After moving to an affluent suburb of Denver in 1975, ninth-grader Tiphanie, the only Black girl in her new high school, feels out of place until she befriends another outsider--Jackie Sue, whose "trailer trash" home life makes Tiphanie's problems seem like a walk in the park. In October 1975, while most teens are worried about their Happy Days Halloween costumes, Tiphanie Jayne Baker has bigger problems. Her parents have just decided to uproot the family to the ritzy suburb of Brent Hills, Colorado, and now she's the only Black girl at a high school full of Barbies. But the longer Tiphanie stays in her new neighborhood, the more her ties to her old community start to fray. Now that nowhere feels like home, exactly where does she belong?
Patrice Williams was happy living in Georgia with her grandmother, who called her "cocoa grandbaby." Then her mother lured her to Chicago and ended up in jail. Now Patrice lives with her Auntie Mae, and her new nickname is "Puffy" – thanks to her giant poof of hair. But Patrice's hair isn't the only reason she sticks out: she cares about her grades and strives for the best. That's why Monty Freeman, another eighth grader who lives in the building, asks Patrice to tutor his little brother. Even though Monty's friends make Patrice uneasy, Monty himself is friendly, confident, and surprisingly smart. When he becomes her guardian angel, Patrice begins to think something stronger than friendship might be growing between them. Still, nothing will stop her from applying for a scholarship at prestigious Dogwood Academy – her ticket out of the project and a school populated by gangs and drug runners. In her debut novel, Traci L. Jones presents a girl with grit she never knew she had, and a boy so inspired by her that he begins to take pride in his own abilities. Standing Against the Wind is a 2007 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year and the winner of the 2007 Coretta Scott King - John Steptoe New Talent Award.
After the death of her mother, seventh-grader Serena finds herself facing the day-to-day challenges of caring for herself and her younger brother, Henry, all while attempting to lead a normal pre-teen life. Seventh-grader Serena Shaw is trying to keep up at school while rehearsing for the lead role in the spring musical and dealing with a father so "blue" he is nearly catatonic. With the aid of a not-so-secret admirer, as well as a growing sense of self-confidence, she faces the challenges of caring for herself and her ball-of-charm younger brother—all while attempting to lead the life of a normal pre-teen. Readers will be drawn into this convincing portrait of a vivacious young person who is on a path to discovering that taking on responsibility sometimes means finding the best way to ask for help.
After moving to an affluent suburb of Denver in 1975, ninth-grader Tiphanie, the only Black girl in her new high school, feels out of place until she befriends another outsider--Jackie Sue, whose "trailer trash" home life makes Tiphanie's problems seem like a walk in the park. In October 1975, while most teens are worried about their Happy Days Halloween costumes, Tiphanie Jayne Baker has bigger problems. Her parents have just decided to uproot the family to the ritzy suburb of Brent Hills, Colorado, and now she's the only Black girl at a high school full of Barbies. But the longer Tiphanie stays in her new neighborhood, the more her ties to her old community start to fray. Now that nowhere feels like home, exactly where does she belong?
In this book, Traci Parker examines the movement to racially integrate white-collar work and consumption in American department stores, and broadens our understanding of historical transformations in African American class and labor formation. Built on the goals, organization, and momentum of earlier struggles for justice, the department store movement channeled the power of store workers and consumers to promote black freedom in the mid-twentieth century. Sponsoring lunch counter sit-ins and protests in the 1950s and 1960s, and challenging discrimination in the courts in the 1970s, this movement ended in the early 1980s with the conclusion of the Sears, Roebuck, and Co. affirmative action cases and the transformation and consolidation of American department stores. In documenting the experiences of African American workers and consumers during this era, Parker highlights the department store as a key site for the inception of a modern black middle class, and demonstrates the ways that both work and consumption were battlegrounds for civil rights.
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