A new history of school desegregation in America, revealing how girls and women led the fight for interracial education The struggle to desegregate America's schools was a grassroots movement, and young women were its vanguard. In the late 1940s, parents began to file desegregation lawsuits with their daughters, forcing Thurgood Marshall and other civil rights lawyers to take up the issue and bring it to the Supreme Court. After the Brown v. Board of Education ruling, girls far outnumbered boys in volunteering to desegregate formerly all-white schools. In A Girl Stands at the Door, historian Rachel Devlin tells the remarkable stories of these desegregation pioneers. She also explains why black girls were seen, and saw themselves, as responsible for the difficult work of reaching across the color line in public schools. Highlighting the extraordinary bravery of young black women, this bold revisionist account illuminates today's ongoing struggles for equality.
After years of pining for the girl next door, 15-year-old Matthew Wainwright must deal with Tabby dating a popular senior just when he needs her most in this fiercely funny and heart-wrenching debut novel.
Go back in time to the little town of Bedford Falls and the majesty of the old Granville House in this beloved new classic tale of love and romance. James Bailey, son of Pete Bailey and grandson of George Bailey, comes back home after years of being away and reunites with his childhood sweetheart, Jane Bright. Not only is their love for each other rekindled, but the love they have for their small town is revitalized in the wake of 9/11 and demonstrates the courage, hope, and survival that small-town America faces every day. Wonderful will not only take you back to a better place in time worth living in but will also transport you to a better place and time worth fighting for. Also, look for his other book, Heli the Helicopter, a children’s book which teaches children the virtues of patience.
Belly Up is a story collection that contains ghosts, mediums, a lover obsessed with the sound of harps tuning, teenage girls who believe they are actually plants, gulag prisoners who outsmart a terrible warden, and carnivorous churches. Throughout these grotesque and tender stories, characters question the bodies they've been given and what their bodies require to be sustained.
In south India in 1896, ten-year old Sivakami is about to embark on a new life. Hanumarathnam, a village healer with some renown as an astrologer, has approached her parents with a marriage proposal. In keeping with custom, he provides his prospective in-laws with his horoscope. The problem is that his includes a prediction, albeit a weak one, that he will die in his tenth year of marriage. Despite the ominous horoscope, Sivakami’s parents hesitate only briefly, won over by the young man and his family’s reputation as good, upstanding Brahmins. Once married, Sivikami and Hanumarathnam grow to love one another and the bride, now in her teens, settles into a happy life. But the predictions of Hanumarathnam’s horoscope are never far from her new husband’s mind. When their first child is born, as a strategy for accurately determining his child’s astrological charts, Hanumarathnam insists the midwife toss a lemon from the window of the birthing room the moment his child appears. All is well with their first child, a daughter, Thangam, whose birth has a positive influence on her father’s astrological future. But this influence is fleeting: when a son, Vairum, is born, his horoscope confirms that his father will die within three years. Resigned to his fate, Hanumarathnam sets himself to the unpleasant task of readying his household for his imminent death. Knowing the hardships and social restrictions Sivakami will face as a Brahmin widow, he hires and trains a servant boy called Muchami to help Sivakami manage the household and properties until Vairum is of age. When Sivakami is eighteen, Hanumarathnam dies as predicted. Relentless in her adherence to the traditions that define her Brahmin caste, she shaves her head and dons the white sari of the widow. With some reluctance, she moves to her family home to raise her children under the protection of her brothers, but then realizes that they are not acting in the best interests of her children. With her daughter already married to an unreliable husband of her brothers’ choosing, and Vairum’s future also at risk, Sivakami leaves her brothers and returns to her marital home to raise her family. With the freedom to make decisions for her son’s future, Sivakami defies tradition and chooses to give him a secular education. While her choice ensures that Vairum fulfills his promise, it also sets Sivakami on a collision course with him. Vairum, fatherless in childhood, childless as an adult, rejects the caste identity that is his mother’s mainstay, twisting their fates in fascinating and unbearable ways.
Legends of abandoned old graveyards and some not so abandoned abound-the crying dog in the cemetary well, the wandering ghost of Long Tom March, who carries a deck of cards and won't rest until he finds a winning poker hand. Next to a graveyard where an arm is buried, the old piano in the fogotten church plays. These and other tales along with some more recent real-life experiences will intrigue you, skeptic or not. Read the tales with an open mind. They are for pleasure, a bit of paranormal, a little seriousness, and hopefully a laugh or two. If you are a nonbeliever in the supernatural, you may change your skepticism is etched in stone. Then again the author learned that nothing is etched in stone forever. This humorous book also includes some unusual coffins, tombstones, and epitaphs as well as some early Texas burial traditions.
