Farewell to Manzanar: A True Story of Japanese American Experience During and After the World War II Internment

During my undergrad years in Chicago, I had the privilege of meeting a Japanese American interment camp survivor. She, along with thousands of other Americans, were forced to live in these camps during WWII. According to my older friend, all of the Japanese Americans in her generation spent time in the camps. Their stories must be told in order for us to fully understand the effects of WWII on our country. Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston offers an insiders look at the interment camp through her poignant memoir.   

Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry

Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry is the Newbery Medal-winning first installment. Readers become acquainted with the main characters: protagonist Cassie, her three brothers and their mischievous friends, Mama – a school teacher, and Papa – an itenerant worker who is often away from home. Taylor paints a picture of segregation's inequalities from the first chapter. Readers feel the humiliation of the Logans as a bus full of white children splatters Cassie and siblings with mud the first day of school. The intensity of race relations culminates in a family friend – a Black youth's trial for murder of a white man.