Farewell To Manzanar by James D. Houston and Jeanna Wakatsuki Houston

            This nonfiction account gives the true depiction of the mistreatment of the Japanese Americans living in the United States during WWII. Similar to Warriors Don’t Cry, this book offers a glimpse into American history, making it a good read for both an English and history class. I feel a common misconception that could be held by students in middle school is that America’s history with racial discrimination is only black and white. This book proves otherwise, giving a look at the shameful past of Americans confining and controlling fellow American citizens.

Summary courtesy of http://www.edb.utexas.edu/resources/booksR4teens/book_reviews/book_reviews.php?book_id=32

            This memoir, based on Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston's experience, explores her trials of living in a Japanese internment camp. The young girl tries to make the best of the situation but sees the pain and suffering that her parents must experience in order to survive. Her father was taken away for a year before he is returned to his family. He does not discuss what happened to him, and he begins to drink to try to forget. After they are freed and permitted to go home, she explains the prejudice she experiences while trying to readjust to life in an American high school. While getting involved in school, she abandons her Japanese heritage, a decision she later regrets making.

Houston, James D. and Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston. (1995). Farewell to Manzanar. Fernie: Laurel Leat. 177 pp. ISBN: 0-913-37404-0.

Warriors Don't Cry by Mario Patillo Beals

I fe       I feel that this book will give students a good understanding of integration and racism in the United States during the 1950s. I also think it is important for students to be introduced to non-fiction/autobiographical pieces of literature and this book could serve that specific purpose. This book would work well in an English class as well as a history class. For English, the book can be paired with fictional accounts of racial segregation and tensions that existed in the 1950s. It would allow the students to compare the fiction to what actually happened. In a history class, it would be an enjoyable supplement to lessons about Brown vs. Board of Education, racial segregation, and the Civil Rights Movement.
                                Summary courtesy of  www.enotes.com

Beals, a journalist, says that only in 1994, nearly forty years later, can she write her story without bitterness. Reared in a middle-class, church-going family that valued education, Melba Pattillo loved Elvis, Johnny Mathis, clothes, and the Hit Parade. She volunteered to test the Supreme Court integration ruling, not out of political conviction, but on a rebellious teenager’s whim. Along with her eight companions, she lost her adolescent innocence when she was threatened with lynching, spit upon, and physically abused by white students, their parents, and the mob that gathered daily outside the high school. The harassment continued with telephone threats and gunshots at her home.

Ultimately President Eisenhower sent the 101st Airborne Division to compel Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus to obey federal law. The violent hatred unleashed by the citizens of Little Rock against the “niggers” has been recorded by news cameras. Less well known is the campaign of terror directed against the black community of Little Rock that led to the loss of jobs, businesses, and homes.

Beals reports the graphic details that make her story come alive. She notes that some white people did offer support, while some in the black community discouraged resistance to the status quo. Beyond the violence, the teenagers were devastated by their isolation from their peers and deprived of a normal school experience. Beal’s story is a forceful and healing record of history that shows how far Americans have come in forty years—and how much more remains to be done. 

Beals, Mario Patillo. (1994). Warriors Don’t Cry. New York: Pocket Books. 312 pp. ISBN: 0-67-186638-9.

First They Killed My Father by Loung Ung

This novel offers students a look at the genocide that took place in Cambodia. Unlike the Holocaust, the genocide in Cambodia is not as well known by middle school students. This gives the students a chance to learn about other genocides that have gone in the world’s history. It can also be used to introduce students to the memoir genre.

Summary Courtesy of http://www.harpercollins.com/author/authorExtra.aspx?isbn13=9780060856267&displayType=readingGuide

First They Killed My Father is a heart-wrenching and often difficult historical autobiography that recounts the brutality of war with vivid detail. A story of political oppression in Cambodia, it is all the more striking and intense as it is told from the perspective of a child, one who is thrust into situations that she doesn't understand, as she is only five years old when the terror begins. Loung Ung made many difficult journeys during her Cambodian youth, starting with being evacuated from her hometown of Phnom Penh. More meaningful were the journeys of self, which led her from a life as the child of a large and privileged family to that of an orphan and work camp laborer. From the deaths of her parents and sisters, we get a glimpse of the power that family relationships have in our lives. From the loss of economic status, the ways in which our social class can define our days is drawn in sharper relief. From her growing knowledge of the regime that has caused her to suffer, we learn of the vast gulf that often exists between a government's intentions and its actions, between words and deeds.

Ung, Loung. (2000). First They Killed My Father. New York: HarperCollins Publishers. 238 pp. ISBN: 0-06-093138-8.