical and somewhat mystical.

I want to start my book about writing for happiness by considering what my father's daily writing pages contained, and how they worked for him - and how something like his approach might work for any of us who choose to give such daily writing practice a try. His pages, which are now housed in the William Stafford Archives at Lewis & Clark College, exhibit a varying daily mixture of four prevailing elements:

1. Each page begins with the date. Is that even worth mentioning? Well, it turns out to be strangely helpful - in the act of writing, and of course for keeping track of the writings. "Once I write the date on a piece of paper," he said once, "I know I'm okay. I have made it to my writing." This is the "open sesame" move of the daily writing practice, for by jotting the date down on a page, you have accomplished the most difficult first step: you have shown up, staked your claim to a page, and you have begun. The pen is active before any wisdom is required, and you have stepped humbly into what William Stafford called "the realm where miracles happen."

2. Then, often, the page would begin withsome prose notes from a recent experience, a few sentences about a connection with friends, an account of a dream. This short passage of "throwaway" writing, it turns out, is very important, as it keeps the pen moving and gets the mind sniffing along through ordinary experience. I call this stage "the boring prose." You are beginning the act of writing without needing to write anything profound. You are writing before you seek to write well. No struggle, no effort, no heroic reach. Just writing.

3. Then there will often be an "aphorism"- a freestanding sentence, an idea, a question, a note about a pattern he perceived, a puzzle. With the aphorism, as we call it in his pages, William Stafford would write a sentence that "lifted off" from daily experience to observe an emblem of thought, a truth, an idea, or a private joke. ("It still takes all kinds to make a world, but there is an oversupply of some.") This provisional understanding from daily life begins to raise the writer's attention out of the mundane into the gently miraculous realm of poetry. It is your own koan.

The aphorisms in William Stafford's daily writing rarely become part of the poem to follow (though a few of his poems are built from a series of such lines). Most often, they are little wonders left to resonate as private treasure, threshold, key. A bell has been struck, bringing the writer to attention.

4. Then he would write something like a poem... or notes toward a poem... or just an exploratory set of lines that never became a poem. But he had taken a few steps up the ladder from silence in the general direction of song.

To write the date, some prose, an idea, and then poetic lines beyond prose - this can begin a process for distilling from ordinary experience the extraordinary report of literature. For once your fill this page, this day, again, you have given yourself a chance to discover worthy things. Nothing stupendous may occur ... but if you do not bring yourself to this point, nothing stupendous will happen for sure ... and you are likely to spend the balance of your day in reaction to the imperatives of the outer world - worn down, buffeted, diminished, martyred.

William Stafford's use of these four elements is capricious. Many pages, especially in his later years, show only the date followed by a poem. Or the date, and a note about family, or his work. But over time, his long practice speeded the process, and the poems began to flow forth. And even in his early years, he can sometime go many days without preliminary prose, or an aphorism-or he can jot a series of aphorisms as if he has been saving them to record in a rush.

Most of us do an assignment shortly before it is due. (That's often true for me.) It's better to begin the project when it's first assigned, not when it's due. And, I realize, again and again, it's even better to practice self-directed searching, writing, thinking on the page - when there is no assignment given, except by yourself (or this book!). This empowers the free range of mind, of "hands-on thinking." By something like this daily practice, you build up a personal sheaf of riches, a democracy of inner voices, an archive you can draw from as needed for work and pleasure over time.

A writer in class once said to me, "You give us a deadline for our writing. But who gives youa deadline?" A terrible sentence came to my mind: "Death is my deadline." There are myriad latent discoveries in me. Daily, I must bring them forth. For this reason, several years ago, I made a vow to perform this four-part practice every day, and now it's been six years without a break. What works for me is to write first thing, before daylight. I've decided as the control group of one for this experience to enlist all four elements each day-the date, of course. And then there is always something to scribble about from the day before-the boring prose. And then-what now seems an essential element in the process-the aphorism. To wait for a thought, which always appears, given time and welcome, is the prelude to true practice for me. The aphorism is the hinge that begins to turn memory to thought, event to idea, scribbling to design. Then a poem, something like a poem, notes for a poem.

This four-step process on the page became a more mysterious form of beckoning when I learned an idea from Buddhism while traveling in Bhutan. Each place, I was told-each experience, each person, each dream, text, or encounter-may offer four ways of knowing:

the visible

the invisible

the deeply secret

So there it is again: the date-visible. A scribbled memory from the day before- the invisible, but palpable. The thought-a secret episode of the Buddhist "unborn." And then ... then whatever mystery may come next, a secret so deep it will not appear unless you use something like this process to welcome what you didn't know until you do.

And later I came upon another way to look at this four-part structure. I read that after the difficult and often violent end of apartheid in South Africa, when the Truth and Reconciliation Commission organized by Bishop Tutu and others took on the task of healing the country, in their deliberations they recognized their almost impossible process could be assisted by four kinds of truth:

1. Forensic truth ("This is what happened."): What events occurred, what actually happened

in as much detail as possible, who were the witnesses, what was the police report, interview transcripts, the coroner's report, are there photographs or documents or other forms of objective truth available?

2. Personal truth ("This is what happened to me."): What first-person accounts of what happened can be entered into the record?

3. Community truth ("This is what happened to us."): Given the forensic facts, and an array of personal accounts, what can we say happened to the community as a whole?

4. Healing truth ("This is what we tell, or sing, or do to heal ourselves, our community, and our nation."): By honoring facts, individuals, and the whole community, can we gather around an account that provides a way forward together?

After reading this account, when I next looked at my daily writing page, I saw the parallels:

1. The date is forensic truth: the fact that today has come. Everyone agrees this is today.

2. The "boring prose" is the personal truth: this is what happened to me recently,

occurred to me in mind, in dream, in what I fear, seek, or wonder.

3. The aphorism is the community truth: beyond my own experience, is there a

pattern or idea about life that could useful to all of us, that's about "us."

4. And part four, a poem or story or whatever comes next on the daily writing page has

at least the potential to be something that can help the self and others to heal, to

learn, to grow.

I don't want to get too grand about this process, but the parallels intrigue me.

As I tell my fellow writers, if you follow this four-step process, or something like it, you may not compose something of lasting value every day - but it will be a better day! It will be a day that begins with your own appointment with silence, with attention, with welcome to the self and to words. Something like this structure can lift your writing into a realm of episodic discovery reaching beyond a simple journal or diary, worthy as those habits can be. Gradually, inexorably, you will accumulate riches to return to, an archive of discrete beginnings to nurture on the path of your devotions.

Based on the legacy of William Stafford, as explored further in my own practice, I offer this four-part daily writing ritual as a kind of hands-on meditation. And I propose to you a week, a month--a year of daily exploration founded in this process of the daily page. What would it be like to experience the kind of sustained and sustaining life of writing you have long imagined?

Here is a sample 4-part daily writing page (see the finished poem on the

"Pandemic Poems" page):

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There's the story that the young student of J.S. Bach asked the master, "Where do you find your melodies?" and Bach replied, "My child, I stumble over them getting out of bed in the morning." What shall we make of that?

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by Mượn Thị & Văn Victo Ngain

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Hello, Mượn Thị Văn! Hello, Victo Ngai! Thank you for visiting Watch. Connect Read. to share Wishes’ cover. Oh, how I wish I could share a copy with every elementary school teacher and donate a copy to every elementary school library. I have read it multiple times over the past two days. It is poignant, lyrical, and beautifully illustrated.

Mượn, what ran through your heart the first time you saw Victo’s cover illustration for Wishes?

Mượn Thị Văn: Wow. Despite the challenging subject matter, Victo managed to convey loss, resilience, and hope brilliantly though one simple, beautiful image.

Victo, please tell us about the materials you used to create the art.

Victo Ngai: The short answer is mixed media. The long answer is pencil, graphite, ink wash, scanned textures and old papers, iPad, Photoshop and anything I could think of to create the hazy and dream-like quality of memory.

Illustration Credit: Victo Ngai

Mượn, please finish the following sentence starters.

Wishes tells the story of a family’s search for home on the other side of the world.

I hope Wishes opens hearts and minds. Every line of text is grounded in my family’s experience as refugees. I wanted the reader to be able to see, and feel, the story from the inside and I hope we succeeded.

Story is transformative. Stories have the power to change us, just as we have the power to change stories.

Victo, please finish the following sentence starters.

Wishes is a story which speaks to the universality of wishing for hope in a sea of helplessness and in times of changes and turmoils. It’s relatable to anyone who has to leave their homes in search for a better life.
Mượn Thị Văn's 75 words manuscript reminds me of the 6 words fiction often attributed to Ernest Hemingway - “ For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”
The restraint and omission make the story all the more powerful.

Picture books are the marriage between words and images. With the right combination and chemistry, 1+1 can be much greater than 2.

Look for Wishes on May 4, 2021.

Mượn Thị Văn stitches stories by starlight and by daylight. Some of these stories become books, and some of these books are read around the world.
Since her New York Times acclaimed debut, In a Village by the Sea, illustrated by April Chu,
Mượn's books have received many distinctions, including a Northern California Book Award, a Golden Kite Award, a New York Public Library Best Book, a Kirkus Reviews Best Book, a Junior Library Guild Selection, and an Irma Black Honor Award. Her work has been translated into more than ten languages.

Victo Ngai is a Forbes 30 Under 30 (Art and Style) honoree and Society of Illustrators New York Gold Medalist. She provides illustrations for newspaper and magazines such as the New York Times and the New Yorker; creates storyboards and art for animations with studios like NBC and Dreamworks; and makes books for publishers such as Scholastic, Penguin Random House, and Simon & Schuster. She lives in Los Angeles.

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Hello, Mượn Thị Văn! Hello, Victo Ngai! Thank you for visiting Watch. Connect Read. to share Wishes ' cover. Oh, how I wish I could share a ...

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by LeUyen Pham

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Editorial Reviews

11/16/2020

Slowly, deliberately, Pham ( Love Is Powerful) explores what changed about the world when Covid-19 hit. A street full of adults, children, dog walkers, and grandparents empties in the turn of a page: "Everybody who was OUTSIDE.../ ...went INSIDE." A black cat with a judicious eye roams the story's pages, gathering its disparate events into one narrative thread. "Well, almost everyone." Patients lie in hospital beds, tended to by health workers swathed in PPE. Others wait at home: "Some of us worked a little, some of us worked a lot... and some of us couldn't work at all." In one spread, friends and neighbors stand in groups, some shown in faded blue instead of full color; they're the ones who didn't make it, or who might not have. "So why did we all go inside?" Pham asks. "Mostly," she explains, "because everyone knew it was the right thing to do." The word virus is not mentioned: it's not a story that presents the science behind the pandemic. Instead, the Caldecott Honoree offers a record of a period of difficulty, a testimony both to loss experienced and moments of unexpected good. A moving author's note is included. Ages 3-6. Agent: Linda Pratt, Wernick & Pratt. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

This powerful ode to community delivers a timeless message of humility, perseverance, and hope." - Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"Reflecting shared experiences and hopes, here's a welcome picture book for our times." - Booklist, starred review

"This optimistic book will help even very young children make sense of Covid-19." - Shelf Awareness, starred review

"A testimony both to loss experienced and moments of unexpected good." - Publishers Weekly

"Colorful, warm-hearted . . . [and] optimistic." - Horn Book

"Poetic understatement and somber images capture the new normal in this essential purchase." - School Library Journal

Selected praise for LeUyen Pham's work:

"This authentic, important book will mean a great deal to many kids." — School Library Journal, starred review, on the New York Times Bestseller Best Friends

"The stylized, comical creatures belie the depth of the message that comes through for even the youngest of readers: We are all in this together, and our differences strengthen our unity." — Kirkus Reviews, starred review, on Caldecott Honor winner
"Wistful, affecting, and utterly charming." — Booklist, starred review, on the New York Times Bestseller
"Seamlessly blends together a good story, lyrical language, and deft, supporting artwork." — Booklist, starred review on Fallingwater

"This sweet book can be enjoyed by children in a group setting or when shared one-on-one with someone special. " — School Library Journal on There's No Such Thing as Little

"Captured in warm and bright illustrations . . . this story about doing the right thing and the power of friendship is a strong choice for story hours and classroom read-alouds. " — Booklist on A Piece of Cake

"Erdos's unconventional brilliance shines through on every page." — Publishers Weekly, starred review, on The Boy Who Loved Math

"[Pham's illustrations] radiate a warmth as arresting as Ezra Jack Keats'." — Kirkus Reviews, starred review, on A Stick is an Excellent Thing

"[LeUyen Pham is] a master at conveying a full range of facial expressions and delightful comic details in her lively sketches." — School Library Journal on All The Things I Love About You

"With warmth and good humor, the ups and downs of sisterly love are perfectly conveyed." — School Library Journal on Big Sister, Little Sister

From the Publisher

★ 04/01/2021

PreS-Gr 2-With sympathy and symmetry, Pham recreates the world pre-pandemic in digital illustrations that have the flow and dynamism of watercolors. She imagines a world where people from all walks of life enjoy being outside engaging in many activities until one day when it all comes to a halt-almost everyone goes inside. So begins this enlightening story of how a deadly pandemic forces everyone indoors. Image after vivid image shows people of many races and ethnicities going about their business and then the abruptly empty streets. Wildlife returns to the suburbs. Through the illustrated portrait-like scenes, people are shown in the hospital, facing job loss, death, upending of routines. Pham underscores the lives of essential workers and their dedication. She also touches on the Black Lives Matter protests during the summer of 2020, offering educators or parents a path for frank discussion about racial injustice. This hopeful work encourages readers to consider their own, ongoing paths through the pandemic, without ever denigrating or playing down the seriousness. VERDICT Poetic understatement and somber images capture the new normal in this essential purchase.- Annmarie Braithwaite, New York P.L.

School Library Journal

★ 2020-11-18
Pham addresses the adversity and resulting growth experienced individually and collectively while the world sheltered in place.

This uplifting reflection on the spring 2020 coronavirus lockdowns expounds on the resiliency of the human spirit as everyone the world over shut themselves indoors. Several different locales and styles of homes are depicted, highlighting the global impact of this almost universal experience. The simple, first-person narrative emphasizes we through deliberate pacing and repetitive use, firmly cementing the theme of togetherness and connection. While the narrative never explicitly names the virus, this accounting is sensitive to both the challenges and triumphs of navigating this new reality of shared vulnerability. A busy street scene filled with masked first responders and other essential workers is followed by a double-page montage of hospital views inspired by real events. One double-page spread shows families cooking and playing while also featuring anxious faces of adults and a frustrated child at a computer screen. These vignettes are outlined in angular edges, reflecting the uncertain, disjointed feelings experienced by all. A following spread shows a larger spectrum of daily moments, this time shaped in sturdy squares and rectangles that signal a newfound stability as people learned to endure and adapt. Told with a gentle but steadying reassurance, this book posits that despite differences or the distances among us, everyone stayed inside because "it was the right thing to do." Intentionally diverse, the characters represent a wide range of racial presentations. (This book was reviewed digitally with 11-by-17-inch double-page spreads viewed at 30.5% of actual size.)

This powerful ode to community delivers a timeless message of humility, perseverance, and hope. (author's note) (Picture book. 3-7)

Kirkus Reviews

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From Caldecott honoree LeUyen Pham, Outside, Inside is a moving picture book that captures the unforgettable moment during the pandemic when people all over the world came together. It celebrates the essential workers, frontline workers, and communities that worked with each other to...

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by Carole Lindstrom & Michaela Goade

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Notes From Your Bookseller

In an appropriately forceful and inspirational call to action, Carole Lindstrom's lyrical picture book about defending Earth's natural resources is a must-read regardless of age. Inspired by Indigenous-led movements across the United States, and particularly the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe during the Dakota Access Pipeline protests, Lindstrom's powerful words are matched with Michaela Goade's stunning illustrations to create a reading experience that will resonate for years to come.

Winner of the 2021 Caldecott Medal
#1 New York Times Bestseller

Inspired by the many Indigenous-led movements across North America, We Are Water Protectors issues an urgent rallying cry to safeguard the Earth's water from harm and corruption- a bold and lyrical picture book written by Carole Lindstrom and vibrantly illustrated by Michaela Goade.
Water is the first medicine.
It affects and connects us all . . .
When a black snake threatens to destroy the Earth
And poison her people's water, one young water protector
Takes a stand to defend Earth's most sacred resource.

Related collections and offers

Product Details

ISBN-13:

9781250203557

Publisher:

Roaring Brook Press

Publication date:

03/17/2020

Pages:

40

Sales rank:

5,023

Product dimensions:

10.20(w) x 10.10(h) x 0.60(d)

Lexile:

AD510L ( what's this?)

Age Range:

3 - 6 Years

About the Author

Carole Lindstrom is Anishinabe/Métis and is a proud member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Ojibwe Indians. She was born and raised in Nebraska and currently makes her home in Maryland. She is the author of We Are Water Protectors and Girls Dance, Boys Fiddle. carolelindstrom.com

Michaela Goade is a Caldecotte Medal-winning illustrator and graphic designer living and working in Juneau, Alaska, where she was also raised. Forever inspired by the coastal wilds of Southeast Alaska, she works to capture its magic and honor its vibrant cultures. Michaela is from the Raven moiety and Kiks.ádi Clan from Sitka, Alaska. She is the illustrator of We Are Water Protectors, I Sang You Down from the Moon, Encounter, and Raven & the Tide Lady. michaelagoade.com

From a book on our Discover Prize Shortlist to another on the Longlist for the National Book Awards year's favorite mysteries and so many in between, this has been a great year for Indigenous voices. While we are focusing on the current books by native authors, we'd be remiss if we didn't include other fantastic [...]

Editorial Reviews

...powerful...Goade's illustrations combine a mystical mood with the lovely fierceness of a child seeking justice.

The New York Times Book Review - Maria Russo

★ 01/13/2020

Metis/Ojibwe author Lindstrom ( Girls Dance, Boys Fiddle) honors those who fight to protect the Earth's fresh water. The words are spoken by a child who's shown first with her grandmother: "Water is the first medicine.... Water is sacred," the white-haired woman tells her. Bold strokes of light, limpid color wash across layered spreads by Tlingit and Haida artist Goade ( Encounter). The girl tells of the arrival of an oil pipeline, the "black snake" that will "spoil the water./ Poison plants and animals./ Wreck everything in its path." The half-bleached figures of a bird and a fish lie next to the pipeline leaking black sludge. "The plants, trees, rivers, lakes..."-Goade pulls back to view the Earth from space studded with stars-"We are all related." Observation is not enough, the book communicates: action is necessary. And the girl doesn't just participate in protest; she stands at the front, carrying a feather in one hand, as other protestors answer her call. "We are water protectors. WE STAND!" An author's note traces the story's genesis to the 2016 Standing Rock protests in the Dakotas. A passionate call for environmental stewardship. Ages 3-6. Author's agent: Kathleen Rushall, Andrea Brown Literary. Illustrator's agent: Kirsten Hall, Catbird Productions. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

"Powerful....Goade's illustrations combine a mystical mood with the lovely fierceness of a child seeking justice." - The New York Times

*"This book will both educate and inspire youth." - School Library Journal

*"In this tribute to Native resilience, Indigenous author-and-illustrator team Lindstrom and Goade invite readers to stand up for environmental justice. An inspiring call to action for all who care about our interconnected planet."- starred review, Kirkus Reviews

*"Goade's watercolor illustrations fill the spreads with streaming ribbons of water, cosmic backdrops, and lush natural landscapes.... Lindstrom's spare, poetic text flows with the "river's rhythm." Written in response to the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, famously protested by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe-and others-these pages carry grief, but it is overshadowed by hope in what is an unapologetic call to action." - starred review, Booklist

*"Observation is not enough, the book communicates: action is necessary... A passionate call for environmental stewardship." - starred review, Publishers Weekly

*"A gorgeous and empowering picture book with an urgent environmental plea." - starred review, BookPage

"Flowing words by Carole Lindstrom and lush art by Michaela Goade appear in immaculate synchronicity on every page of We Are Water Protectors."- Shelf Awareness

"...beautifully composed." - Horn Book

"This book celebrates indigenous-led movements to protect our planet's water. With gorgeous illustrations, it gives readers a sense of our connectivity." -Romper.com

From the Publisher

★ 04/01/2020

K-Gr 3-From swirling, detailed watercolor illustrations to lyrical text with the refrain, "We stand with our songs and our drums. We are still here," this title explores the Indigenous fight to protect water from pollution. A young Anishinaabe girl explains the prophecy of the black snake "that will destroy the land. Spoil the water. Poison plants and animals. Wreck everything in its path." The unnamed girl calls for action to protect all living things and "fight for those who cannot fight for themselves." The illustrations use rich colors and shading to show the intricate connection among all living creatures. A broken pipeline leaks into blue waters, turning fish and fowl into skeletons. Ghosts of ancestors surround children as an elder tells them the black snake prophecy. Black pipelines form the body of the snake on a red background, its mouth open and ready to strike. The author and illustrator notes focus on the need to protect water, and explain events at Standing Rock, where tribal members and their allies fought against an oil pipeline. A glossary of terms is provided, and the last page has an "Earth Steward and Water Protector Pledge" for readers to sign. VERDICT An accessible introduction to environmental issues combined with beautiful illustrations, this book will both educate and inspire youth. First purchase for all libraries.- Tamara Saarinen, Pierce County Library, WA

School Library Journal

★ 2019-12-08
In this tribute to Native resilience, Indigenous author-and-illustrator team Lindstrom and Goade invite readers to stand up for environmental justice.

"Water is the first medicine," a young, unnamed protagonist reflects as she wades into a river with her grandmother. "We come from water." Stunning illustrations, rich in symbolism from the creators' respective Ojibwe and Tlingit/Haida lineages, bring the dark-haired, brown-skinned child's narrative to life as she recounts an Anishinaabe prophecy: One day, a "black snake" will terrorize her community and threaten water, animals, and land. "Now the black snake is here," the narrator proclaims, connecting the legend to the present-day threat of oil pipelines being built on Native lands. Though its image is fearsome, younger audiences aren't likely to be frightened due to Goade's vibrant, uplifting focus on collective power. Awash in brilliant colors and atmospheric studies of light, the girl emphasizes the importance of protecting "those who cannot fight for themselves" and understanding that on Earth, "we are all related." Themes of ancestry, community responsibility, and shared inheritance run throughout. Where the brave protagonist is depicted alongside her community, the illustrations feature people of all ages, skin tones, and clothing styles. Lindstrom's powerful message includes non-Native and Native readers alike: "We are stewards of the Earth. We are water protectors."

An inspiring call to action for all who care about our interconnected planet. (author's note, glossary, illustrator's note, Water Protector pledge) (Picture book. 5-12)

Kirkus Reviews

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Customer Reviews

From #1 New York Times best-selling, award-winning author and illustrator Mo Willems! Buckle up for twists, turns, and emotional loop-de-loops in the most roller coaster-y Pigeon book ever!

The Pigeon Needs a Bath!

The Pigeon really needs a bath! Except, the Pigeon's not so sure about that. Besides, he took a bath last month! Maybe. It's going to take some serious convincing to try and get the Pigeon to take

Mo Willems, #1 New York Times best-selling creator and three-time Caldecott Honoree, presents the 20th anniversary edition of the book that started it all: Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!,

It's a busload of the Pigeon books! Climb on board for three picture books starring the famous beleaguered bird- Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!, The Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog!, and Don't Let the

From the New York Times bestselling and two-time Newbery Medal-winning author of The Giver and Number the Stars comes a delightfully tongue-in-cheek story about parents trying to get rid of their

1990 Newbery Medal Winner As the German troops begin their campaign to "relocate" all the Jews of Denmark, Annemarie Johansen's family takes in Annemarie's best friend, Ellen

Anastasia Krupnik answers a personal ad, and by stretching the truth, finds herself in quite a predicament when the special "he" wants to meet her.

Now a major motion picture starring Jeff Bridges, Meryl Streep, Katie Holmes, Taylor Swift, Alexander Skarsgard, and Brenton Thwaites

This boxed set includes the

Every Sunday after church, CJ and his grandma ride the bus across town. But today, CJ wonders why they don't own a car like his friend Colby. Why doesn't he have an iPod like the boys on the

Every Sunday after church, CJ and his grandmother ride the bus across town, but today, CJ wonders why they don't own a car like his friend Colby. Why doesn't he have an iPod like the boys on the bus?

Newbery Award-winning and New York Times bestselling author Matt de la Peña's Mexican WhiteBoy is a story of friendship, acceptance, and the struggle to find your identity in a world of

* "A surefire read-aloud for any wannabe hero." —Booklist (starred review) From Drew Daywalt, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Day the Crayons Quit, comes a hilarious buddy-comedy

Celebrate the holidays with the Crayons in this festive story from #1 New York Times best-selling duo Drew Daywalt and Oliver Jeffers. This special book has letters, games, ornaments, a poster, and

The hilarious crayons from the #1 New York Times bestselling The Day The Crayons Quit are ready to celebrate Halloween!
The Crayons want to go trick-or-treating, but they're not sure what to say! In

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Winner of the 2021 Caldecott Medal#1 New York Times BestsellerInspired by the many Indigenous-led movements across North America, We Are Water Protectors issues an urgent rallying cry to safeguard the Earth's water from harm and corruption-a bold...

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How our identities are shaped by the texts we consume

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How our identities are shaped by the texts we consume

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Penny Kittle

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Clint Smith

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Get a daily email featuring the latest talk, plus a quick mix of trending content.

By subscribing, you understand and agree that we will store, process and manage your personal information according to our Privacy Policy

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"We spend so much time listening to the things people are saying that we rarely pay attention to the things they don't," says poet and teacher Clint Smith. A short, powerful piece from the heart, about finding the courage to speak up against ignorance and injustice.

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Christopher Emdin

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Christopher Emdin: Teach teachers how to create magic | TED Talk

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What do rap shows, barbershop banter and Sunday services have in common? As Christopher Emdin says, they all hold the secret magic to enthrall and teach at the same time — and it’s a skill we often don’t teach to educators. A longtime teacher himself, now a science advocate and cofounder of Science…

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There are so many tiny, beautiful, funny, tragic moments in your life -- how are you going to remember them all? Director Cesar Kuriyama shoots one second of video every day as part of an ongoing project to collect all the special bits of his life.

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A Booster Shot for Writers: Lessons Learned from a Year of Writing Pandemically

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A Booster Shot for Writers: Lessons Learned from a Year of Writing Pandemically

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from one of my early mentors, Roy Peter Clark

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Pull up Roy Peter Clark's website and you'll see it leads with a reference to him as "America's writing coach." The source of that comment isn't specified, but could likely be claimed by any number of the thousands of writers he has guided through his career at The Poynter Institute and a collection of must-have writing books.

Now add those who popped into Clark's breakout session at last week's 2021 Power of Narrative conference, hosted by Boston University. We gathered a few highlights from Clark's session, "A booster shot for writers: Lessons learned from a year of writing pandemically." ( Take-aways from the opening keynote conversation of the conference can be found here.)

"I have written more productively than any other year," Roy Peter Clark told the Zoom crowd. While reporting trips were curtailed and budgets shifted to cover the global pandemic, his pre-COVID writing practices held true.

Make hard facts easier to read

The most important tool for making hard facts simpler to read, Clark says, is right at your fingertips: Shorter words, shorter sentences, and shorter paragraphs at the points of greatest complexity. "When something is complex you divide it up into more digestible sections," he says, and you make effective use of the period - what the Brits call a full stop. These shorter, digestible chunks slow down the reader's pace to make complex material understandable.

Make important stories interesting

Clark has developed a working definition of news judgment: the ability to explore the seemingly random events of the day, find the ones that are most interesting and most important. "Sometimes news comes from things that are interesting and sometimes it comes from important."

No matter how seemingly dull the topic is (mortgage interest rates, investing in GameStop) there is a person out there who can make it come alive. "If you can tap into the passion of that human being, and you can get that person to tell stories to you, to interview that person in a way that they share elements of narrative that can become your elements of writing, that is gold."

Mix reports and narrative elements

Too often the narrative elements in a story stop with the lede - which can feel like a bait and switch to a reader, Clark says. By creating threads of narrative elements in informational stories woven into the beginning, middle and end, you can lead the reader along through complex information.

"What we're doing is creating a virtual experience, not the transfer of information," he adds. While the purpose of a report is to point you there, the purpose of a story is to put you there. A story is a form of transportation: back in time, into some other world or into the future.

Take the basic elements of reporting: what, where, when, why, and how. They exist in stories but they have to be unfrozen. For stories, who becomes character. What becomes the action of a story, a sequence of scenes for the reader to follow. Where becomes setting. And when becomes a time in action, which we call chronology.

The most significant thing he's learned as a writer and teacher this past year

Clark held up the front page of The New York Times from February 21,2021, with the headline: U.S. Virus Deaths Nearing 500,000. It led a page-filling graphic of dots, with each dot representing a person lost to COVID. News is not just about the transmission of information; he says. Rather, news is the collective ritual of community, identity and celebration. And in this case, it's also about the collective experience of mourning and loss.

Clark says he's thinking more and more about the way we are changing and adapting to loss: "There are plenty of journalists delivering the information but I'm trying to help them think about how we've been living our lives - what's the value of our new appreciation and gratitude for things in our lives that maybe seem inconsequential in the past. These are things that reports make clear and stories make powerful."

You can watch the full recording of Clark's session here:

***
Katharine Gammon is a science journalist based in Santa Monica, California. Her story interests range from culture and nature in public lands to the lives of scientists to the complexity of baby brains.

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Roy Peter Clark on productive writing through a pandemic year | Nieman Storyboard

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Pull up Roy Peter Clark's website and you'll see it leads with a reference to him as "America's writing coach." The source of that comment isn't specified, but could likely be claimed by any number of the thousands of writers he has guided through his career at The Poynter Institute and a collection of must-have writing books.

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Simon Sinek

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I have Jane Austen on rotation often just to marinate in her language.

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I have Jane Austen on rotation often just to marinate in her language.

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In this Audible Exclusive production, Academy Award® nominee Rosamund Pike ( Gone Girl) narrates one of Jane Austen's most beloved works, Sense and Sensibility. In this timeless tale of misguided romance and heartbreak, two teenage heroines must overcome the pitfalls of Georgian England's high society in order to achieve the love and happiness they seek. The admiration that Pike has for Austen's work is shown clearly through this passionate delivery of Austen's first published novel.

"The more I know of the world, the more am I convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love."

Jane Austen's first published novel, Sense and Sensibility, tells the classic tale of love and heartbreak in late 18th-century England. The story follows the romantic trials and tribulations of the daughters of the recently widowed Mrs. Dashwood as they encounter, and learn to handle, the emotionally reckless male characters of Georgian society. In order to find happiness, the two teenage heroines (Marianne and Elinor) must each learn to navigate through a life where status and money govern the rules of love.

A true classic of English literature, Sense and Sensibility is written with all the hallmarks of Austen's style, providing strong female protagonists, great irony and wit, and showcasing her superb talent for character creation and dialogue.
About the Author
Jane Austen is one of the most influential and celebrated novelists in English literature. The daughter of a Hampshire clergyman, she was the seventh of eight children and was, from a young age, an avid reader and writer. After graduating from Oxford, Austen survived typhus and embarked on a literary career seeing her works published anonymously throughout her life.

Best known for Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), and Emma (1816), her six full-length novels have rarely been out of print and have spawned numerous film, television, and drama adaptations. Rich in satire, romance, and wit, Austen is renowned for her critiques of 18th-century British high society and the role of women within it.
About the Narrator
Rosamund Pike is an acclaimed English actress most recognized for her breakthrough role as a Bond girl in Die Another Day (2002), where she won the Empire Aware for Best Newcomer, and her towering lead performance in Gone Girl (2014), which won her an Empire Award for Best Actress. A graduate of English literature from Oxford University's Wadham College, Pike began her career in stage productions and television appearances before later transitioning into film. Having often spoken of her admiration for the works of Jane Austen, Pike played Jane Bennett in a 2005 film adaptation of Pride and Prejudice as well as providing narration of this novel for Audible in 2015.

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Check out this great listen on Audible.com. In this Audible Exclusive production, Academy Award® nominee Rosamund Pike (Gone Girl) narrates one of Jane Austen's most beloved works, Sense and Sensibility. In this timeless tale of misguided romance and heartbreak, two teenage heroines must...

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I studied George Eliot for years, so truly enjoyed this.

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I studied George Eliot for years, so truly enjoyed this.

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Captivated

Where does The Mill on the Floss rank among all the audiobooks you've listened to so far?

A favourite to listen to again and again. It's a hard act to follow for my next choice of audiobook.

What other book might you compare The Mill on the Floss to, and why?

Adam Bede and Middlemarch that were also written by George Eliot. I have found a challenge for reading/ listening in Eliot's stories, that I have yet to find in those that are written by modern authors.

Which character - as performed by Laura Paton - was your favourite?

Maggie Tulliver, the heroine and victim.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

No, this story weaves images of characters, places and situations that are too good to rush, in case I missed a bit and had to retrace my listening.

Any additional comments?

I was unprepared for the ending, it was worthy of the anticipation created by Eliot.I enjoyed listening to the different voices that Laura Paton portrayed.

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Check out this great listen on Audible.com. Maggie Tulliver has two lovers: Philip Wakem, son of her father's enemy, and Stephen Guest, already promised to her cousin. But the love she wants most in the world is that of her brother Tom. Maggie's struggle against her passionate and sens...

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Check out this great listen on Audible.com. An Odyssey Honor audiobook and National Book Award Finalist, this remarkable graphic novel - adapted for audio - is about growing up in a refugee camp, as told by a former Somali refugee to the Newbery Honor-winning creator of Roller Girl. Omar and ...

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New York Times Contributions by Kiese Laymon, Imani Perry, Laverne Cox, Jason Reynolds, Austin Channing Brown, and more. Best Seller * Tarana Burke and Dr. Brené Brown bring together a dynamic group of Black writers, organizers, artists, academics, and cultural figures to discuss the topics the two have dedicated their lives to understanding and teaching: vulnerability and shame resilience.
It started as a text between two friends.

Tarana Burke, founder of the 'me too.' Movement, texted researcher and writer Brené Brown to see if she was free to jump on a call. Brené assumed that Tarana wanted to talk about wallpaper. They had been trading home decorating inspiration boards in their last text conversation so Brené started scrolling to find her latest Pinterest pictures when the phone rang.

But it was immediately clear to Brené that the conversation wasn't going to be about wallpaper. Tarana's hello was serious, and she hesitated for a bit before saying, "Brené, you know your work affected me so deeply, but as a Black woman, I've sometimes had to feel like I have to contort myself to fit into some of your words. The core of it rings so true for me, but the application has been harder."

Brené replied, "I'm so glad we're talking about this. It makes sense to me. Especially in terms of vulnerability. How do you take the armor off in a country where you're not physically or emotionally safe?"

Long pause.

"That's why I'm calling," said Tarana. "What do you think about working together on a book about the black experience with vulnerability and shame resilience?"

There was no hesitation.

Burke and Brown are the perfect pair to usher in this stark, potent collection of essays on black shame and healing. Along with the anthology contributors, they create a space to recognize and process the trauma of white supremacy, a space to be vulnerable and affirm the fullness of black love and black life.

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Check out this great listen on Audible.com. New York Times Best Seller * Tarana Burke and Dr. Brené Brown bring together a dynamic group of Black writers, organizers, artists, academics, and cultural figures to discuss the topics the two have dedicated the...

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * From the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys, this gloriously entertaining novel is "fast-paced, keen-eyed and very funny ... about race, power and the history of Harlem all disguised as a thrill-ride crime novel" (San Francisco Chronicle).
"Ray Carney was only slightly bent when it came to being crooked..." To his customers and neighbors on 125th street, Carney is an upstanding salesman of reasonably priced furniture, making a decent life for himself and his family. He and his wife Elizabeth are expecting their second child, and if her parents on Striver's Row don't approve of him or their cramped apartment across from the subway tracks, it's still home.

Few people know he descends from a line of uptown hoods and crooks, and that his façade of normalcy has more than a few cracks in it. Cracks that are getting bigger all the time.

Cash is tight, especially with all those installment-plan sofas, so if his cousin Freddie occasionally drops off the odd ring or necklace, Ray doesn't ask where it comes from. He knows a discreet jeweler downtown who doesn't ask questions, either.

Then Freddie falls in with a crew who plan to rob the Hotel Theresa-the "Waldorf of Harlem"-and volunteers Ray's services as the fence. The heist doesn't go as planned; they rarely do. Now Ray has a new clientele, one made up of shady cops, vicious local gangsters, two-bit pornographers, and other assorted Harlem lowlifes.

Thus begins the internal tussle between Ray the striver and Ray the crook. As Ray navigates this double life, he begins to see who actually pulls the strings in Harlem. Can Ray avoid getting killed, save his cousin, and grab his share of the big score, all while maintaining his reputation as the go-to source for all your quality home furniture needs?

Harlem Shuffle' s ingenious story plays out in a beautifully recreated New York City of the early 1960s. It's a family saga masquerading as a crime novel, a hilarious morality play, a social novel about race and power, and ultimately a love letter to Harlem.

But mostly, it's a joy to read, another dazzling novel from the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning Colson Whitehead.

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Check out this great listen on Audible.com. NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * From the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys, this gloriously entertaining novel is "fast-paced, keen-eyed and very funny ... about race, power and the histor...

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On President Obama's Summer 2021 Reading List The magnificent new novel from Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro - author of "The Sun always has ways to reach us." Never Let Me Go and the Booker Prize-winning The Remains of the Day.
From her place in the store, Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, watches carefully the behavior of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass in the street outside. She remains hopeful a customer will soon choose her, but when the possibility emerges that her circumstances may change forever, Klara is warned not to invest too much in the promises of humans.

In Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro looks at our rapidly changing modern world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator to explore a fundamental question: What does it mean to love?

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Check out this great listen on Audible.com. New York Times Best Seller Longlisted, 2021 Booker Prize Named a Best Book of the Year by the New York Times, Globe and Mail, Guardian, Esquire, Vogue, Time, Washington Post, The Times (UK), Vulture, The Economist, NPR, and Bookriot On President Obama&rs...

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Breakshot: My First 21 Years by James Taylor

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Breakshot: My First 21 Years by James Taylor

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"I'm James Taylor and I'm a professional autobiographer", says the celebrated folk singer at the start of this tender audio memoir. Through decades of music by one of the best-selling musicians of all time, who created classics like "Fire and Rain" and "Carolina in My Mind", James Taylor has doled out his history in the poetry of his work. Taylor says his early life is, "the source of many of my songs", and is a tour of his first 21 years in rich, new detail. Praised by Forbes magazine as going "beyond the spoken word", Break Shot combines storytelling, music and performance to create a one-of-a-kind listening experience. Longtime fans will savor a crop of musical gems, including an unreleased recording of the beloved hymn "Jerusalem", selections from his newest release American Standard, as well as new original scoring by Taylor specially recorded for Break Shot and more from the Grammy Award-winning artist.

Recorded in his home studio, The Barn in western Massachusetts, Taylor tells the deeply personal story of his youth, which is entwined with the story of his family. What started as an idyllic tight unit soon became a family sent to different emotional corners - like a break shot in the game of pool, he says, when you slam the cue ball into the fifteen other balls and they all go flying off. By the time Taylor released his breakout second album in 1970, Sweet Baby James, he had seen the disintegration of his parents' marriage and his family crumble in the aftermath. He had committed himself twice to a psychiatric hospital, battled depression, a heroin addiction, suffered a relapse, and traveled far away from the wood smoke and moonshine of the North Carolina landscapes in which he came of age. Despite it all, he was also on the cusp of super-stardom and on his way to bringing light and joy to millions. He was 21.

Journey with James Taylor to a time before he became a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Songwriters Hall of Fame inductee, a recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors and both the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the National Medal of Arts - and a beloved voice to millions.

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Check out this great listen on Audible.com. "I'm James Taylor and I'm a professional autobiographer", says the celebrated folk singer at the start of this tender audio memoir. Through decades of music by one of the best-selling musicians of all time, who created classic...

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The writing craft in this memoir is notable, interesting, and continually surprising. This guy can WRITE.

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#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * Discover the life-changing memoir that has inspired millions of readers through the Academy Award®-winning actor's unflinching honesty, unconventional wisdom, and lessons learned the hard way about living with greater satisfaction.THE GUARDIAN "McConaughey's book invites us to grapple with the lessons of his life as he did-and to see that the point was never to win, but to understand."-Mark Manson, author of -you can enjoy a state of success I call "catching greenlights."

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck get relative with the inevitable To life.

I've been in this life for fifty years, been trying to work out its riddle for forty-two, and been keeping diaries of clues to that riddle for the last thirty-five. Notes about successes and failures, joys and sorrows, things that made me marvel, and things that made me laugh out loud. How to be fair. How to have less stress. How to have fun. How to hurt people less. How to get hurt less. How to be a good man. How to have meaning in life. How to be more me.

Recently, I worked up the courage to sit down with those diaries. I found stories I experienced, lessons I learned and forgot, poems, prayers, prescriptions, beliefs about what matters, some great photographs, and a whole bunch of bumper stickers. I found a reliable theme, an approach to living that gave me more satisfaction, at the time, and still: If you know how, and when, to deal with life's challenges-how to

So I took a one-way ticket to the desert and wrote this book: an album, a record, a story of my life so far. This is fifty years of my sights and seens, felts and figured-outs, cools and shamefuls. Graces, truths, and beauties of brutality. Getting away withs, getting caughts, and getting wets while trying to dance between the raindrops.

Hopefully, it's medicine that tastes good, a couple of aspirin instead of the infirmary, a spaceship to Mars without needing your pilot's license, going to church without having to be born again, and laughing through the tears.

It's also a guide to catching more greenlights-and to realizing that the yellows and reds eventually turn green too.

Good luck.

It's a love letter.

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Greenlights - Kindle edition by McConaughey, Matthew. Religion & Spirituality Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.

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by Kacen Callender

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Winner, National Book Awards 2020 for Young People's Literature

ISBN 9781338129335
Scholastic Press / Scholastic Inc.

Kacen Callender

From the publisher:
Twelve-year-old Kingston James is sure his brother Khalid has turned into a dragonfly. When Khalid unexpectedly passed away, he shed what was his first skin for another to live down by the bayou in their small Louisiana town. Khalid still visits in dreams, and King must keep these secrets to himself as he watches grief transform his family.

It would be easier if King could talk with his best friend, Sandy Sanders. But just days before he died, Khalid told King to end their friendship, after overhearing a secret about Sandy - that he thinks he might be gay. "You don't want anyone to think you're gay too, do you?"

But when Sandy goes missing, sparking a town-wide search, and King finds his former best friend hiding in a tent in his backyard, he agrees to help Sandy escape from his abusive father, and the two begin an adventure as they build their own private paradise down by the bayou and among the dragonflies. As King's friendship with Sandy is reignited, he's forced to confront questions about himself and the reality of his brother's death.

Judges Citation

King and the Dragonflies hooks the reader from its first haunting sentence. Twelve-year-old King's voice rings true and not a single line feels superfluous. Themes of toxic masculinity, racism, and self-discovery slowly come into focus as King himself begins to understand the layers of hurt and hope in this world. Kacen Callender has created a timeless story that is painfully timely-one that will lodge in your gut and grow.

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King and the Dragonflies - National Book Foundation

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Twelve-year-old Kingston James is sure his brother Khalid has turned into a dragonfly. When Khalid unexpectedly passed away, he shed what was his first skin for another to live down by the bayou in their small Louisiana town. Khalid still visits in dreams, and King must keep these secrets to himself as he watches grief transform his family.

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by Isabel Wilkerson

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#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK * "An instant American classic and almost certainly the keynote nonfiction book of the American century thus far."-Dwight Garner, The New York Times

The Pulitzer Prize-winning, bestselling author of The Warmth of Other Suns examines the unspoken caste system that has shaped America and shows how our lives today are still defined by a hierarchy of human divisions-now with a new Afterword by the author.

#1 NONFICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR: ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, O: The Oprah Magazine, NPR, Bloomberg, The Christian Science Monitor, New York Post, The New York Public Library, Fortune, Smithsonian Magazine, Marie Claire, Slate, Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews

Winner of the Carl Sandberg Literary Award * Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize * National Book Award Longlist * National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist * Dayton Literary Peace Prize Finalist * PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction Finalist * PEN/Jean Stein Book Award Longlist * Kirkus Prize Finalist

"As we go about our daily lives, caste is the wordless usher in a darkened theater, flashlight cast down in the aisles, guiding us to our assigned seats for a performance. The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality. It is about power-which groups have it and which do not."

In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched, and beautifully written narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings.

Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people's lives and behavior and the nation's fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more. Using riveting stories about people-including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball's Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many others-she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. She documents how the Nazis studied the racial systems in America to plan their outcasting of the Jews; she discusses why the cruel logic of caste requires that there be a bottom rung for those in the middle to measure themselves against; she writes about the surprising health costs of caste, in depression and life expectancy, and the effects of this hierarchy on our culture and politics. Finally, she points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity.

Original and revealing, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents is an eye-opening story of people and history, and a reexamination of what lies under the surface of ordinary lives and of American life today.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK * "An instant American classic and almost certainly the keynote nonfiction book of the American century thus far."-Dwight Garner, The New York Times

The Pulitzer Prize-winning, bestselling author of The Warmth of Other Suns examines the unspoken caste system that has shaped America and shows how our lives today are still defined by a hierarchy of human divisions.

#1 NONFICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR: ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, O: The Oprah Magazine, NPR, Bloomberg, The Christian Science Monitor, New York Post, The New York Public Library, Fortune, Smithsonian Magazine, Marie Claire, Slate, Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews

Winner of the Carl Sandberg Literary Award * Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize * National Book Award Longlist * National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist * Dayton Literary Peace Prize Finalist * PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction Finalist * PEN/Jean Stein Book Award Longlist * Kirkus Prize Finalist

"As we go about our daily lives, caste is the wordless usher in a darkened theater, flashlight cast down in the aisles, guiding us to our assigned seats for a performance. The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality. It is about power-which groups have it and which do not."

In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched, and beautifully written narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings.

Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people's lives and behavior and the nation's fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more. Using riveting stories about people-including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball's Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many others-she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. She documents how the Nazis studied the racial systems in America to plan their outcasting of the Jews; she discusses why the cruel logic of caste requires that there be a bottom rung for those in the middle to measure themselves against; she writes about the surprising health costs of caste, in depression and life expectancy, and the effects of this hierarchy on our culture and politics. Finally, she points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity.

Original and revealing, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents is an eye-opening story of people and history, and a reexamination of what lies under the surface of ordinary lives and of American life today.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK * "An instant American classic and almost certainly the keynote nonfiction book of the American century thus far."-Dwight Garner, The New York Times

The Pulitzer Prize-winning, bestselling author of The Warmth of Other Suns examines the unspoken caste system that has shaped America and shows how our lives today are still defined by a hierarchy of human divisions.

#1 NONFICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR: ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, O: The Oprah Magazine, NPR, Bloomberg, The Christian Science Monitor, New York Post, The New York Public Library, Fortune, Smithsonian Magazine, Marie Claire, Slate, Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews

Winner of the Carl Sandberg Literary Award * Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize * National Book Award Longlist * National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist * Dayton Literary Peace Prize Finalist * PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction Finalist * PEN/Jean Stein Book Award Longlist * Kirkus Prize Finalist

"As we go about our daily lives, caste is the wordless usher in a darkened theater, flashlight cast down in the aisles, guiding us to our assigned seats for a performance. The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality. It is about power-which groups have it and which do not."

In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched, and beautifully written narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings.

Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people's lives and behavior and the nation's fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more. Using riveting stories about people-including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball's Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many others-she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. She documents how the Nazis studied the racial systems in America to plan their outcasting of the Jews; she discusses why the cruel logic of caste requires that there be a bottom rung for those in the middle to measure themselves against; she writes about the surprising health costs of caste, in depression and life expectancy, and the effects of this hierarchy on our culture and politics. Finally, she points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity.

Original and revealing, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents is an eye-opening story of people and history, and a reexamination of what lies under the surface of ordinary lives and of American life today.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK * "An instant American classic and almost certainly the keynote nonfiction book of the American century thus far."-Dwight Garner, The New York Times

The Pulitzer Prize-winning, bestselling author of The Warmth of Other Suns examines the unspoken caste system that has shaped America and shows how our lives today are still defined by a hierarchy of human divisions-now with a new Afterword by the author.

#1 NONFICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR: ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, O: The Oprah Magazine, NPR, Bloomberg, The Christian Science Monitor, New York Post, The New York Public Library, Fortune, Smithsonian Magazine, Marie Claire, Slate, Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews

Winner of the Carl Sandberg Literary Award * Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize * National Book Award Longlist * National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist * Dayton Literary Peace Prize Finalist * PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction Finalist * PEN/Jean Stein Book Award Longlist * Kirkus Prize Finalist

"As we go about our daily lives, caste is the wordless usher in a darkened theater, flashlight cast down in the aisles, guiding us to our assigned seats for a performance. The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality. It is about power-which groups have it and which do not."

In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched, and beautifully written narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings.

Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people's lives and behavior and the nation's fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more. Using riveting stories about people-including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball's Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many others-she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. She documents how the Nazis studied the racial systems in America to plan their outcasting of the Jews; she discusses why the cruel logic of caste requires that there be a bottom rung for those in the middle to measure themselves against; she writes about the surprising health costs of caste, in depression and life expectancy, and the effects of this hierarchy on our culture and politics. Finally, she points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity.

Original and revealing, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents is an eye-opening story of people and history, and a reexamination of what lies under the surface of ordinary lives and of American life today.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK * "An instant American classic and almost certainly the keynote nonfiction book of the American century thus far."-Dwight Garner, The New York Times

The Pulitzer Prize-winning, bestselling author of The Warmth of Other Suns examines the unspoken caste system that has shaped America and shows how our lives today are still defined by a hierarchy of human divisions.

#1 NONFICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR: ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, O: The Oprah Magazine, NPR, Bloomberg, The Christian Science Monitor, New York Post, The New York Public Library, Fortune, Smithsonian Magazine, Marie Claire, Slate, Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews

Winner of the Carl Sandberg Literary Award * Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize * National Book Award Longlist * National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist * Dayton Literary Peace Prize Finalist * PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction Finalist * PEN/Jean Stein Book Award Longlist * Kirkus Prize Finalist

"As we go about our daily lives, caste is the wordless usher in a darkened theater, flashlight cast down in the aisles, guiding us to our assigned seats for a performance. The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality. It is about power-which groups have it and which do not."

In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched, and beautifully written narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings.

Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people's lives and behavior and the nation's fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more. Using riveting stories about people-including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball's Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many others-she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. She documents how the Nazis studied the racial systems in America to plan their outcasting of the Jews; she discusses why the cruel logic of caste requires that there be a bottom rung for those in the middle to measure themselves against; she writes about the surprising health costs of caste, in depression and life expectancy, and the effects of this hierarchy on our culture and politics. Finally, she points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity.

Original and revealing, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents is an eye-opening story of people and history, and a reexamination of what lies under the surface of ordinary lives and of American life today.

"Magnificent . . . a trailblazing work on the birth of inequality . . . Caste offers a forward-facing vision. Bursting with insight and love, this book may well help save us." -O: The Oprah Magazine

"This book has the reverberating and patriotic slap of the best American prose writing. . . . Wilkerson has written a closely argued book that largely avoids the word 'racism,' yet stares it down with more humanity and rigor than nearly all but a few books in our literature. . . . It's a book that changes the weather inside a reader." -Dwight Garner, The New York Times

"A surprising and arresting wide-angle reframing . . . Her epilogue feels like a prayer for a country in pain, offering new directions through prophetic language." -Bilal Qureshi, The Washington Post

"A transformative new framework through which to understand identity and injustice in America." -Justin Worland, Time

"Magisterial . . . Her reporting is nimble and her sentences exquisite. But the real power of Caste lies tucked within the stories she strings together like pearls. . . . Caste roams wide and deep, lives and deaths vividly captured, haloed with piercing cultural critique. . . . Caste is a luminous read, bearing its own torch of righteous wrath in a diamond-hard prose that will be admired and studied by future generations of journalists." -Hamilton Cain, Minneapolis Star Tribune

"Brave, clear and shatteringly honest in both approach and delivery . . . Extrapolating Wilkerson's ideas to contemporary America becomes an unsettling exercise that proves how right she is and how profoundly embedded into society the caste system is. . . . Her quest for answers frames everything and acts as the perfect delivery method for every explanation." -Gabino Iglesias, San Francisco Chronicle

" Caste draws heavily on the powerful mingling of narrative, research, and visionary, sweeping insight that made Wilkerson's The Warmth of Other Suns the definitive contemporary study of African Americans' twentieth-century Great Migration from the Jim Crow South to northern, midwestern, and western cities. It deepens the resonance of that book (a seemingly impossible feat) by digging more explicitly into the pervasive racial hierarchy that transcends region and time." -Steve Nathans-Kelly, New York Journal of Books

" Caste will spur readers to think and to feel in equal measure." -Kwame Anthony Appiah, The New York Times Book Review

"Wilkerson's book is a powerful, illuminating and heartfelt account of how hierarchy reproduces itself, as well as a call to action for the difficult work of undoing it." -Kenneth W. Mack, The Washington Post

"Should be required reading for generations to come . . . A significant work of social science, journalism, and history, Caste removes the tenuous language of racial animus and replaces it with a sturdier lexicon based on power relationships." -Joshunda Sanders, The Boston Globe

"[ Caste] should be at the top of every American's reading list." -Jennifer Day, Chicago Tribune

"An expansive interrogation of racism, institutionalised inequality and injustice . . . This is an American reckoning and so it should be. . . . It is a painfully resonant book and could not have come at a more urgent time." -Fatima Bhutto, The Guardian

"Full of uncovered stories and persuasive writing . . . Opening up a new bank of language in a time of emboldened white supremacism may provide her readers with a new way of thinking and talking about social injustice. . . . A useful reminder to India's many upper-caste cosmopolitans . . . that dreams of resistance are just one part of the shared inheritance of the world's oldest democracy, and the world's largest." -Supriya Nair, Mumbai Mirror

"It is bracing to be reminded with such precision that our country was built through genocide and slavery. But Ms. Wilkerson has also provided a renewed way of understanding America's longest, fiercest trouble in all its complexity. Her book leaves me both grateful and hopeful. I gulped it down." -Tracy Kidder, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Mountains Beyond Mountains

"Like Martin Luther King, Jr. before her, Isabel Wilkerson has traveled the world to study the caste system and has returned to show us more clearly than ever before how caste is permanently embedded in the foundation and unseen structural beams of this old house called America. Isabel Wilkerson tells this story in prose that is so beautiful, the only reason to pause your reading is to catch your breath. You cannot understand America today without this book." -Lawrence O'Donnell

"This enthralling exposé deserves a wide and impassioned readership.""Similar to her previous book, the latest by Wilkerson is destined to become a classic, and is urgent, essential reading for all."
"This is a brilliant book, well timed in the face of a pandemic and police brutality that cleave along the lines of a caste system."

Dayton Literary Peace Prize FINALIST 2022

Kirkus Prize FINALIST 2022

National Book Critics Circle Awards FINALIST 2022

PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction FINALIST 2022

Carl Sandburg Award AWARD 2022

Los Angeles Times Book Prize AWARD 2022

National Book Award LONGLIST 2022

PEN/Jean Stein Book Award LONGLIST 2022

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Caste by Isabel Wilkerson: 9780593230275 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

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1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK * "An instant American classic and almost certainly the keynote nonfiction book of the American century thus far."-Dwight...

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36 hours!!! Will I ever finish my father's all-time favorite book?

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A love story, an adventure, and an epic of the frontier, Larry McMurtry’s Pulitzer Prize- winning classic, Lonesome Dove, the third book in the Lonesome Dove tetralogy, is the grandest novel ever written about the last defiant wilderness of America.

Journey to the dusty little Texas town of Lonesome Dove and meet an unforgettable assortment of heroes and outlaws, whores and ladies, Indians and settlers. Richly authentic, beautifully written, always dramatic, Lonesome Dove will make listeners laugh, weep, dream, and remember.

This newly remastered audio edition is expertly read by actor Lee Horsley, best known for his starring roles in the television series Nero Wolfe, Matt Houston, and Paradise.

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Check out this great listen on Audible.com. A love story, an adventure, and an epic of the frontier, Larry McMurtry’s Pulitzer Prize- winning classic, Lonesome Dove, the third book in the Lonesome Dove tetralogy, is the grandest novel ever written about the last defiant wilderness of America...

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Caffeine: How Caffeine Created the Modern World

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Caffeine: How Caffeine Created the Modern World

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Michael Pollan

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Michael Pollan, known for his best-selling nonfiction audio, including The Omnivores Dilemma and How to Change Your Mind, conceived and wrote Caffeine: How Caffeine Created the Modern World as an Audible Original. In this controversial and exciting listen, Pollan explores caffeine's power as the most-used drug in the world - and the only one we give to children (in soda pop) as a treat.

Pollan takes us on a journey through the history of the drug, which was first discovered in a small part of East Africa and within a century became an addiction affecting most of the human species. Caffeine, it turns out, has changed the course of human history - won and lost wars, changed politics, dominated economies. What's more, the author shows that the Industrial Revolution would have been impossible without it. The science of how the drug has evolved to addict us is no less fascinating. And caffeine has done all these things while hiding in plain sight! Percolated with Michael Pollan's unique ability to entertain, inform, and perform, Caffeine is essential listening in a world where an estimated two billion cups of coffee are consumed every day.

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Check out this great listen on Audible.com. Michael Pollan, known for his best-selling nonfiction audio, including The Omnivores Dilemma and How to Change Your Mind, conceived and wrote Caffeine: How Caffeine Created the Modern World as an Audible Original. In this controversial and exciting liste...

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by Joy Harjo

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In this transcendent memoir, grounded in tribal myth and ancestry, music and poetry, Joy Harjo, one of our leading Native American voices, details her journey to becoming a poet. Born in Oklahoma, the end place of the Trail of Tears, Harjo grew up learning to dodge an abusive stepfather by finding shelter in her imagination, a deep spiritual life, and connection with the natural world. She attended an Indian arts boarding school, where she nourished an appreciation for painting, music, and poetry; gave birth while still a teenager; and struggled on her own as a single mother, eventually finding her poetic voice. Narrating the complexities of betrayal and love, Crazy Brave is a memoir about family and the breaking apart necessary in finding a voice. Harjo's tale of a hardscrabble youth, young adulthood, and transformation into an award-winning poet and musician is haunting, unique, and visionary.

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Check out this great listen on Audible.com. In this transcendent memoir, grounded in tribal myth and ancestry, music and poetry, Joy Harjo, one of our leading Native American voices, details her journey to becoming a poet. Born in Oklahoma, the end place of the Trail of Tears, Harjo grew up learni...

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by Barack Hussein Obama

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A riveting, deeply personal account of history in the making-from the president who inspired us to believe in the power of democracy
In the stirring, highly anticipated first volume of his presidential memoirs, Barack Obama tells the story of his improbable odyssey from young man searching for his identity to leader of the free world, describing in strikingly personal detail both his political education and the landmark moments of the first term of his historic presidency-a time of dramatic transformation and turmoil.

Obama takes readers on a compelling journey from his earliest political aspirations to the pivotal Iowa caucus victory that demonstrated the power of grassroots activism to the watershed night of November 4, 2008, when he was elected 44th president of the United States, becoming the first African American to hold the nation's highest office.

Reflecting on the presidency, he offers a unique and thoughtful exploration of both the awesome reach and the limits of presidential power, as well as singular insights into the dynamics of U.S. partisan politics and international diplomacy. Obama brings readers inside the Oval Office and the White House Situation Room, and to Moscow, Cairo, Beijing, and points beyond. We are privy to his thoughts as he assembles his cabinet, wrestles with a global financial crisis, takes the measure of Vladimir Putin, overcomes seemingly insurmountable odds to secure passage of the Affordable Care Act, clashes with generals about U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, tackles Wall Street reform, responds to the devastating Deepwater Horizon blowout, and authorizes Operation Neptune's Spear, which leads to the death of Osama bin Laden.

A Promised Land is extraordinarily intimate and introspective-the story of one man's bet with history, the faith of a community organizer tested on the world stage. Obama is candid about the balancing act of running for office as a Black American, bearing the expectations of a generation buoyed by messages of "hope and change," and meeting the moral challenges of high-stakes decision-making. He is frank about the forces that opposed him at home and abroad, open about how living in the White House affected his wife and daughters, and unafraid to reveal self-doubt and disappointment. Yet he never wavers from his belief that inside the great, ongoing American experiment, progress is always possible.

This beautifully written and powerful book captures Barack Obama's conviction that democracy is not a gift from on high but something founded on empathy and common understanding and built together, day by day.

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Crown is proud to partner with these international publishers for the worldwide publication of A Promised Land. An English-language edition will be published in the UK and British Commonwealth territories by Viking, an imprint of Penguin General Books at Penguin Random House UK. It will also be available in the following languages:

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A riveting, deeply personal account of history in the making-from the president who inspired us to believe in the power of democracy In the stirring, highly anticipated first volume of his presidential memoirs, Barack Obama tells the story of his improbable odyssey from young man searching for his identity to leader of the free world, describing in strikingly personal detail both his political education and the landmark moments of the first term of his historic presidency-a time of dramatic transformation and turmoil.

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by Clint Smith

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"So many of these poems just blow me away. Incredibly beautiful and powerful."
-Michelle Alexander, Author of The New Jim Crow

"Clint Smith weaves histories, from collective to personal, to make indelible archetypes of those places that have created us all. These poems shimmer with revelatory intensity, approaching us from all sides to immerse us in the America that America so often forgets. The broad sweep of Smith's vision delivers a sudden awareness: In this poet's hands, we sense, like Rilke, there is no place that does not see you."
-Gregory Pardlo, Author of Digest

Counting Descent is a tightly-woven collection of poems whose pages act like an invitation. The invitation is intimate and generous and also a challenge; are you up to asking what is blackness? What is black joy? How is black life loved and lived? To whom do we look to for answers? This invitation is not to a narrow street, or a shallow lake, but to a vast exploration of life. And you're invited.
-Elizabeth Acevedo, Author of Beastgirl & Other Origin Myths

Counting Descent is more than brilliant. More than lyrical. More than bluesy. More than courageous. It is terrifying in its ability to at once not hide and show readers why it wants to hide so badly. These poems mend, meld and imagine with weighted details, pauses, idiosyncrasies and word patterns I've never seen before.
-Kiese Laymon, Author of Long Division

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Clint Smith's debut poetry collection, Counting Descent, is a coming of age story that seeks to complicate our conception of lineage and tradition. Smith explores the cognitive dissonance that results from belonging to a community that unapologetically celebrates black humanity while living in a wor

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by Joy Harjo

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A nationally best-selling volume of wise, powerful poetry from the first Native American Poet Laureate of the United States., An American Sunrise, Poems, Joy Harjo, 9780393358483

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join for just $60 at booklovefoundation.org/summer-book-club

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Julia Torres & Penny Kittle

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Celebrate teachers and a joy of reading with The Book Love Foundation Podcast.

Hosts Penny Kittle and Julia Torres celebrate reading, books, and authors in a show filled with information, inspiration, and book love.

This podcast focuses on this essential question: How do we develop rich and rewarding reading experiences for every student? We visit classrooms where students have access to books and skilled teachers. We learn from Penny Kittle, Julia Torres, past Book Love Foundation Award recipients, and Book Love Foundation friends and authors like Cornelius Minor, Luz Yadira Herrera and Carla España, Kylene Beers, Randy Ribay, Chad Everett, Kelly Gallagher, Donalyn Miller and even John Irving as each shares thinking about the moves that inspire and engage readers.

The Book Love Foundation has one goal: to put books into the classrooms of teachers who inspire students to read more. More matters. Join us for great conversations!

You can subscribe to the series via RSS or

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This podcast focuses on this essential question: How do we develop rich and rewarding reading experiences for every student? We visit classrooms where students have access to books and skilled teachers.

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I read this about a year ago and just saw the video, love it, powerful

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Clint Smith

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Clint Smith

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Lee Mokobe

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A powerful poem about what it feels like to be transgender

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“I was the mystery of an anatomy, a question asked but not answered,” says poet Lee Mokobe, a TED Fellow, in this gripping and poetic exploration of identity and transition. It’s a thoughtful reflection on bodies, and the meanings poured into them.

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Jae Mitchell

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Jae Nichelle - "Friends With Benefits" @WANPOETRY (TGS 2017)

If playback doesn't begin shortly, try restarting your device.

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0:04 / 3:27•Watch full video

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Jae Nichelle - "Friends With Benefits" @WANPOETRY (TGS 2017)

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Sophia Thakur

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G. Yamazawa

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In Order to Live...don't forget to use smile.amazon if you order so Book Love Foundation gets a donation. Thank you!

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In Order to Live...don't forget to use smile.amazon if you order so Book Love Foundation gets a donation. Thank you!

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5.0 out of 5 stars She tells us what we have forgotten
Reviewed in the United States on October 8, 2020

Why did we fight so hard to create this country? What horrors did our forefathers try to save us from? We have lived the easy life for so long that to us, dictatorships and evil regimes are just shadows and rumors. Yeonmi has traveled a very dark road to bring us a message. That freedom is not free and the price we pay for losing that freedom is beyond the imagination of soft, well-fed Americans who have never been under the grinding boot of a despot. Yeonmi gives us a first-hand account from the dark side of human nature. Some strange part of human behavior makes us easy targets for sweet-sounding ideology. We willingly support the creation of a government that promises to fill our every need but ends up tapping every ounce of our productivity. If we forget these lessons, our grandchildren will be left scrabbling in the dirt for "frozen potatoes", their free will withered away with no awareness that a choice even exists.

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Top reviews from the United States

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Reviewed in the United States on October 8, 2020

Why did we fight so hard to create this country? What horrors did our forefathers try to save us from? We have lived the easy life for so long that to us, dictatorships and evil regimes are just shadows and rumors. Yeonmi has traveled a very dark road to bring us a message. That freedom is not free and the price we pay for losing that freedom is beyond the imagination of soft, well-fed Americans who have never been under the grinding boot of a despot. Yeonmi gives us a first-hand account from the dark side of human nature. Some strange part of human behavior makes us easy targets for sweet-sounding ideology. We willingly support the creation of a government that promises to fill our every need but ends up tapping every ounce of our productivity. If we forget these lessons, our grandchildren will be left scrabbling in the dirt for "frozen potatoes", their free will withered away with no awareness that a choice even exists.

5.0 out of 5 stars She tells us what we have forgotten
Reviewed in the United States on October 8, 2020

Why did we fight so hard to create this country? What horrors did our forefathers try to save us from? We have lived the easy life for so long that to us, dictatorships and evil regimes are just shadows and rumors. Yeonmi has traveled a very dark road to bring us a message. That freedom is not free and the price we pay for losing that freedom is beyond the imagination of soft, well-fed Americans who have never been under the grinding boot of a despot. Yeonmi gives us a first-hand account from the dark side of human nature. Some strange part of human behavior makes us easy targets for sweet-sounding ideology. We willingly support the creation of a government that promises to fill our every need but ends up tapping every ounce of our productivity. If we forget these lessons, our grandchildren will be left scrabbling in the dirt for "frozen potatoes", their free will withered away with no awareness that a choice even exists.

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Reviewed in the United States on September 3, 2020

Review of In Order to Live
This is the story of Yeonmi Park who defected from North Korea and who now sheds light on that hitherto dark landmass North of the 38th Parallel with its depraved barbaric regime set in the middle ages.
I had seen a video interview of this brave young woman whose story so amazed me I immediately purchased her revelatory book, which in turn, astounded me with its attention to detail that no personal interview could have covered in such breadth.
Yeonmi describes in vivid language the desperate and cruel living conditions of the majority of North Koreans, the starving masses, the constant indoctrination and mind control which keeps the population subservient to the government and to their “Great Leader”.
Yeonmi describes the three levels of society or songbun status where one is classified as the elite or loyal class, the wavering class, and the hostile class. Yeonmi’s family enjoyed the higher songbun class until her father was arrested for smuggling which was the only way the family could survive without starving. Once arrested their status was downgraded to the lowest songbun which meant their rations were reduced even further and among other deficiencies which were applied against the whole family.

Yeonmi describes catching a dragonfly and eating it. Everyone ignores bodies lying on the street with rats attacking the remains and eating the eyes first. She was taught that the "Great Leader" was a God and could read her mind, so she was terrified about thinking bad thoughts of the way she was living.
The incentive to flee to China was not about freedom as she had no concept of what that meant, it was about the possibility of having a full bowl of rice to eat. It was that alone which drove her and her mother to risk fleeing across the River Yula to China with the assistance of what turned out to be human traffickers. If caught they would be executed but starvation drove them

Her story of being in the hands of traffickers and what they did to her and her mother was heartrending. They did get plenty of rice and other food in China but it came at a heavy price for both Yeonmi who was only 13 at the time, and her mother. The brutality of life never extinguished the flame of determination and hope this young girl exhibited during her time in China and for other periods of hardship and difficulty yet to come.

Her description of walking through the desert with her mother to sneak into Mongolia while avoiding capture by the Chinese was nail-biting in its intensity & the ordeal made worse by the freezing conditions. Yeonmi had hidden a razor blade in her clothing which she was prepared to use to cut her own throat if captured. She would not allow herself to be sent back to North Korea where she would face labor camp or execution. Her mother had a stash of sleeping pills for the same purpose.

After successfully getting through to Mongolia and onto South Korea where she was able to eventually graduate from college, Yeonmi was able to turn a life of what could have been bitterness of heart into a humanitarian who wants to give inspiration to others who may be in poor and unfortunate circumstances.

Yeonmi must be careful, and hopefully, she will be well guarded as the North Korean regime has already targeted her as a puppet of the West. She brought a searchlight into the blackness that was hiding the real conditions of her country and the barbaric nature of its governance. She helped save her mother and searched relentlessly for her missing sister until they were united together in Seoul.

Her humanitarian work awakened in her a self-awareness that she should help others who may not be able to help themselves. If there were open votes for a Nobel Peace Prize, she would have mine without any question.
This book should be read by all high school students
David E. Huntley 9/2/2020

Reviewed in the United States on November 2, 2020

This is a remarkable and moving story by a very personable narrator. In part it's also quite thrilling, if that word is appropriate, given the seriousness of it all. I don't know when i last felt as deeply connected to another person's life experience, as transported to a different an exotic place and situation. It was a reminder for me of the power of the book medium to do just that.
There's lots more to say about the story it self and it's power, but many have already done so. So I'd like to contribute a critical perspective: at times, i wavered in Trust during the read. Generally speaking, you don't have to have been around for long to not be new or naive to people lying, exaggerating nor to the corruptive power when monetary gain and bad incentives could be at hand. I honestly couldn't quite shrug a nagging and most unhappy worry about exaggerations, "improvements" even fabrication. It's a suprisingly detailed account with detailed dialogues, for one thing, with a lot of remarkable things happening. Please note though that I'm not making accusations here, merely describing my personal feelings.

The more powerful, moving, significant the story, the more you'd like to know that it's true (if it purports to be so). And here we certainly have the former, while the degree of veracity boils down to - largely - a matter of personal trust. Allthough there's of course plausibility to begin with from the context of the well known and egregious human rights violations in NK and China.

As much as there is an interest and value in important personal accounts like these, there should be also a corresponding demand and standard in regards them being verified, as far as possible. Perhaps an appendixed description of the publisher's verification method? That might well have allayed my unhappy doubts during this read. Defector stories aren't just any stories, they're important in the championing for human rights.

All in all however the book was a compelling read despite my experience being polluted at times by these unpleasant doubts. Looking at the reviews, i'm in a way cheered up, seeing that most people aren't as afflicted by doubts as i am, and seem to have higher trust in honesty and moral integrity.

Edit:

Rereading this review i wrote a while back, it seems i should qualify it somewhat by pointing out that for a autobiographical story to be readable, coherent, vivid etc, it's inevitable that there will be some amount of creative writing involved. No one (well) has photographic memory, and filling in memory gaps regarding more or less trivial details and that doesn't corrupt the story (e.g. details that make scenes come to life) falls under creative licence. To a certain extent. In some of the places where i went "hmmm?" perhaps others would have felt "who cares" - because creative license. While other doubts were about things beyond reasonable creative license.

Top reviews from other countries

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing read I just wish it was fiction rather than a true account. A life changing read.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 1, 2017

Both the best and the worst thing I have ever read. Best in the fact that you can see and understand the suffering and anguish of the people of North Korea and the worst because no one should ever have to experience the things which Yeonmi has suffered. This book makes you realise how lucky you are to live in a country like the UK or US where you don't have to worry about angering a regime or starving to death. This book gives you a totally new outlook on life and I can guarantee that it will make you appreciate what you have much more than you did before.

4.0 out of 5 stars Good read for people interested in North Korean fugutives. Read as addition to 'Dear Leader' or 'Escape from Camp 14'

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 18, 2017

I've read quite a few books written by North Korean escapees over the last year or so ("Dear Leader", "Escape From Camp 14", "Aquariums of Pyongyang", and "Nothing to Envy" to name a few) and I have mixed feelings about "In Order To Live".
Don't get me wrong, it's a good book. It's well written and Yeonmi's story is at times emotional and gripping. Yet at other times, it's an accounting that is not as interesting as I wanted it to be. Honestly, part II and III of the book are most outstanding. Her and her mothers hardships in China, the search for her sister and how hard it is for North Koreans once they're out of North Korea (with no understanding of the world beyond their indoctrinated view of NK and the 'enemies' outside) is a gripping and insightful read and should be read by anyone with interest in what happens 'after North Korea'. The (re)introduction process into South Korea's society and her subsequent actions to create awareness around NK is an interesting read as well.

Overall, a great book on everything "after NK", and a good book on "inside NK", but if you want to know more about inside NK, also do read "Dear Leader" and "Escape from Camp 14" for two excellent viewpoints of two ends of life in North Korea.

5.0 out of 5 stars Powerful...

Reviewed in Canada on June 3, 2021

I'm surprised there are negative reviews. Are those North Korean bots doing damage control?
As for the one, who was born and raised in Soviet Union, it greatly reminded me of my childhood. Thankfully, I experienced no famine, but shortage of everything and luck of necessities was there. Plus, the communist propaganda.
My maternal grand-grand-parents were of Russian nobles, they were killed by bolsheviks. My grandma was not allowed to go to university , because of her upbringing. My father was jailed by communists, because he made a joke about communist leaders.

I think this book is very important, especially for the youth these days, who think that socialism is a bliss.
It will open their eyes and hopefully change their perspectives.

3.0 out of 5 stars Insight to North Korea

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 14, 2020

This book provides an insight to what life is like in North Korea. The things the author went through is horrifying and hard to believe. Having read some of the reviews provided on here, some have said that there are inconsistencies and contradictories in her story. Whilst reading the book, I did not spot them, but then this was the first book I've read from a North Korean defector retelling their story on their escape from North Korea. It's best to get a broader reading on this subject area in order to have a better understanding.

5.0 out of 5 stars Most interesting book I have read for several years.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 16, 2021

I really did enjoy reading about life in North Korea. It was a real eye opener what is expected of the people, and how they are brain washed. This young lady is to be so admired how she studied and educated herself despite a terrible life forced on her through deceit and greed etc. The book is written relating incidents, but without going into unnecessary nasty detail. I think her and her sister must be very intelligent to have achieved so much through their studies, plus having to learn to speak English. I most sincerely hope that she finds happiness, contentment, and a genuine person to love her, and for her to give her love to. I really admire her courage and determination despite all odds.

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In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl's Journey to Freedom

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In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl's Journey to Freedom [Park, Yeonmi, Vollers, Maryanne] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl's Journey to Freedom

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Make it Scream, Make it Burn essays by Leslie Jamison

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Make it Scream, Make it Burn essays by Leslie Jamison

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Murmurr with Community Bookstore - Brooklyn, NY
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Murmurr with Community Bookstore - Brooklyn, NY Wednesday, September 25th Politics & Prose - Washington, DC Thursday, September 26th Flyleaf Books - Chapel Hill, NC Monday, September 30th Brookline Booksmith - Brookline, MA Tuesday, October 1st Harvard University - Cambridge, MA Thursday, October 3rd Brazos Bookstore - Houston, TX Friday, October 4th Tattered Cover - Denver, CO Wednesday, October 9th Booksmith - San Francisco, CA Thursday, October 10th Skylight Books - Los Angeles, CA Friday, October 18th Next Chapter Booksellers - St.

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The Other Talk: Reckoning with Our White Privilege by Brendan Kiely

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The Other Talk: Reckoning with Our White Privilege by Brendan Kiely

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About The Book

A School Library Journal Best Book of the Year

Award-winning and New York Times bestselling author Brendan Kiely starts a conversation with white kids about race in this "well-executed and long overdue" (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) introduction to white privilege and why allyship is so vital.

Talking about racism can be hard, but...

Most kids of color grow up doing it. They have "The Talk" with their families-the honest talk about survival in a racist world.

But white kids don't. They're barely spoken to about race at all-and that needs to change. Because not talking about racism doesn't make it go away. Not talking about white privilege doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

The Other Talk begins this much-needed conversation for white kids. In an instantly relatable and deeply honest account of his own life, Brendan Kiely offers young readers a way to understand one's own white privilege and why allyship is so vital, so that we can all start doing our part-today.

Chapter 1: Bottle of Nesquik, Bottle of Long Since Forgotten 1 Bottle of Nesquik, Bottle of Long Since Forgotten
Here's the situation:

Two teenagers go to a convenience store.

Actually, two different convenience stores.

Kid A is in a car that pulls up outside one at a gas station in Jacksonville, Florida. Music's bumping. Got "Beef" by Lil Reese, Lil Durk, and Fredo Santana cued up on the playlist.

Kid B walks into one on a busy street near Boston, Massachusetts. Headphones on. Head bobbing to A Tribe Called Quest's "Can I Kick It?" Yes you can, he mouths along as he pulls open the glass door.

Kid A's there with three friends. One of them goes into the store to grab some snacks and a bottle of something long since forgotten.

Kid B's there to get a bottle of Strawberry Nesquik.

They're just two kids, two kids loving their music and going to the convenience store-but then everything changes.

Kid A's waiting in the car. "Beef" blasting. He's out with friends. They're having a good time.

Kid B, though, grabs his bright yellow bottle of Nesquik and slips it into the folds of his puffy down coat. Yes you can! Then he strolls right out the door without looking back. He hasn't paid for the Strawberry Nesquik. He's stolen it. And he's done this before. He's got a crush on a girl who loves Strawberry Nesquik (even though it's gross-and it is -it's gross!), and he loves giving her a bottle in the hallway before homeroom because he likes the coconut smell of her hair and the way her high-sprayed bangs rise off her forehead like a flag. He likes the way roller coasters run wild loops through his gut whenever their eyes meet. He gives her one of these stolen bottles of Strawberry Nesquik about once a week, maybe more, and he's been doing it for the past month.

He hasn't thought twice about the people in the store.

Or anybody else, really.

Just the girl with the bangs climbing toward the sky.

More than one thousand miles south on Route 95, Kid A's bumping to the music with his buddies, still waiting for the friend in the store, when a car pulls up beside them. The two adults in the car start giving the friends dirty looks. The clock starts ticking. In three and half minutes everything will be different. Lives will have changed. But when the car pulls up, Kid A has no idea. All he sees are the scowls. Scowls he's seen before. He's not doing anything wrong. He's just a kid and his music is loud. And if the adults would just take a breath and let it go, let this boy be a kid and let his too-loud music thump, only a few minutes later his car would be gone, the music would be gone, and there'd be no story to tell.

Instead, the woman in the car opens her door, and before she leaves to go into the store, the man who's with her turns to her and says, "I hate this thug music." This man, the scowler, starts yelling at Kid A and his friends, starts calling them names. One of Kid A's friends turns down the music, but Kid A's sick of the scowler's scowls. Sick of the way this man, this adult, keeps talking to him, so he turns the music back up and tries to drown him out. Tries to drown out everything the man's saying. Those scowls. Those kinds of arguments. He's all too used to them. He's heard it all before, and all too often, he's heard the slurs and the name-calling that follows. He's heard it all before and he's heard it enough-so up goes the music, bass rattling the car doors. Up goes his voice too, yelling back at the man, matching him insult for insult. But the clock is still ticking.

The clock is still ticking when Kid A's friend comes out of the convenience store and gets back in the car. The clock's still ticking as Kid A and the man keep yelling, their voices loud enough to climb up and over the music. The clock's still ticking when the adult man shouts at Kid A, "You aren't going to talk to me like that."

And it's supposed to be kids driving around through the night, shouting their lyrics- In the field, we play for keeps/I'm out here, no hide-and-seek -like kids all over the country do, are doing, will do later. The clock is still ticking when the man reaches into his glove compartment and pulls out a 9 mm pistol-and then everything goes into hyperspeed.

He fires.

The man fires and fires. Bullets crash through the door beside Kid A. Bullets rip through the car around and into Kid A. Bullets explode and crack open the night as the kids throw the car into reverse, try to escape, but the man steps out of his own car, crouches in a shooting stance, and fires and fires and fires. Ten bullets in all.

The clock only stops ticking when the kids pull into a nearby parking lot and find Kid A gasping for air. Losing his breath. No chance to drink that bottle of who-knows-what soda or whatever as his blood spills across the car seats, down onto the concrete, where it stains the parking lot, the whole town, the whole state, the whole country, because Kid A's blood is the blood of another innocent, unarmed child who has been called names, called all kinds of things, like a thug, and who hasn't done anything illegal, hasn't done anything wrong, except be a kid-and murdered all the same.

Kid B's the one who did something wrong. Kid B's the one who did something illegal. Kid B's the actual thief.

But nobody's ever called him one. Nobody knows he is one. Because nobody's ever even suspected he's one.

In fact, later that spring, when Kid B is working for a talent agency in Boston, auditioning to model for a series of magazine ads, the casting director will lean forward and say to Kid B, "Hey, yeah, we definitely want you. You look like the kid next door. You look like the all-American boy."

Now let me tell you more about Kid A.

He was someone's son. He liked Jacksonville, where he lived. He liked to play basketball and PlayStation. But his singular passion was music. All the music. In the field, we play for keeps... Making mixes for his buddies. He had dreams and family and friends.

You might say he was just another "all-American boy," except I fear not enough people told him that. The adults who pulled up in the car beside him certainly didn't. That man took one look at Kid A and suspected... assumed... profiled Kid A as a "thug." As someone who was up to no good. Even though he wasn't. The man prejudged Kid A-and his prejudice did all the thinking. And Kid A paid the price for it.

But Kid A wasn't a thug. He wasn't a thief.

Kid B was the thief. The way Kid B acted, you might call him the thug.

But here's what else I have to tell you:

Kid A was Black.

And Kid A was a real person. His name was Jordan Davis.

And Jordan Davis was murdered because of racial prejudice-because of racism.

Kid B was white.

And Kid B was a real person too. That kid? He's me. Brendan Kiely. I'm the thief.

And I'm alive because... well, we're going to get to all that.

Reading Group Guide

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Discussion Questions for
The Other Talk
by Brendan Kiely​

There are ways that you can prepare as an individual to engage with The Other Talk, especially as you set expectations for your own experience with the book's content. As you begin to read the text, know that your mental and emotional work as a reader will likely involve each of the following:

LISTENING to stories and perspectives you haven't heard before;

QUESTIONING what you thought you knew, including messages you've internalized and narratives that have been used to frame how and why racial inequality exists and persists;

UNLEARNING some or maybe most of what you've been taught about American history, including the history of your own community;

GRAPPLING with your identity as a white person and your relationship to racist systems.
Discussion Questions:
1. Most white people grow up thinking that race is skin color, but that idea is wrong: race is a social construction. How were you taught to think about race as a child? Who taught you, and how did they convey the information? How do the resources provided here, along with what Brendan writes-that race is a concept that was made up a long time ago by people with social power-give you new ways to think about what race is and what it isn't?

2. Consider what Brendan shares in The Other Talk about the impact of the question "What are you?" on people who are not perceived to be white. How do you think individuals decide which box to choose on the census? What happens when more and more people start checking more than one box? How do increasing numbers of people who identify with more than one racial group change the way we think about race in America and about who is American?

3. Many of us were raised to think that racism is defined as individual acts of meanness, and that racism is a problem because of the harm it does to marginalized groups. But just like the concept of race, racism is much more complicated. Consider the idea that racism is multifaceted: it's about beliefs, but it's also about behaviors, policies, practices, and systems. Everyone is affected, and everyone is implicated. How do these ideas shift the way you think about the nature of racism, the unequal playing field it creates, and the different forms of harm it causes to different groups of people? How are white people, too, harmed by racism?

4. Consider the development of your own racial identity. When did you first realize that race mattered? How did you know it mattered? Who was involved? What thoughts and feelings were attached to this experience?

5. Think back to the earliest time you realized you had a racial identity. What did that experience teach you to think about your race in relation to other races?

6. What messages were you sent in your home, neighborhood, or school about race? What messages were you sent about who or what had value, who or what was desirable and good, who or what was undesirable and bad? What was confusing? What things were you left to make sense of on your own?

7. In The Other Talk, Brendan describes the process of revisiting stories from his life and seeing them in a new light-that is, making the conscious choice to retell every single story with a focus on how being white shaped what happened. What stories from your life can you revisit with this focus in mind? How do these stories look different when you think about the role whiteness played in what happened to you?

8. Consider what Brendan says in The Other Talk about reckoning with his Egyptian neighbor's experiences in Queens, New York, in contrast to his own:

"I'd heard my neighbor talk about the difficulties he'd had with people looking at him condescendingly at the bank when he went in to apply for a loan. About how when he went to the public pool, some of the employees watched him, scrutinized him-as if they feared he might harm someone if they didn't keep their eye on him, when all he was doing was going for his morning swim. But none of that had ever happened to me. Those are experiences I've never had when I've interacted with anyone in a position of authority. I've never been made to feel like I don't belong in a public pool or a bank or a school or any public institution. Because I am white."

How do these accounts from the book help you to think more deeply about the impact of whiteness on other people, and about how people who are not white navigate the power and impact of whiteness on their daily lives?

Learning to talk thoughtfully, compassionately, and accurately about race-and its corollary for white people, white privilege-takes knowledge and skill. It also takes practice. Racism is painful and traumatic; it's a heavy weight we all bear, and it harms all of us. But we as white people don't have to remain stuck. We can equip ourselves with new knowledge, we can build stamina for hard conversations, and we can replace guilt and shame with courage and hope. We aren't responsible for the wrongs committed by our ancestors, but we are responsible for the world we've inherited. We can work together to make it a better and more just world for everyone.
This guide was prepared by Jennifer Buehler, Associate Professor in the School of Education at Saint Louis University.
This guide has been provided by Simon & Schuster for classroom, library, and reading group use. It may be reproduced in its entirety or excerpted for these purposes.

About The Author

Brendan Kielyis the New York Times bestselling author of All American Boys (with Jason Reynolds), Tradition, The Last True Love Story, and The Gospel of Winter. His most recent book is The Other Talk: Reckoning with Our White Privilege. His work has been published in over a dozen languages, and has received the Coretta Scott King Author Honor Award, the Walter Dean Meyers Award, and ALA's Top Ten Best Fiction for Young Adults. A former high school teacher, he is now on the faculty of the Solstice MFA Program. He watches too much basketball and reads too many books at the same time, but most importantly, he lives for and loves his wife and son. Find out more at BrendanKiely.com.

Product Details

Publisher: Atheneum/Caitlyn Dlouhy Books (September 20, 2022)

Length: 288 pages

ISBN13: 9781534494053

Grades: 7 and up

Ages: 12 - 99

Lexile ® 980L The Lexile reading levels have been certified by the Lexile developer, MetaMetrics®

Browse Related Books

Raves and Reviews

Well-executed and long overdue.

- Kirkus *STARRED REVIEW*, September 1, 2021

A heartfelt, motivating, and necessary call to action.

- Booklist *STARRED REVIEW*, September 15, 2021

"There have been many calls to action; [this] is a mighty, necessary response"

- - Renée Watson, Newbery Honor recipient and Coretta Scott King Award-winning author of Love is a Revolution

"A clarion call to action, a call to love, to do better for ourselves, our neighbors, and our nation"

- - Samira Ahmed, New York Times bestselling author of Internment

"This is the book for all the white folks who asked 'How do I talk to my kids/students about racism?'"

- - Joanna Ho, New York Times bestselling author of Eyes that Kiss in the Corners

"The kind of candor that challenges young people at the door, but also welcomes them inside."

- - Olivia A. Cole, critically acclaimed author of The Truth about White Lies

"Accessible and timely. It's time for white people to talk to each other about racism..."

- - Julie Murphy, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Dumplin' series

" The Other Talk is the conversation that white people should have had with each other long ago. This book is LONG OVERDUE. For those who have been unable to confront the truth about what whiteness is and how it is lived, Brendan Kiely offers a supportive, accessible, and necessary late pass. This book is not just an opportunity to school yourself. It is a rare chance to truly free yourself."

- - Cornelius Minor, nationally renowned educator and author of We Got This: Equity, Access, and the Quest to Be Who Our Students Need Us to Be.

"Brendan tells the truth. It is as simple as that--and as complicated. In my 20 years of teaching youth about whiteness and white privilege, I have often found it challenging to be honest with myself and my students without being met with resistance. frustration and, sometimes, anger. Brendan offers us a way into "The Other Talk" with grace, patience, honesty, and vulnerability."

- - Keith Newvine, educator and scholar.

"Can a nonfiction book about race be a heart-pounding page-turner? The Other Talk sure is."

- - Adam Gidwitz, bestselling author of the Newbery honoree The Inquisitor's Tale

"An urgent call for white teens to listen, reflect, speak up, and join the fight for justice."

- - Randy Ribay, author of the National Book Award finalist Patron Saints of Nothing

"[This book] invites readers to enter the difficult conversation of race without blame and instead focuses on the necessary conversations that are needed for real change to happen."

- - Ellen Oh, author of Finding Junie Kim and cofounder of We Need Diverse Books

"The Other Talk invites readers to an honest conversation that is uncomfortable, messy, and absolutely necessary."

- - Minh Lê, early care and education policy expert and critically acclaimed author of Drawn Together

"Compelling, riveting, emotionally stirring--Brendan Kiely gives us a critical tool for consciousness raising and freedom dreaming. Read this, then read it again, then talk about it with those you know and love."

- - Julia E. Torres, nationally acclaimed educator, scholar, and librarian.

"For all of us who have wrestled with our own whiteness and have asked, what can I do about racial injustice? This is the book we've been waiting for. Teachers, young people, their families, and school communities will find hope and humility in Brendan's book. It offers us practical ways to talk with each other about and move beyond the fear that paralyzes us in doing this work, and it gives us the strength of a larger community committed to having this other talk."

- - Sarah Fleming, PhD, educator and scholar

This approachable memoir and guide, comprising Kiely's own experiences relating to race and allyship, is a welcome tool to help facilitate conversations with white teenagers about white privilege, and the ongoing journey to become effective allies to those in the "Global Majority," on both a personal and systemic level.

- Publishers Weekly *STARRED REVIEW*, September 13, 2021

A compelling call to action that belongs in all collections serving middle and high school students.

- School Library Journal, *STARRED REVIEW*

Awards and Honors

CCBC Choices (Cooperative Children's Book Council)

Chicago Public Library's Best of the Best

Kansas NEA Reading Circle List High School Title

Bank Street Best Children's Book of the Year Selection Title

Resources and Downloads

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About The Book A School Library Journal Best Book of the Year Award-winning and New York Times bestselling author Brendan Kiely starts a conversation with white kids about race in this "well-executed and long overdue" (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) introduction to white privilege and why allyship is so vital.

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by Clint Smith

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Editorial Reviews

★ 03/22/2021

Poet and Atlantic staff writer Smith debuts with a moving and perceptive survey of landmarks that reckon, or fail to reckon, with the legacy of slavery in America. Visiting Monticello plantation, Smith describes how Thomas Jefferson's self-perception as a "benevolent slave owner" often conflicted with his actions. On a tour of Angola prison, Smith discusses how nonunanimous jury verdicts fueled the "convict leasing system" that replaced slave labor in post-Reconstruction Louisiana, and notes that when the state switched from the electric chair to lethal injection in 1991, Angola inmates refused to build the prison death bed. At the Blandford Cemetery for Confederate soldiers in Petersburg, Va., Smith questions on-site historians about the ethical implications of preserving a place of honor for the defenders of slavery. He also checks in at the annual Juneteenth festival in Galveston, Tex., and takes an illuminating walking tour of underground railroad sites in New York City. Suffused with lyrical descriptions and incisive historical details, including Robert E. Lee's ruthlessness as a slave owner and early resistance by Frederick Douglass and W.E.B. Du Bois to the Confederate general's "deification," this is an essential consideration of how America's past informs its present. Agent: Alia Habib, the Gernert Co. (June)

Publishers Weekly

Publisher's Weekly, Nonfiction Best Books of 2021

Longlist, Goodreads, Best Nonfiction of 2021

A Shelf Awareness Best Books of 2021

Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance - 2022 Southern Book Prize nonfiction finalist

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice

Washington Post, 50 Notable Works of Nonfiction

One of John Green's Two Favorite Books of the Year Washington Post Best Book to Read in June Time Best Book of Summer 2021 The Root's Book You Have to Read This Summer A Goodreads Hottest New Book of the Season One of Buzzfeed's New Books to Add to Your Summer Reading List ASAP

"Suffused with lyrical descriptions and incisive historical details, including Robert E. Lee's ruthlessness as a slave owner and early resistance by Frederick Douglass and W.E.B. Du Bois to the Confederate general's "deification," this is an essential consideration of how America's past informs its present."-Publisher's Weekly

"The Atlantic writer drafts a history of slavery in this country unlike anything you've read before."-Entertainment Weekly

"An important and timely book about race in America."-Drew Faust, Harvard Magazine

"Merging memoir, travelogue, and history, Smith fashions an affecting, often lyrical narrative of witness."-The New York Review of Books

"In this exploration of the ways we talk about - and avoid talking about - slavery, Smith blends reportage and deep critical thinking to produce a work that interrogates both history and memory."-Kate Tuttle, Boston Globe

"Raises questions that we must all address, without recourse to wishful thinking or the collective ignorance and willful denial that fuels white supremacy." -Martha Anne Toll, The Washington Post

"Sketches an impressive and deeply affecting human cartography of America's historical conscience...an extraordinary contribution to the way we understand ourselves." -Julian Lucas, New York Times Book Review

"With careful research, scholarship, and perspective, Smith underscores a necessary truth: the imprint of slavery is unyieldingly present in contemporary America, and the stories of its legacy, of the enslaved people and their descendants, are everywhere."-TeenVogue

"Clint Smith, in his new book "How the Word Is Passed," has created something subtle and extraordinary."-Christian Science Monitor

"Part of what makes this book so brilliant is its bothandedness. It is both a searching historical work and a journalistic account of how these historic sites operate today. Its both carefully researched and lyrical. I mean Smith is a poet and the sentences in this book just are piercingly alive. And it's both extremely personal-it is the author's story-and extraordinarily sweeping. It amplifies lots of other voices. Past and present. Reading it I kept thinking about that great Alice Walker line 'All History is Current'."-John Green, New York Times bestselling author of The Anthropocene Reviewed

"The summer's most visionary work of nonfiction is this radical reckoning with slavery, as represented in the nation's monuments, plantations, and landmarks."-Adrienne Westenfeld, Esquire

"The detail and depth of the storytelling is vivid and visceral, making history present and real. Equally commendable is the care and compassion shown to those Smith interviews - whether tour guides or fellow visitors in these many spaces. Due to his care as an interviewer, the responses Smith elicits are resonant and powerful. . . . Smith deftly connects the past, hiding in plain sight, with today's lingering effects."-Hope Wabuke, NPR

"This isn't just a work of history, it's an intimate, active exploration of how we're still constructing and distorting our history." -Ron Charles, The Washington Post

"Both an honoring and an exposé of slavery's legacy in America and how this nation is built upon the experiences, blood, sweat and tears of the formerly enslaved."-The Root

"What [Smith] does, quite successfully, is show that we whitewash our history at our own risk. That history is literally still here, taking up acres of space, memorializing the past, and teaching us how we got to be where we are, and the way we are. Bury it now and it will only come calling later." -USA Today

From the Publisher

01/01/2021

Atlantic staff writer Smith travels the country, moving from his native New Orleans to Monticello; the Whitney Plantation, which aims to preserve the experience of those enslaved; Angola, a former plantation in Louisiana that now serves as a maximum-security prison; and downtown Manhattan, where people were bought and sold. His aim: to show that slavery has been central to the making of America.

Library Journal

★ 2021-03-31
A Black journalist and poet calls for a reconsideration of the way America teaches its history of slavery.

"The story our country tells about the Civil War often flattens some of its otherwise complex realities," writes New Orleans native Smith, a staff writer for the Atlantic. He notes the U.S. is "at an inflection point, in which there is a willingness to more fully grapple with the legacy of slavery and how it shaped the world we live in today." However, while "some places have attempted to tell the truth about their proximity to slavery and its aftermath," others have refused. For this book, the author traveled to nine sites, eight in the U.S. and one in Dakar, Senegal, "to understand how each reckons with its relationship to the history of American slavery." The result is a devastating portrait with unforgettable details. At the Whitney Plantation in Wallace, Louisiana, historians have labored to help visitors close "the yawning gap on slavery" in their educations-"a hammer attempting to unbend four centuries of crooked nails." By contrast, the Angola Museum at the Louisiana State Penitentiary has a gift shop with such souvenirs as "a white mug with the silhouette of a guard sitting in a watchtower surrounded by fencing." When Smith asked his White tour guide to comment on Angola's role in slavery, the guide replied, "I can't change that." At these places and other sites such as Monticello, Galveston Island, and New York City, the author conducted interviews with tour guides, visitors, and others to paint a vivid portrait of the extent to which venues have attempted to redress past wrongs. Smith concludes with a moving epilogue about taking his grandparents to the National Museum of African American History and Culture. The trip elicited painful stories from their childhoods, such as his grandmother recalling walking home from school as White children in buses threw ice cream at her and hurled vicious epithets.

A brilliant, vital work about "a crime that is still unfolding.

Kirkus Reviews

Read More

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How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America|Hardcover

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★ 03/22/2021 Poet and Atlantic staff writer Smith debuts with a moving and perceptive survey of landmarks that reckon, or fail to reckon, with the legacy of slavery in America. Visiting Monticello plantation, Smith describes how Thomas Jefferson's self-perception as a "benevolent slave owner" often conflicted with his actions.

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Padma Lakshmi

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A vivid memoir of food and family, survival and triumph, Love, Loss, and What We Ate traces the arc of Padma Lakshmi's unlikely path from an immigrant childhood to a complicated life in front of the camera-a tantalizing blend of Ruth Reichl's Tender at the Bone and Nora Ephron's Heartburn

Long before Padma Lakshmi ever stepped onto a television set, she learned that how we eat is an extension of how we love, how we comfort, how we forge a sense of home-and how we taste the world as we navigate our way through it. Shuttling between continents as a child, she lived a life of dislocation that would become habit as an adult, never quite at home in the world. And yet, through all her travels, her favorite food remained the simple rice she first ate sitting on the cool floor of her grandmother's kitchen in South India.

Poignant and surprising, Love, Loss, and What We Ate is Lakshmi's extraordinary account of her journey from that humble kitchen, ruled by ferocious and unforgettable women, to the judges' table of Top Chef and beyond. It chronicles the fierce devotion of the remarkable people who shaped her along the way, from her headstrong mother who flouted conservative Indian convention to make a life in New York, to her Brahmin grandfather-a brilliant engineer with an irrepressible sweet tooth-to the man seemingly wrong for her in every way who proved to be her truest ally. A memoir rich with sensual prose and punctuated with evocative recipes, it is alive with the scents, tastes, and textures of a life that spans complex geographies both internal and external.

Love, Loss, and What We Ate is an intimate and unexpected story of food and family-both the ones we are born to and the ones we create-and their enduring legacies.

Related collections and offers

Product Details

ISBN-13:

9780062868572

Publisher:

HarperCollins Publishers

Publication date:

06/19/2018

Edition description:

Reprint

Pages:

336

Sales rank:

86,599

Product dimensions:

6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Padma Lakshmi is the Emmy-nominated host of the highly rated and critically acclaimed, Emmy-winning Bravo series Top Chef, and the author of three cookbooks and food titles: the award-winning Easy Exotic; Tangy, Tart, Hot & Sweet; and the Enclyclopedia of Spices and Herbs. In addition to her culinary achievements, Lakshmi has contributed to such magazines as Vogue, Gourmet, and Harper's Bazaar (UK and US), and penned a syndicated column on fashion and food for the New York Times. Her television-hosting credits include Planet Food and Padma's Passport, as well as other programs in the United States and abroad. A global style icon and the first internationally successful Indian supermodel, Lakshmi also helms companies of her own such as the Padma Collection and Easy Exotic.

Lakshmi is a cofounder of the Endometriosis Foundation of America. Since 2009, the organization has advocated for early diagnosis, promoted research, and raised awareness in the medical community and the greater public about this devastating chronic disease which affects over 190 million women worldwide.

She lives in New York City with her daughter.

Editorial Reviews

[A] surprisingly engrossing memoir/tell-all/cookbook.

Read More

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Love, Loss, and What We Ate: A Memoir|Paperback

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A vivid memoir of food and family, survival and triumph, Love, Loss, and What We Ate traces the arc of Padma Lakshmi's unlikely path from an immigrant childhood to a complicated life in front of the camera-a tantalizing blend of Ruth Reichl's Tender at the...

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Ashley C. Ford

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Ashley C. Ford was a baby when her father went to prison, and for many years no one in her family told her what his crime was. As a teenager, she was shocked to learn he had been convicted of rape.

"It was terrible to try to process it," she says. "With rape, there's no mistake about the intention to harm. You intended to harm someone and you intended to harm someone in a way that I understand intimately."

Just a few months before she learned about her father, when she was 13, Ford was raped by a classmate. It wasn't until she was in her 30s and her father was out of prison that Ford told him about her own history with sexual assault.

"And then we just talked about it, and it helped me to talk to him," she says. "My dad asserted over and over and over about his crimes that he made a choice, that it had been his choice, and that he had taken away somebody else's choice."

Ford says their conversations helped her put her own experiences into a new context: "Talking to my dad, I realized ... I didn't make this choice, somebody took my choice. This is not my fault. This is not my shame. It's not my burden. Somebody else took my choice and now it is their burden."

Ford's new memoir, Somebody's Daughter, details her childhood growing up poor in Indiana and her complicated relationships with her mother, her grandmother and her own body.

Interview highlights
On initially not knowing why her father was in prison

When I was very young and I asked my mom, "Well, why?" her reaction to that was so big and so sad, that it became very clear to me as a kid that that's just not a question I got to ask. It was a question that caused a reaction in my mom that worried me and scared me. And then my brother, he asked more often than I did, but he would get the same response from my mother or my grandmother, which was that big emotional, outsize response. Or when we got a little older and he would ask ... my mom would say, "I shouldn't have to tell you that. He should have to tell you that." And so we were just trying to figure out what had happened between the two of us, and that wasn't really working out because we were 8 and 9.

[Murder] was my number one guess. ... No idea who, no idea how, obviously. But I just assumed because of how long he was away, how long he was expected to be away.
On how her family responded to her going through puberty starting at age 9
It made me feel like my body was betraying me every day. Every day I felt like my body was taking something away from me. I remember the last time I climbed a tree as a kid because I remember when my mother told me, "You don't get to climb trees anymore. You're getting too big for that. Your body is changing. When you're up a tree, people might look at you." So it's like you can't climb trees anymore. You can't be outside alone anymore. As my body changed, my brother had to come with me everywhere. I wasn't allowed to just go for my walks in the woods and stuff like I used to do.
On why she didn't tell her mother when she was raped
My mother told me from the time I was very young that if anybody touched me or hurt me, especially in that way, that she would kill them - and I believed her. I absolutely believed that she would kill him, and I wasn't so concerned with his life at the time that I thought, "Oh, I don't want him to die." It was more so that I don't want to lose my mom. If I tell her this and she finds and kills this boy for what he's done to me, I'll have two parents in prison.
On writing her father a letter when she was in her 20s asking for an explanation of his crimes
When he responded to my letter, he told me that he had been a young, insecure, deeply afraid man. And he made a choice, an inhumane choice, because he was not thinking of some other people as human. He was so wrapped up in his own pain and in his own fear about his life and his ability and capability, that he took it out on two people who didn't deserve it, who had their own lives and their own dreams. And he became a monster so that he didn't have to become a man.

On having empathy for the boy who raped her

I'm in love with my humanity. I love being a human. I do. I really do. The range of emotions is terrifying and beautiful. The range of actions are terrifying and beautiful that a human can experience, and some of my experiences suck really, really bad. A lot of them are fantastic.

Not in the way that I would ever want to know or speak to him again - that is a boundary firmly in place for a reason. But I understand, in a certain capacity, that his life went on and that this is a thing that happened and it is terrible and it is tragic, and I do wish there had been some accountability for what happened to me. But at the same time, there is very little that looks like accountability, there is very little that could happen that would make me feel like, yeah, I finally feel like I got justice. That's not going to happen by thinking of him as inhuman. That's not going to happen by forgetting the fact that diminishing his humanity, thinking of him as less human, separates me from my humanity in a certain way - and I'm in love with my humanity. I love being a human. I do. I really do. The range of emotions is terrifying and beautiful. The range of actions are terrifying and beautiful that a human can experience, and some of my experiences suck really, really bad. A lot of them are fantastic.
On why she took nude photos of her body - and how they made her feel
I had just broken up with my only long-term boyfriend, who I had been with from the time I was 14 until I was 20. We broke up after he came out to me as gay. I started to think, if he is attracted to men, then what does that mean about my body? ... I've only ever thought of my body in terms of how other people see it or react to it. And I want to do that differently. ...

I had a little digital camera that my grandma had gotten me that past Christmas, and I started trying to figure out if I could take nudes of me that looked good to me and that felt good to me. And I was totally worried that I was going to be really, really embarrassed by the outcome. But I uploaded those photos to my computer to look at them and I felt really beautiful. I looked at those photos and I saw these gentle curves in my body, and I saw like little marks on my skin, but there seemed to be patterns in those marks and that made it kind of beautiful to me, too. And I found myself just spending so much time looking at these photos of my body. And I was like, I can't believe this. I never thought I even wanted to see a photo of my body like that ever, ever. ... I thought that it would disgust me. I thought that it would make me feel ashamed. And then I was sitting there and I was looking at the photos and I felt neither of those things. I felt proud and I felt beautiful. And it was a spark, like a seedling of a moment, that started to really implant in myself a perception of my own beauty and the idea that I get to define what's beautiful to me.
Seth Kelley and Joel Wolfram produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz and Molly Seavy-Nesper adapted it for the web.

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In 'Somebody's Daughter' Ashley C. Ford Confronts The Crimes Of Her Father

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Ashley C. Ford was a baby when her father went to prison, and for many years no one in her family told her what his crime was. As a teenager, she was shocked to learn he had been convicted of rape. "It was terrible to try to process it," she says.

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Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

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Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

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by Adam Grant

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Named a best nonfiction book of 2021 by The Washington Post

"Renowned Wharton professor Grant spotlights one of the most important and impactful themes of our time: questioning one's own deeply held beliefs. Grant frames true knowledge as not knowing everything, but rather, listening as if we knew nothing at all in this intrepid book that is what our present moment requires."
-Newsweek, "Our 21 Favorite Books of 2021"

"In a world of aggressive certitude, Adam Grant's latest book is a refreshing mandate for humble open-mindedness. Think Again offers a particularly powerful case for rethinking what we already know . . . that is not just a useful lesson; it could be a vital one."

"In his latest book, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know, [Grant] is in vintage form."

"Think Again delivers smart advice on unlearning assumptions and opening ourselves up to curiosity and humility."

"Adam Grant's latest book pushes us to reconsider, rethink, reevaluate and reimagine our beliefs, thoughts, and identities and get to the core of why we believe what we do, why it is so important to us, and why we are steadfast to hold on to those ideas and beliefs. . . . It teaches us to stop digging our heels and doubling down and consider other people's points of view so that we may grow our own. Once again, Adam Grant succeeded in turning our very way of thinking upside down as he pushes us to examine the obvious."
"This book blends psychology and self-help to prove how doubt, failing, and rethinking are instrumental to improving ourselves and our world. . . . In three sections, he outlines why we struggle to embrace feedback, how we can help others rethink effectively, and how our communities can shift to encourage rethinking."
"Grant is a born communicator-engaging and impossibly articulate. . . . Think Again . . . digs into the synaptic weirdness of why we think how we do and how we know what (we think) we know. The bottom line: In a world that's constantly changing, we could all benefit from deliberately reassessing our cherished opinions."
"Adam Grant believes that keeping an open mind is a teachable skill. And no one could teach this hugely valuable skill better than he does in this wonderful read. The striking insights of this brilliant book are guaranteed to make you rethink your opinions and your most important decisions."
-Daniel Kahneman, Nobel Prize winner in economics and #1 New York Times bestselling author of Thinking, Fast and Slow

"THIS. This is the right book for right now. Yes, learning requires focus. But, unlearning and relearning requires much more - it requires choosing courage over comfort. In Think Again, Adam Grant weaves together research and storytelling to help us build the intellectual and emotional muscle we need to stay curious enough about the world to actually change it. I've never felt so hopeful about what I don't know."
-Brené Brown, Ph.D., #1 New York Times bestselling author of Dare to Lead

"Adam Grant makes a captivating argument that if we have the humility and curiosity to reconsider our beliefs, we can always reinvent ourselves. Think Again helped me learn about how great thinkers and achievers don't let expertise or experience stand in the way of being perpetual students."
-M. Night Shyamalan, director of The Sixth Sense and Split

"Readers will find common ground in many of his compelling arguments (ideologies, sports rivals), making this a thought-provoking read."
"[A] fast-paced account by a leading authority on the psychology of thinking."
-Library Journal, (starred review)

"For anyone who wants to create a culture of learning and exploration at home, work or school, Grant distills complex research into a compelling case for why each of us should continually question old assumptions and embrace new ideas and perspectives."
-Entrepreneur

"It's the idea of flexibility and how to achieve it that I found most compelling in Think Again. As I read the book, I couldn't help but reflect on the times I'd clung to an opinion past its expiration date or imagine what I might have learned from a debate, had I asked a question instead of hurling a rebuttal."
-Behavioral Scientist

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Think Again by Adam Grant: 9781984878106 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

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Named a best nonfiction book of 2021 by The Washington Post "Renowned Wharton professor Grant spotlights one of the most important and impactful themes of our time: questioning one's own deeply held beliefs. Grant frames true knowledge as not knowing everything, but rather, listening as if we knew nothing at all in this intrepid book that is what our present moment requires."

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Dusk, Night, Dawn: On Revival and Courage

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Dusk, Night, Dawn: On Revival and Courage

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by Anne Lamott

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Anne Lamott is back with a collection of beautifully written essays. Her goal here is to illuminate how we can go on in spite of all that is difficult. Her voice is wry, humorous and laden with wisdom. I lost count of the number of quotes I circled. This is the book we need from a voice we love.

This Barnes & Noble Exclusive Edition includes an additional essay by the author.

"Anne Lamott is my Oprah." -Chicago Tribune

From the bestselling author of Help, Thanks, Wow comes an inspiring guide to restoring hope and joy in our lives.

In Dusk Night Dawn, Anne Lamott explores the tough questions that many of us grapple with. How can we recapture the confidence we once had as we stumble through the dark times that seem increasingly bleak? As bad newspiles up-from climate crises to daily assaults on civility-how can we cope? Where, she asks, "do we start to our world and joy and hope and our faith in life itself back . . . with our sore feet, hearing loss, stiff fingers, poor digestion, stunned minds, broken hearts?"

We begin, Lamott says, by accepting our flaws and embracing our humanity.

Drawing from her own experiences, Lamott shows us the intimate and human ways we can adopt to move through life's dark places and toward the light of hope that still burns ahead for all of us.

As she does in Help, Thanks, Wow and her other bestselling books, Lamott explores the thorny issues of life and faith by breaking them down into manageable, human-sized questions for readers to ponder, in the process showing us how we can amplify life's small moments of joy by staying open to love and connection. As Lamott notes in Dusk Night Dawn, "I got Medicare three days before I got hitched, which sounds like something an old person might do, which does not describe adorably ageless me." Marrying for the first time with a grown son and a grandson, Lamott explains that finding happiness with a partner isn't a function of age or beauty but of outlook and perspective.

Full of the honesty, humor, and humanity that have made Lamott beloved by millions of readers, Dusk Night Dawn is classic Anne Lamott-thoughtful and comic, warm and wise-and further proof that Lamott truly speaks to the better angels in all of us.

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Dusk, Night, Dawn: On Revival and Courage (B&N Exclusive Edition)|BN Exclusive

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Anne Lamott is back with a collection of beautifully written essays. Her goal here is to illuminate how we can go on in spite of all that is difficult. Her voice is wry, humorous and laden with wisdom. I lost count of the number of quotes I circled.

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by Kim Stafford

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Eloquent Listening and Other Pleasures of the Writer's Craft

Title Details

Pages: 152

Trim size: 5.500in x 8.500in

Eloquent Listening and Other Pleasures of the Writer's Craft

The Muses Among Us is an inviting, encouraging book for writers at any stage of their development. In a series of first-person letters, essays, manifestos, and notes to the reader, Kim Stafford shows what might happen at the creative boundary he calls "what we almost know." On the boundary's far side is our story, our poem, our song. On this side are the resonant hunches, griefs, secrets, and confusions from which our writing will emerge. Guiding us from such glimmerings through to a finished piece are a wealth of experiments, assignments, and tricks of the trade that Stafford has perfected over thirty years of classes, workshops, and other gatherings of writers.

Informing The Muses Among Us are Stafford's own convictions about writing-principles to which he returns again and again. We must, Stafford says, honor the fragments, utterances, and half-discovered truths voiced around us, for their speakers are the prophets to whom writers are scribes. Such filaments of wisdom, either by themselves or alloyed with others, give rise to our poems, stories, and essays. In addition, as Stafford writes, "all pleasure in writing begins with a sense of abundance-rich knowledge and boundless curiosity." By recommending ways for students to seek beyond the self for material, Stafford demystifies the process of writing and claims for it a Whitmanesque quality of participation and community.

Much about Kim's book is more alive and sadly aware of what it means to be a writer than any other recent how-to-write book I've seen in decades. Clearly Kim holds the flag for the gutsy mix of compassionate, political engagement and love of vivid scene that American authors had better take on if they don't want to be easy livers in our vicious culture.

-Carol Bly, author of The Passionate, Accurate Story

I've been awaiting this book for years, and now I rejoice to hold it in my hands. Kim Stafford has distilled into these pages the wisdom of his long practice not only as a writer and teacher, but also as a son and husband and father, and as a citizen of the great community of Earth. Part minstrel, part wizard, he shows us that writing begins in listening, to outer as well as inner voices, and listening begins in wonder. If you want to stir up your art and soul, sit down with this inspiring book.

-Scott Russell Sanders, author of Hunting for Hope and The Force of Spirit

Son of poet William Stafford, Oregon writer Kim Stafford offers a brief, gem-packed primer on the writer's craft, drawing largely from his experiences as writer, teacher, and 'professional eavesdropper.' . . . A rich resource for any writer, but particularly for those who value writing as a path to personal fulfillment.

- Booklist

This slim volume is a lyrically written treatise on Stafford's writing principles, which deal with all stages of development, starting with the first stimulus (or 'muse') and ending with the finished piece. . . . The book could be described as a series of impressions, beautifully composed and abstract enough to force the writing student to sense intuitively what the author wants to convey.

- Library Journal

A delightful invitation to listen to the unlikely. And although it can be read as a "how-to" for the writing instructor or writing student, it is more in that it inspires through Stafford's personal anecdotes and thoughtful and philosophical reflections.

- North Dakota Quarterly

The book is a joy to read, offering both practical and abstract advice.

- Chattanooga Times

The air in The Muses Among Us is rich with the scents of earth and what grows upon it. . . . Stafford has composed a handbook that will lead writers or would-be writers away from the esoteric details and back to the source: 'a sense of abundance-rich knowledge and boundless curiosity.' The Muses Among Us is a quick read with a lasting lesson.

- Seattle Times

The Muses Among Us doles out philosophy from the writerly trenches. As an author and a teacher, Stafford has been there-this compassionate book may well guide others through the thickets of self-doubt to a place where writing is a pleasurable opportunity.

-Barbara McMichael, Tacoma News Tribune

Runner-up
Frances Fuller Victor Award for General Nonfiction, Literary Arts/Oregon Book Awards

About the Author/Editor

KIM STAFFORD is director of the Northwest Writing Institute at Lewis & Clark College. His many books include A Thousand Friends of Rain and Having Everything Right.

Eloquent Listening and Other Pleasures of the Writer's Craft

Title Details

Pages: 152

Trim size: 5.500in x 8.500in

Eloquent Listening and Other Pleasures of the Writer's Craft

The Muses Among Us is an inviting, encouraging book for writers at any stage of their development. In a series of first-person letters, essays, manifestos, and notes to the reader, Kim Stafford shows what might happen at the creative boundary he calls "what we almost know." On the boundary's far side is our story, our poem, our song. On this side are the resonant hunches, griefs, secrets, and confusions from which our writing will emerge. Guiding us from such glimmerings through to a finished piece are a wealth of experiments, assignments, and tricks of the trade that Stafford has perfected over thirty years of classes, workshops, and other gatherings of writers.

Informing The Muses Among Us are Stafford's own convictions about writing-principles to which he returns again and again. We must, Stafford says, honor the fragments, utterances, and half-discovered truths voiced around us, for their speakers are the prophets to whom writers are scribes. Such filaments of wisdom, either by themselves or alloyed with others, give rise to our poems, stories, and essays. In addition, as Stafford writes, "all pleasure in writing begins with a sense of abundance-rich knowledge and boundless curiosity." By recommending ways for students to seek beyond the self for material, Stafford demystifies the process of writing and claims for it a Whitmanesque quality of participation and community.

Much about Kim's book is more alive and sadly aware of what it means to be a writer than any other recent how-to-write book I've seen in decades. Clearly Kim holds the flag for the gutsy mix of compassionate, political engagement and love of vivid scene that American authors had better take on if they don't want to be easy livers in our vicious culture.

-Carol Bly, author of The Passionate, Accurate Story

I've been awaiting this book for years, and now I rejoice to hold it in my hands. Kim Stafford has distilled into these pages the wisdom of his long practice not only as a writer and teacher, but also as a son and husband and father, and as a citizen of the great community of Earth. Part minstrel, part wizard, he shows us that writing begins in listening, to outer as well as inner voices, and listening begins in wonder. If you want to stir up your art and soul, sit down with this inspiring book.

-Scott Russell Sanders, author of Hunting for Hope and The Force of Spirit

Son of poet William Stafford, Oregon writer Kim Stafford offers a brief, gem-packed primer on the writer's craft, drawing largely from his experiences as writer, teacher, and 'professional eavesdropper.' . . . A rich resource for any writer, but particularly for those who value writing as a path to personal fulfillment.

- Booklist

This slim volume is a lyrically written treatise on Stafford's writing principles, which deal with all stages of development, starting with the first stimulus (or 'muse') and ending with the finished piece. . . . The book could be described as a series of impressions, beautifully composed and abstract enough to force the writing student to sense intuitively what the author wants to convey.

- Library Journal

A delightful invitation to listen to the unlikely. And although it can be read as a "how-to" for the writing instructor or writing student, it is more in that it inspires through Stafford's personal anecdotes and thoughtful and philosophical reflections.

- North Dakota Quarterly

The book is a joy to read, offering both practical and abstract advice.

- Chattanooga Times

The air in The Muses Among Us is rich with the scents of earth and what grows upon it. . . . Stafford has composed a handbook that will lead writers or would-be writers away from the esoteric details and back to the source: 'a sense of abundance-rich knowledge and boundless curiosity.' The Muses Among Us is a quick read with a lasting lesson.

- Seattle Times

The Muses Among Us doles out philosophy from the writerly trenches. As an author and a teacher, Stafford has been there-this compassionate book may well guide others through the thickets of self-doubt to a place where writing is a pleasurable opportunity.

-Barbara McMichael, Tacoma News Tribune

Runner-up
Frances Fuller Victor Award for General Nonfiction, Literary Arts/Oregon Book Awards

About the Author/Editor

KIM STAFFORD is director of the Northwest Writing Institute at Lewis & Clark College. His many books include A Thousand Friends of Rain and Having Everything Right.

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The Muses Among Us is an inviting, encouraging book for writers at any stage of their development. In a series of first-person letters, essays, manifestos, a...

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by Marie Mutsuki Mockett

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For over one hundred years, the Mockett family has owned a seven-thousand-acre wheat farm in the panhandle of Nebraska, where Marie Mutsuki Mockett's father was raised. Mockett, who grew up in bohemian Carmel, California, with her father and her Japanese mother, knew little about farming when she inherited this land. Her father had all but forsworn it.

In American Harvest, Mockett accompanies a group of evangelical Christian wheat harvesters through the heartland at the invitation of Eric Wolgemuth, the conservative farmer who has cut her family's fields for decades. As Mockett follows Wolgemuth's crew on the trail of ripening wheat from Texas to Idaho, they contemplate what Wolgemuth refers to as "the divide," inadvertently peeling back layers of the American story to expose its contradictions and unhealed wounds. She joins the crew in the fields, attends church, and struggles to adapt to the rhythms of rural life, all the while continually reminded of her own status as a person who signals "not white," but who people she encounters can't quite categorize.

American Harvest is an extraordinary evocation of the land and a thoughtful exploration of ingrained beliefs, from evangelical skepticism of evolution to cosmopolitan assumptions about food production and farming. With exquisite lyricism and humanity, this astonishing book attempts to reconcile competing versions of our national story.

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For over one hundred years, the Mockett family has owned a seven-thousand-acre wheat farm in the panhandle of Nebraska, where Marie Mutsuki Mockett's father was raised. Mockett, who grew up in bohemian Carmel, California, with her father and her Japanese mother, knew little about farming when she inherited this land.

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by Mathew Salesses

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An NPR Best Book of the YearAn Esquire Best Nonfiction Book of the YearAn Electric Literature Best Book of the Year "Salesses is clearly a generous instructor, willing to share ideas for syllabus design, grading techniques and writing exercises.

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by Annie Dillard

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The Writing Life a book by Annie Dillard

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For nonwriters, it is a glimpse into the trials and satisfactions of a life spent with words. For writers, it is a warm, rambling, conversation with a stimulating and extraordinarily talented colleague. -- Chicago TribuneFrom Pulitzer Prize-winning Annie Dillard, a collection that illuminates the de…

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What You Have Heard Is True: a Memoir of Witness and Resistance

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What You Have Heard Is True: a Memoir of Witness and Resistance

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Carolyn Forché

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What You Have Heard Is True by Carolyn Forché: 9780525560395 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

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2019 National Book Award Finalist "Reading it will change you, perhaps forever." -San Francisco Chronicle "Astonishing, powerful, so important at this time." --Margaret Atwood...