Excerpt from “Braids and Belonging” my article in IBBY LINK, Spring-Summer, 2015 the journal of IBBY UK, International Board of Books for Young People in the United Kingdom. “From the beginning of my years with the girls of Sudan, it was so much about hair. I saw how the styles were a vital part of…
Posts Tagged: The Good Braider
A Student Speaks for “all the Violas of the world”
Students and teachers have shared with me some of the essays written in response to reading The Good Braider. One student, Steven Kidder, wrote an essay about PTSD. It was both well researched and also deeply personal, and his personal response added power to the facts about PTSD. In Viola he saw a person experiencing…
If You Were Thomas’s White Girlfriend
“When Studs Terkel was asked on Transom what he wanted to hear on the radio, he answered, “Something real.” Jay Allison in his intro to this story on Transom.org, “If You Were Thomas’s White Girlfriend.” By Terry Farish Thomas got a job shelving books at a branch of the Portland Public Library, a pretty good…