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Books for Teens - High School
American Born Chinese
By Gene Luen Yang
$19.95
Graphic novelist Gene Yang follows three different plot lines about Chinese
youth trying to fit into American culture. This much-anticipated, affecting
story about growing up different is more than just the story of a
Chinese-American childhood; it's a fable for every kid born into a body that
doesn’t always fit in and the struggle to come to acceptance and peace
within one’s own identity.
Pact says: Very relevant, particularly to Asian adoptees, whether they are
adopted transracially or not.
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American Eyes
Edited by Lori Colson
$6.50
Short stories that burn with conflicts and choices that occur when two cultures come together. Books in Print says; "This intriguing collection of short stories presents answers as individual as each writer's voice. The search for identity sometimes leads back to Asian roots: in one selection, an adopted person journeys to her native Korea to find her biological parents. For others, the battle takes place on the home front."
Pact says: This book acknowledges racism for Asian youth and gives adopted Asians a context for seeing their own struggles toward identity in a larger context - opening the door to commonalities with non-adopted kids.
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Bowman's Store: A Journey to Myself
$9.95
Bruchac's childhood was full of secrets. He didn't know why he lived with his grandparents, when his parents' home was just up the road, or why his grandfather was defensive about his dark skin. His compelling memoir explains how he came to claim his Indian heritage despite his grandparents' wishes against it. An engrossing weave of Native American myth, personal journey and the history of a nation.
Pact says: This book is a great read.
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Brief Chapter in My Impossible Life, A
by Dana Reinhardt
$15.95
Simone has always felt different, her parents and her brother all look like each other and seem similar in their ways. Simone is a member of a middle class professional family, studying for her SATs, facing dilemma's about choosing to get drunk at parties, having sex with boyfriends and smoking dope. She also happens to be adopted. Her birth mother and adoptive parents ask her to consider meeting with and having contact for the first time ever, something that at 16 she isn't sure she wants. They push her and she eventually opens the gates to find that it really matters to her to find out her story and make a connection to Rivka, her Jewish (Hassidic) birth mother, who chooses this time to connect because she herself is facing a terminal illness.
Pact says: We love this book because it stirs up emotions and reads very true to middle and upper class teens who may be afraid to stir the emotional pot of search and reunion but in fact struggle to feel whole without about their birth family. A really good read.
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Buddha Boy
by Katje Lpka
$5.99
Jinsen gets teased because he wears weird clothes and act's "weird." This story of handling loss and transition, explores the reasons that teens sometimes get angry when they are really hurting inside. Jinsen parents have recently died and he has been adopted by his great aunt.It also explores loyalties to friends and family, teens inner lives and peer pressure. A very relevant read .
Pact says: This is a good book that teen boys in particular will find engrossing and relevant to their own process of trying to fit into the peer structure called high school.
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Caucasia
by Danzy Senna
$14.00
Explores the internal cultural tug of war of a multiracial family. When their family breaks up, Birdie's Black father and sister move to Brazil to find racial equality, while Birdie and her white mother take on new identities and move to a small New Hampshire town where Birdie passes for white. Birdie tries to fit in but struggles to find a way to make both her white and black heritage to count. Her search for her sister leads to a search for her own identity.
Pact says: This is a well written book about the struggle for racial identity that multiracial youth face, particularly highlighting the differences between growing up with a strong African American influence versus living in a predominantly white environment.
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Finding Miracles
by Julia Alvarez
$15.95
In spite of her family's openness, Milly Kaufman has never wanted to talk about her adoption. However, during ninth grade, Pablo Bolívar, a refugee from an unnamed Central American country, joins her class and immediately identifies her as someone who might have come from his family's hometown. The strength of this book lies in its description of adoption issues-Milly's feelings of abandonment and difference and her sister's fear that Milly's increased identification as Latina will destroy their close relationship.
Pact says: This book explores adoption and race in a way that will satisfy many teenagers who are thinking about these issues themselves.
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First Part Last
by Angela Johnson
$5.99
A Coretta Scott King award winner, this gem of a novel tells the story of a young father struggling to raise an infant. His parents are supportive but refuse to take over the child-care duties, so he struggles to balance parenting, school, and friends who don't comprehend his new role.
Pact says: An opportuntity for teens to concretely think about what it means to be a parent. "I think that the book was good. It talks about how a teenager's life would be about if they have unsafe sex and have a child. You can't go out and have fun all the time you would have to stay in the house and take care of your child."
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Mixed: An Anthology of Short Fiction on the Multiracial Experience
Edited by Chandra Prasad, Introduction by Rebecca Walker
$15.95
This anthology of short stories by and about people of mixed racial heritage
explores the complexities of multiracialism and multiculturalism. Each piece
is preceded by a short biographical sketch of the writer and concludes with
a commentary.
Pact says: This is an absorbing and thought-provoking collection of stories
that explore racial identity, alienation, and people often forced to choose
between races and cultures in a search for self-identity.
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Molly by Any Other Name
by Jean Davies Okimoto
$17.95
Seventeen-year-old Molly Fletcher has a chance to find her birth mother. Her adoptive parents are afraid everyone may get hurt if she searches. She needs to make them understand her need to learn about her roots.
Pact says: Arranged in three sections, the story relates Molly's search, her birth mother's reactions, and their eventual meeting. We love books that help kids explore their own feelings about adoption and search.
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One Thing That's True
by Cheryl Foggo
$5.95
Roxanne, 13, can't work out what's gone wrong.... Why are her parents acting so weird, especially with her older brother, Joel? When it turns out that Joel is adopted and that they had kept it secret, Joel runs away.
Pact says: Set in Canada, this first novel is told in a fresh, funny, contemporary voice that blends the suspenseful plot with Roxanne's coming-of-age struggles ("Are you, like, in love or something?"). "Race and class are part of the story. As one of the few Black families in the community, the Jacobs are always wary of prejudice. For the sake of all adopted children of color, we are so glad to have this book, which affirms cultural pride and individual value.
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Secret of Me, The
by Meg Kearney
$17.95
Being adopted is a fact of life for fourteen-year-old Lizzie: she and her older brother and sister are all adopted. Lizzie struggles with telling her boyfriend that she is adopted for fear he will think there is something wrong with her and she especially struggles with explaining to her family that she would like to know more about her birth parents. A tender, sometimes intense, look at the inner life of an adopted teen. Autobiographical.
Pact says: This book or poems expresses a range of emotions that will be familiar to all teens, and especially to those who have been adopted and are secretly wondering if their questions are "normal."
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Sula
by Toni Morrison
$13.00
As young girls Nel and Sula are best friends. Through their girlhood years they share everything--perceptions, judgments, yearnings, secrets, even crime--until Sula gets out. When she returns to her friend ten years later, Nel is a wife now, settled with her man and her three children. She belongs. Not Sula. As willing to feel pain as to give pain, she can never accommodate. Nel can't understand her any more, and the others never did. Sula scares them.
Pact says: Toni Morrison is a fantastic writer who depicts the black experience in a historically accurate but also emotionally accessible and honest way that acknowledges the realities of living with racism.
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Whale Talk
$5.50
There's bad news and good news about the Cutter High School swim team. The bad news is that they don't have a pool. The good news is that only one of them can swim anyway. A group of misfits brought together by T. J. Jones (the J is redundant) to find their places in a school that has no place for them. T. J. is convinced that earning the varsity letter jacket-unattainable for most, exclusive, revered, the symbol (as far as T. J. is concerned) of all that is screwed up at Cutter High-will prove that they have found their niche. He's right. He's also wrong. Still, it's always the quest that counts. And the bus on which the Mermen travel to swim meets soon becomes the cocoon inside which they gradually allow themselves to talk, to fit, to bloom. Chris Crutcher is in top form with a cast of characters-adults, children, and teenagers-fighting for dignity in a world where tragedy and comedy dance side by side, where a moment's inattention can bring lifelong heartache, and where true acceptance is the only prescription for what ails us.
Pact says: A readable story that rings true with genuine feeling and is propelled by exhilarating swimming action to an ending that is both cataclysmic and triumphant.
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What Are You?
by Pearl Gaskins
$19.95
Through the lively voices of 45 young people, ages 14-26, speaking of the shame and pride that fill their own lives, this book helps us begin to understand how it feels to grow up outside traditional racial boundaries. Their views about the challenges of coming-of-age when the complexities of race are part of each milestone are honest, to-the-point, inspirational, and remarkably insightful. Includes extensive resource lists.
Pact says: This collection of authentic writing conveys the emotional impact of being of mixed race in a time of identity politics. The more you read, the better you can see both the common issues they share and the unique human qualities of each writer.
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Where Are My Birth Parents?
by Karen Gravelle & Susan Fischer
$8.95
Includes why people search; telling your parents; the first contact; birth mothers; reunion and post reunion, and more. Keep this on your shelf even if your kids aren't asking so it will be available when they do.
Pact says: A sensitive guide to help adopted teens make informed decisions about if and how to search for their birth parents.
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Yell-oh Girls!
by Vickie Tam
$13.00
Emerging Voices Explore Culture, Identity, and Growing Up Asian American: Asian girls provide poignant, honest, real and suprising pieces addressing topics such as culture clash, body image, interracial dating, adoption and stereotypes. This collection includes 80 brief selections by budding teen writers. Nam presents the pieces according to theme and ends each section with a "Mentor Piece" by an established Asian-American writer on her own coming-of-age.
Pact says: Very important reading for Asian American girls and everyone who loves them!
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