Theme+-+Racism

** RACISM THEME **
 Fuqua, Jonathon Scott: //Darby// Marlboro, American Deep South, 1960s. A white girl observes relationships in the town as the Black Civil Rights movement takes hold.

Collier, Kristi: //Jericho// //Walls// American Deep South, 1957. A white girl moves into town and, shockingly, befriends a black boy. Winner of various minor awards.

Rai, Bali: //the Last Taboo// Contemporary England. An Indian girl falls in love with a black boy. Not suitable for younger readers, according to the publisher.

Rai, Bali: //What’s Your Problem?// Contemporary England. Quick reader about the only Asian boy in an English village.

Brown, Eric: //British Front// Science Fiction. Two teenagers time-travel to 2055 and an ethnically-cleansed UK. Quick reader.

Cheng, Christopher W.: //My Australian Story: New Gold Mountain// A Chinese miner’s experience on the Australian goldfields in 1860.

Fox, Paula: //The Slave Dancer// A boy is press-ganged and forced to help transport slaves from Africa to America in the 1840s. Newbery Medal winner.

Godden, Rumer: //The Diddakoi// c1960s England. An old-fashioned but good story about the bullying faced by a gypsey girl. Whitbread Children’s Award winner.

Taylor, Mildred D.: //Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry// First book of a series, about prejudice faced by a black farming family in dustbowl America during the Great Depression. Newbery Medal winner.

Hendry, Frances Mary: //Chains// England, 1794. Juliet discovers the truth about her father and her comfortable lifestyle: it’s built on the slave trade. Award-winning author.

Hesse, Karen: //Witness// Vermont, USA, 1924. The Ku Klux Klan moves into a small town. Newbery Medal winner.

Moloney, James: //Dougy// Contemporary Australia. An Aboriginal girl is picked for the state athletics championships, and racial tension comes to a head.

Armistead, John: //The $66 Summer// Alabama, 1955. Three friends, two black and one white, try to solve the mystery of a father’s disappearance.

Woodson, Jacqueline: //I Hadn’t Meant to Tell You This// Lena (white) and Marie (black) become friends, partly because both have lost their mothers. But Lena has a terrifying secret…

Tlali, Miriam: //Soweto// //Stories// Short stories from apartheid-era South Africa. Aimed at adult readers.

Paulsen, Gary: //Sarny// c1900 America. Sarny runs away from the slave plantation, hoping to find freedom in the northern States.

Thon, Melanie Rae: //Meteors in August// Roughly contemporary America. Lizzie’s sister ran away with an Indian boy, and the repercussions are still being felt.

Lester, Julius: //Day of Tears// Money is needed, so the slaves on a failing plantation are auctioned. Different voices describe the day. Coretta Scott King Award winner.

Nagelkerke, Bill: //My Story: Sitting on the Fence// 1980s NZ. One family’s experience of the Springbok Tour and the protests against it.

Blackman, Malorie: //Noughts and Crosses// Noughts are nothing, Crosses are the bosses. A futuristic society, not unlike ours, and a Romeo and Juliet scenario.

Blackman, Malorie: Unheard voices

Taylor, Theodore: //The Cay// Unforgettable story of a white boy forced to rely on a black man when they are shipwrecked.

Zephaniah, Benjamin: //Refugee Boy//

Hoffman, Mary & Caroline Binch: //Amazing Grace//

Ross, Stewart: //Greed, seeds & slavery//

Riordan, James: //Rebel cargo//

Darke, Malorie: //The first of midnight//

Hatt, Christine: //Slavery: from Africa to the Americas//

Williams, S I: //Jupiter Williams// Griffin, John Howard: //Black like me// In the Deep South of the 1950s, journalist John Howard Griffin decided to cross the color line. Using medication that darkened his skin to deep brown, he exchanged his privileged life as a Southern white man for the disenfranchised world of an unemployed black man. His audacious, still chillingly relevant eyewitness history is a work about race and humanity-that in this new millennium still has something important to say to every American.  Kidd, Sue Monk: //The secret life of bees// Set around the time of the Civil Rights Act it touches on the rights black women and the associated political unrest.

Curtis, Chris Paul: //The Watsons Go to Birmingham, 1963// The ordinary interactions and everyday routines of the Watsons, an African American family living in Flint, Michigan, are drastically changed after they go to visit Grandma in Alabama in the summer of 1963.

..and these two, also by Chris Curtis, which are not specific to the civil rights movement but deal with African-Americans in earlier times...

// Bud, Not Buddy // (won the Newbery and the Coretta Scott King awards) Ten-year-old Bud, a motherless boy living in Flint, Michigan, during the Great Depression, escapes a bad foster home and sets out in search of the man he believes to be his father--the renowned bandleader, H.E. Calloway of Grand Rapids.

Nelson, Vaunda Micheaux: //Beyond Mayfield// In 1961 the children of Mayfield are concerned with air-raid drills and fallout shelters, but the civil rights movement becomes real when a neighbour joins the Freedom Riders.

Murphy, Rita: //Black Angels// The summer of 1961 brings change to eleven year old Celli and her town of Mystic, Georgia, when her beloved Sophie becomes involved in the Civil Rights Movement and Celli learns a secret about the father who left her and her family long ago.

** SHORT STORIES **  Skin deep by Tony Bradman Somehow tenderness survives edited by Hazel Rochman Examples are: Life unbroken by Henry Scott Holland;

Epitaph on a friend by Robert Burns

The thoughts of Nanushka by Nan Witcomb.

Out of bounds by Beverley Naidoo

Half-caste and other poems by John Agard.
 * POEMS **