MG – Exploring Social Injustice (Series NF)

Exploring Social Injustice. Bright Point Press, 2023. $43.93 ea. $175.72 set of 4. 64 p. Grades 5-8.

Boone, Mary. Racial Injustice. 978-1-678-20400-6.
. Immigrant and Refugee Injustice. 978-1-678-20396-6.
Gagne, Tammy. Injustices Against Women. 978-1-678-20398-6.
Terp, Gail. Climate and Environmental Injustices. 978-1-678-20394-6. 

Each book in this compact series is set up with a list of fast facts, an introduction with a topic overview, and four chapters offering a brief history of the injustice, the modern problem, aspects of activism, and possible solutions. The slim volumes feature large print, textboxes, and color photographs with captions. Despite the lack of in-depth description, the authors attempt to include a clear, concise explanation of each injustice accurately and currently. Textboxes highlight important persons involved in the movements. Each page contains significant information about the causes, progressions, and effects of these societal wrongs. The information is suitable for older, struggling readers or middle school students. Includes source notes, glossary, and index.

THOUGHTS: In the present climate of book banning and criticism of critical race theory, these nonfiction texts offer a genuine overview of each topic and do not cut corners on a truthful perspective, however cursory. With the included glossary and index, the books will prove valuable for beginning researchers looking for simple facts. This reviewer read two volumes in the series: Racial Injustice and Injustices Against Women.

360 Social Problems and Services

MG – Race to the Truth (Series)

Race to the Truth series. Crown Books for Young Readers, 2023. $12.99 ea. 272 p. Grades 6-8.

Coombs, Linda. Colonization and the Wampanoag Story. 978-0-593-48045-8.
Dockery, Patricia Williams. Slavery and the African American Story. 978-0-593-48046-5. 

Wampanoag historian, Linda Coombs sets up this Race to the Truth entry as part narrative, part expository. Interspersed through thirteen chapters, she takes the reader through a year in the Wampanoag community, describing the Wampanoag way of life: the spring planting, the summer celebrations, the fall preparations, the winter insulation. Following each season, Coombs traces the harsh insinuation of colonization into the harmonious, cyclical, oneness with nature of Native American society. The time frame covers the Doctrine of Discovery, examining the impact of Columbus’s findings; the Pilgrims Patterns, disrupting the belief that Thanksgiving was a consensual sharing time with the Wampanoag; and Colonization, revealing the false assumptions colonial writers spread about Native peoples and the transgressions heaped upon the Wampanoag after the Great Dying (erupting from sickness colonists brought to the Native community). The narrative sections are homey and detailed, telling of the close family life, the reverence for everything that the earth provides, the ingenuity and knowledge of the Wampanoag society. Only in the final portion does the perfect harmony crack. Coombs inserts a tale of a Native who is caught stealing furs and other materials on several occasions and ultimately, the community stages a football game to determine the man’s fate: banishment or death. The alternating chapters that take place after 1400 do not stint on the injustice of claiming and usurping land that belongs to others. The excerpts quoted from 17th century works entitled, Mourt’s Relation and Gookin’s Historical Collections, enforce the racist attitude and superiority these white colonists felt toward the Native Americans. Among many other points in this history, Coombs explains The Mayflower Compact, the Catholic Church’s approval of colonization, the reasons for King Philip’s War in 1675, and the devastation of being forced to “live like the English.” Like Howard Zinn’s A Young People’s History of the United States and Anton Treuer’s Everything You Wanted to Know About Indians But Were Afraid to Ask: Young Readers Edition, Colonization and the Wampanoag Story unearths a perspective that is essential for all to know. Though the narrative sections are appropriate for younger readers, the average ten year-old reader may find the expository following difficult to understand independently.

THOUGHTS: The author, Linda Coombs, is from the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) and served as the  program director of the Aquinnah Cultural Center. Outrageous, infuriating, shameful, extreme unfairness, white privilege–all these words scream in the reader’s mind when learning of the English’s audacity to take over this land nurtured and protected by the Wampanoag for hundreds of years. Young readers will have the same reaction. The contrast of the colonists’ selfishness, ignorance, and bullying with the gentle, peaceful ways of the Native society is stark. With the one exception, life as part of the Wampanoag community prior to colonization seems perfect. This narrative may need some tempering, however, the brutality to the land and the Native communities that loved it stings because of its truth. An essential addition to the school library. One reservation is the size listed as 5 ½” x 8 ¼”. For a book of that length, the size is very small and is sure to get lost on the shelf.

973 History of North America (United States)  

YA – We Are Not Free

Chee, Traci. We Are Not Free. Houghton, Mifflin, Harcourt, 2020. 978-0-358-13143-4. $17.99. 384 p. Grades 9 and up.

Traci Chee’s National Book Award Finalist, We Are Not Free, takes the reader from the close-knit community of Japantown in San Francisco at the start of World War II to the gradual closing of the Japanese imprisonment camps at the end of the war. Told in first-person narrative, each teen—ranging from ages 14 to 19–brings a perspective of life as an American of Japanese descent, from the growing discrimination toward the Japanese after the bombing of Pearl Harbor to the injustices of the camps to the explicit racism displayed when their families return to their former neighborhood. In a novel where credible character development is critical, author Chee shows a wide range of astute writing ability inhabiting the minds of the varied group of young people inhabiting two camps, Topaz and Tule Lake. Sensitive Aiko Harano who at only 13 realizes not only the unfairness of the American government’s oppression of her family and friends, but also the repugnancy of her own parents’ abusive treatment of her older brother, Tommy. Intellectual Stan Katsumoto surrenders his hard-earned dream of continuing his college education when he sides with his parents in being a “No No” person: refusing to relinquish allegiance to the Japanese emperor when no allegiance had ever been formed. Perhaps the most impressive chapter is David “Twitchy” Hashimoto’s, the happy-go-lucky, ever-moving nineteen-year-old who, like several of his friends, volunteered to serve in the military, to go to war. The battle description Chee develops with Twitchy’s commentary is both action-packed and gut-wrenching. Though there are other selections telling of the imprisonment of the Japanese-Americans (in an afterword, Chee advises to delete the term, Japanese internment, in favor of more accurate terms like incarceration, imprisonment, forced removal), We Are Not Free dives deep into what it was like in the camps and how it affected a non-combative community. Works like Journey to Topaz  by Yoshiko Uchida, Weedflower by Cynthia Kadohata, or Paper Wishes by Lois Sepahban—to name just a few–give readers a glimpse into this ignominious period of American history, but We Are Not Free covers the full scope and does so through the voices of teens with whom young readers can relate. This book tells a powerful story, one that has not always been fully explored, but has a new resonance in today’s society. Contains further readings, some historical images.

Historical Fiction          Bernadette Cooke, School District of Philadelphia

THOUGHTS: After reading this book, I feel that all the other historical fiction books on this topic are just a prelude. If I had to choose one book to recommend on the experience in Japanese prison camps to a high school student, We Are Free would be the one. Chee is able to reveal the complications of feeling American and patriotic while also feeling unaccepted by and disheartened by one’s government. In literature lessons, students can examine the character development in a short chapter. In history class, the revelations of injustices and wrongs can be debated and discussed.