A comprehensive collection by one of the most intensely musical and visionary poets writing today.

    James is ready to prove he’s cool enough to be in with them, but he soon learns that the K-Bones are not just an innocent club--they’re a gang that steals, tags freeway signs, and even plans to buy a gun. After a dangerous confrontation with a crew of older boys, James realizes that he’s put Isaac in danger, and knows that if he finds the courage to walk away, Isaac will follow.

    Thursday is the day before Mama gets paid at work each week - it's the day when money is tight and spirits are low for Andre and his older brother and sister.As report card day approaches, Andre anticipates making the honor roll, and Mama said she'd throw a royal party for just such an event. But Andre can't believe his eyes when he looks at the calendar and sees that report card day falls on the worst possible day of the week - a Thursday.Andre's predicament - and the loving solution that his family offers - will strike a chord with readers of all backgrounds. Melrose Cooper and Nneka Bennett present a warm and touching portrait of a child who experiences a celebration he'll never forget.

    Camp Notes and Other Writings recounts this experience.Yamada's poetry yields a terse blend of emotions and imagery. Her twist of words creates a twist of vision that make her poetry come alive. The weight of her cultural experience-the pain of being perceived as an outsider all of her life-permeates her work.Yamada's strength as a poet stems from the fact that she has managed to integrate both individual and collective aspects of her background, giving her poems a double impact. Her strong portrayal of individual and collective life experience stands out as a distinct thread in the fabric of contemporary literature by women. "The core poems of Camp Notes and the title come from the notes I had taken when I was in camp, and it wasn’t published until thirty years after most of it was written. I was simply describing what was happening to me, and my thoughts. But, in retrospect, the collection takes on a kind of expanded meaning about that period in our history. As invariably happens, because Japanese American internment became such an issue in American history, I suppose I will be forever identified as the author of Camp Notes. Of course, I try to show that it’s not the only thing I ever did in my whole life; I did other things besides go to an internment camp during World War II. So, in some ways I keep producing to counteract that one image that gets set in the public mind. At the time that I was writing it, I wasn’t necessarily a political person. Now, when I reread it, even to myself, I think it probably has a greater warning about the dangers of being not aware, not aware of one’s own rights, not aware of helping other people who may be in trouble. I think that it does speak to our present age very acutely." -- Mitsuye Yamada , "You should not be invisible”: An Interview with Mitsuye Yamada, Contemporary Women's Writing, March 2014, Vol. 8 Issue 1Read the whole interview at: https://academic.oup.com/cww/article/...

    Beautifully retold, the story of how Amrita saves the village trees from the woodcutters.An Environmental Folk Tale

    Through an examination of post-World War II autobiographical writings, fiction, and poetry, Traise Yamamoto argues that these writers have employed the trope of masking—textually and psychologically—as a strategy to create an alternative discursive practice and to protect the self as subject.Yamamoto's range is broad, and her interdisciplinary approach yields richly textured, in-depth readings of a number of genres, including film and travel narrative. Looking at how the West has sexualized, infantilized, and feminized Japanese culture for over a century, she examines contemporary Japanese American women's struggle with this orientalist fantasy. Analyzing the various constraints and possibilities that these writers negotiate in order to articulate their differences, she shows how masking serves as a self-affirming discourse that dynamically interacts with mainstream culture's racial and sexual projections.

    Here are sisters and brothers, fathers and mothers, grannies, grandads, uncles and aunts, houses and homes, habits and traditions, history, hugs, struggles, and love. Full-color.