My very favorite novels are written in free verse. I like how the required economy of words leaves no room for the verbose, the superfluous. Takes you to the gist. And the books that manage to vividly convey a distinct sense of time and place, of personalities and relationships within that format are pure magic. So the day I discovered two of these gems in the YA section of the Orono Public Library I felt truly blessed.
Rex Ogle's When We Ride takes readers to a neighborhood long past it's years of niceness and prosperity.
"Cars on bricks in front yards.
Angry pit bulls barking mad.
Paint flaking off houses like dry skin.
Bars on windows, like detention centers.
Junkies walking up the asphalt, day and night"
It's a place where people struggle to keep a roof over their heads, food on the table, and the lights on. Ogle's narrator, Diego, works after school bussing tables at a diner. His mother works six days a week at two jobs.
Diego's mother is determined that he achieve the kind of success and life she couldn't have. She's going to do whatever she can to help make this happen.
"She's always saying,
'Education is everything.
And you're going to college
if it's the last thing I do.'"
And Diego is fulfilling her expectations. He's achieving academically despite the time he has to spend working. He's filling out college applications.
Diego and Lawson are long term best friends, more like brothers, even though their lives are going in drastically different directions. Lawson is an indifferent student.
"'Why you bother with that shit?
Grades don't mean nothin' in the real world.
They're just letters and numbers."
Worse yet he's doing and selling drugs. He's gone from just selling grass to pushing harder drugs, getting involved with seriously dangerous people in the process...
Leaving Diego caught between loyalties--to his mother and her dream or to his bestie and his survival.
What we're taught about the fight for women's suffrage in America tends to be pretty sanitized. We learn about about the movement leaders, the big conferences, and the marches. We're told that one of the most fundamental rights of those of us who aren't he/hims was gained by hard work and sacrifice and should never be taken for granted. We're not usually filled in on the premeditated cruelty and outright brutality some of our foremothers had to endure. Marcie Flinchum Atkins' One Step Forward reveals some very inconvenient truths.
The narrative arc of the story goes from 1913 to 1920. The setting is Washington DC where Woodrow Wilson is doing his presidential best to ignore the suffragists. Even some of their supporters are urging them not to distract the head honcho when there's this world war going on. Only they don't see their cause as a distraction. How can America claim to be fighting for democracy while denying so many of its citizens the right to vote?
The narrative is a blend of fiction and nonfiction. The narrator, Matilda Young, was a very real person, as were most of the characters of the book. However, the historical record only goes so far. Atkins had to extrapolate from the very little known about Matilda and the literature about the time in which she lived to create her daily actions and thoughts.
Matilda was the youngest in a lively family of seven: two parents, four daughters, one son. She was only fourteen when she cut school to secretly to attend the Woman Suffrage Procession. She wanted to see thousand of women marching.
"No, Matilda,
you cannot go.
You're too young.
It's too dangerous."
She was angered when she saw men including her father physically and verbally abusing the marchers and the police doing absolutely, nothing. Unsure of what kind of suffragist she wanted to be and apprehensive about being jailed she began the began sorting mail behind the scenes at headquarters.
As the years went by, Wilson went out of his way to ignore the suffragists and their demand, and nothing changed, they devised a new tactic, a silent protest. Women would take turns picketing the White House. At first Matilda stuck to behind the scenes work...
...But as Wilson entered his second term she joined the picket line. People began to assault the women. But when the arrests began it was the women who were arrested, jailed, and tortured brutally behind bars.
"Throughout the entire research, writing, and revising process for this book, I never ceased to be amazed at the great sacrifice that suffragists made for our right to vote. Some of them gave up considerable time, money, and comfort. Inez Mulholland died pursuing suffrage for women. Others nearly died from the abuse and hunger strikes in prison."
Atkins wants YA readers to know that even if they're, like Matilda when she became involved in the fight for suffrage, too young to vote, they can make a real difference by staying up on current events and policies, getting involved with the issues that matter most to them, and communicating with elected officials.
On a purrrsonal note, OMG, do I have news!!! A people magazine editor has been interviewing me and Amber to do a story on my getting my masters degree after a stroke. Today it came out on the internet. It is so well written. Check it out and feel free to share with your friends and acquaintances. I am certainly going to celebrate with my girls.
A great big shout out goes out to Brian Brant for doing such an excellent story.
Jules Hathaway
Sent from my U.S.Cellular© Smartphone
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