Review by New York Times Review
SUGAR RUN, by Mesha Maren. (Algonquin, $26.95.) An ex-convict returns to her Appalachian roots in this debut novel. The literary lineages here are hard-boiled fiction and film noir - but by exploring place, connection and redemption in the face of the justice system, Maren creates bold takes on those venerable genres. ANNE FRANK'S DIARY: The Graphic Adaptation, adapted by Ari Folman. Illustrated by David Polonsky. (Pantheon, $24.95.) By turning the famous diary of a girl hiding from the Nazis into a graphic novel, Folman and Polonsky bring out its wit and humor in whimsical illustrations capturing Anne's rich imaginative life. REVOLUTION SUNDAY, by Wendy Guerra. Translated by Achy Obejas. (Melville House, paper, $16.99.) This Cuban novel, about a poet facing political and personal questions amid the loosening grip of socialism, plays with expectations; as often as Guerra gives a concrete description of Havana, she gives one that dances and evades. GHOST WALL, by Sarah Moss. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $22.) This compact, riveting novel, about a 17-year-old working-class girl forced by her parents to join a re-enactment of Iron Age Britain, asks us to question our complicity in violence, particularly against women. MY SISTER, THE SERIAL KILLER, by Oyinkan Braithwaite. (Doubleday, $22.95.) Murders litter this debut novel by a young Nigerian writer, but the book is less about crime than about the complexities of sibling bonds, as well as the way two sisters manage to survive in a corrupt city that suffocates women at every turn. THE BREAKTHROUGH: Immunotherapy and the Race to Cure Cancer, by Charles Graeber. (Twelve, $28.) Training the body's immune system to fight disease now offers the most promising developments in the effort to battle cancer. Graeber recounts the treatment's 19th-century origins and provides a panoramic view of the work being done today to make it effective. TODDLER-HUNTING: And Other Stories, by Taeko Kono. Translated by Lucy North, with an additional translation by Lucy Lower. (New Directions, paper, $16.95.) As nonchalantly as some authors might describe a character's hair, Kono details her characters' taboo desires. First published in the '60s, these stories all retain interest. WE ARE DISPLACED: My Journey and Stories From Refugee Girls Around the World, by Malala Yousafzai. (Little, Brown, $18.99; ages 12 and up.) The world's youngest Nobel laureate gathers stirring stories of displacement from nine other girls. A THOUSAND SISTERS: The Heroic Airwomen of the Soviet Union in World War II, by Elizabeth Wein. (Balzer + Bray, $19.99; ages 13 and up.) The powerful tale of the all-female Soviet air regiments who flew 24,000 missions to help defeat the Nazis. The full reviews of these and other recent books are on the web: nytimes.com/books
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [January 31, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review
Yousafzai recounts her own refugee journey as well as those of girls and women from political hot spots and war-torn countries, all refugees seeking a safe place to call home. Separated from family members and threatened by attack, they forge on in their struggle to survive. Yousafzai starts with her own journey. Acknowledging that, while displaced, she is not a refugee, she goes on to tell the stories of eight girls and two women, one a volunteer with World Church Services in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and the other a woman returning to Uganda, having fled to Canada with her family when she was two years old. Yousafzai starts with a preface to each story, describing how she met each person, and then tells their story in first person, lending immediacy to each narrative and capturing each voice. Her writing is lucid and accessible and will attract a range of readers. The stories are heart-wrenching, compelling, and inspirational and, one hopes, will motivate readers to become involved locally. Epilogue and back matter unavailable for preview.--Donna Scanlon Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Nobel Peace Prize winner Yousafzai (I Am Malala), who famously survived being shot by Taliban soldiers as a teen in 2012, is a passionate activist for girls' right to education. Yet, in this profound volume, she sidesteps those aspects of her life to illuminate another experience: displacement-beginning with her family's forced 2009 evacuation of their Pakistani hometown in response to escalating Taliban violence. Comprising the bulk of the book are urgent, articulate firstperson stories from displaced or refugee young women whom Yousafzai has encountered in her travels, whose birthplaces include Colombia, Guatemala, Syria, and Yemen. Their often raw testaments encompass witnessing atrocities (a Congolese native whose family fled to Zambia watched a vigilante mob attack her mother) and harrowing escapes (as the military burns their Myanmar village, a Rohingya Muslim family flees by foot to begin an arduous journey to Bangladesh). The contributors' strength, resilience, and hope in the face of trauma is astounding, and their stories' underlying message about the heartbreaking loss of their former lives and homelands (and the resulting "tangle of emotions that comes with leaving behind everything you know") is profoundly moving. Ages 14-up. (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 7 Up--As a displaced person and refugee, Yousafzai provides a knowledgeable introduction to the international refugee and immigration crisis through both her own experience and through the stories of the girls and young women she chronicles in this timely work. Refugees seeking freedom from physical, emotional, and sexual terror, trauma, and danger describe their lives before, during, and after their escapes as they seek a better life for themselves and their families. Descriptions of lives in detention and in refugee camps are of particular interest for those following the crisis on our own Southern border. Another focus of the work is that of the education of girls. Yousafzai reads her own prologue, and two dynamic narrators, Neela Vaswani and Deepti Gupta, perform stories of young women from Myanmar, the Congo, Iraq, Syria, and Colombia. While geared to mature middle and high school level listeners, this is an audiobook that could be listened to and discussed in a guided family or school setting. VERDICT Anyone who wants to learn more about immigration and refugees will benefit from this telling.--Ann Brownson, formerly with Eastern Illinois University, Charleston, IL
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Horn Book Review
Nobel Peace Prizewinner Yousafzai re-frames her experience as one of displacement and retells stories of refugee girls from diverse geographical locations. Particularly poignant are stories of families whose members chose different migratory paths and the long-term consequences of those choices. Appended bios of the featured refugees and a photo insert add depth to the reading experience. (c) Copyright 2019. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
In this uplifting work Yousafzai shares the survival stories of female refugees from around the world. Before she was a Nobel Peace Prize winner, Yousafzai was displaced. When she was just 11-years-old, the Taliban forced Yousafzai and her family to leave their idyllic home in the Swat Valley and join the ranks of Pakistan's Internally Displaced Persons. Yousafzai recounts the agony of leaving behind her books, friends, and pet chickens and the disappointment of interrupted schooling. She also vividly describes the horror of seeing schools reduced to rubble as a result of bombings, an experience that both politicized her and forced her family into exile in England. The author devotes only about a quarter of the book to her own story, the remainder is a collection of oral histories from displaced women and girls from countries ranging from Yemen to Colombia to the Democratic Republic of Congo. Each refugee's tale of survival is equal parts devastating and inspiring, and the narrators do not shy away from the complex, contradictory experiences of fleeing a homeland. The narratives are filled with emotionally specific descriptive details that render each voice powerful and unique. In the prologue, Yousafzai specifically states that her purpose is to transform refugees from nameless, faceless statistics into who they really are: humans whose identities are more than just their displaced status. A poignant, fascinating, and relevant read. (author's note, background information, biographies) (Nonfiction. 13-adult) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
