One Crazy Summer

One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia, 218 pages

Eleven-year-old Delphine is a responsible, no-nonsense girl, which should come in handy as she and her two younger sisters travel across the country to visit the mother they haven't seen in seven years. The reunion doesn't bode well, as their mother seems much more interested in doing her own thing than in getting to know her daughters. Delphine and her sisters soon learn that their mother is deeply involved with the Black Panthers, making Delphine worry about their safety while also making her deeply curious about her mother.

This outstanding middle-grade novel won the Coretta Scott King Award in 2011, and there's no wonder why. This book illustrates the Black Panther movement in a way that is rarely discussed in schools, in part because it focuses on the kids that saw the movement taking shape. It's a great book, and I'll be recommending it to everyone I meet.

There There

There There by Tommy Orange, 290 pages.
Through the efforts of a lot of people the Big Oakland Powwow is coming. The characters in Orange's first novel, interrelated in a bunch of different ways, all have their own reasons for heading to A's stadium to participate in this event. Jacquie Red Feather and her younger sister, Viola Victoria Bear Shield, are at the nexus of the novel, and we follow their lives, and the lives of their friends and family, back and forward to see where they have been and where they are going.
Orvil Red Feather and his brothers Loother and Lony live with their grandmother's sister and learn about Native culture from Youtube videos. Tony Loneman struggles with the way people perceive his off-kilter features and the actions he takes. Blue and Edwin both have worked hard to get the Powwow off the ground and they both make unexpected connections there.
A really good book with a few minor flaws; for instance I don't think that 3D printed guns without metal parts are currently capable of semi-auto fire.The book flows along nicely, but the cast of characters in this engaging novel are the best part.

There there, by Tommy Orange

The “there there” in the title is not a comforting “There, there” but a quote from Gertrude Stein who famously said, of her hometown Oakland, “There is no there there.”  This isn’t, as I once assumed, an insult to the city, but means that what she remembers is gone.  Tommy Orange’s first novel is set in Oakland, where the author also was raised.  He is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma.  The reader is introduced to the fairly large cast characters in short vignettes.  Each person has ties, close or distant, to his or her Native-American past.  Through these various viewpoints, Orange portrays the situation of the “urban Indian,” which is largely unknown outside of their communities.  One character is a young man with fetal alcohol syndrome who is painfully aware of his limitations and the facial characteristics that mark him as different.  One is a grandmother raising her alcoholic daughter’s three sons.  Another has fallen in with a bad crowd.  Many are related in ways they don’t know and all will come together in a climactic scene at the Big Oakland Powwow.  The book owes a debt to Sherman Alexie, which the author acknowledges, but the fresh voice is his own.  294 pp.

Empire State: A Love Story (Or Not)

Empire State: A Love Story (Or Not) by Jason Shiga, 144 pages.

Jimmy lives n Oakland, at home with his mother. He works at the library and he hangs out with his friend Sara. When she decides that she wants more out of life and moves to New York, Jimmy realizes that he may have been in love with her. He writes her a letter and jumps on a bus heading to New York. The bus trip is funny, and the time in New York is bittersweet. This is a different side to Jason  Shiga from the one seen in Demon or in Bookhunter. A nice read.