The Best Books of 2024 (So Far) Explore All Lists

Open Mic: Riffs on Life Between Cultures in Ten Voices

Add to Wishlist

Open Mic: Riffs on Life Between Cultures in Ten Voices

eBook

$7.99 ~~$8.99~~ Save 11%

eBook
$7.99 ~~$8.99~~ Save 11% Current price is $7.99, Original price is $8.99. You Save 11%.

Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.

WANT A NOOK? Explore Now

Buy As Gift

Related collections and offers

Overview

Using humor as the common denominator, a multicultural cast of YA authors steps up to the mic to share stories touching on race.

Listen in as ten YA authors — some familiar, some new — use their own brand of humor to share their stories about growing up between cultures. Henry Choi Lee discovers that pretending to be a tai chi master or a sought-after wiz at math wins him friends for a while — until it comically backfires. A biracial girl is amused when her dad clears seats for his family on a crowded subway in under a minute flat, simply by sitting quietly in between two uptight white women. Edited by acclaimed author and speaker Mitali Perkins, this collection of fiction and nonfiction uses a mix of styles as diverse as their authors, from laugh-out-loud funny to wry, ironic, or poingnant, in prose, poetry, and comic form.

Product Details
About the Author

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780763667191
Publisher:	Candlewick Press
Publication date:	09/10/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Lexile:	810L (what's this?)
File size:	2 MB
Age Range:	12 - 17 Years

About the Author

Mitali Perkins is the author of numerous books for teens and younger readers, including Monsoon Summer and Secret Keeper. She was born in India and immigrated to the United States with her parents and two sisters when she was seven. Mitali Perkins lives with her husband just outside of Boston, Massachusetts.

“I am an accidental writer,” says G. Neri, author of When Paul Met Artie, Hello, I’m Johnny Cash and Ghetto Cowboy. “I never thought I would—or could—write stories for young people, but life steered me from being a filmmaker and digital media producer to kids books.” Neri has since written 10 books of prose and poetry and has won numerous awards, including a Coretta Scott King Honor and a Horace Mann Upstander Award.

“All my stories are inspired by real life. I think everyone has a story to tell and my job is to find those stories.” He is widely-traveled, having done school visits in 47 of the 50 states in America. He has also lived in Berlin, Montreal and Vancouver, traveled all over Europe and toured in Russia with his book, Ghetto Cowboy. But his craziest adventure was this past winter when he was given a grant from the National Science Foundation to go to Antarctica! “That was a trip of a lifetime,” he said. “I was able to go to some of the most remote places on earth and walk in the footsteps of Shackleton and Scott. Sometimes you have to go to great lengths to find stories.”

Normally, he lives in the jungles of the gold coast of Florida, where he swims with manatees and kayaks amongst alligators. He has a wife and daughter and a cat named Mexico that came out of the jungle during a hurricane. “I try to say yes to all new experiences, whether its eating jellyfish salad, skydiving, or writing a new kind of story he’s never attempted before. Life’s an adventure. Take chances and live it to the fullest.”

From the B&N Reads Blog

Page 1 of

Editorial Reviews

Ten writers and artists, including Varian Johnson, Naomi Shihab Nye, and Francisco X. Stork, offer brief works of fiction and nonfiction “about the between-cultures life.” As Perkins notes, “Humor has the power to break down barriers and draw us together across borders,” and the stories within bear that out, though few qualify as laugh-out-loud funny. Most offer a subtler, uncomfortable brand of situational humor: Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich calls her high school “an oasis of suburban racial integration”; when the drama club performed The Crucible, “the drama coach was sensitive enough to ask the black members of the troupe if we’d be uncomfortable playing the role of slave Tituba.” And in “Under Berlin,” written in verse, G. Neri describes a “game” that a biracial American family plays on the German subway: seeing how quickly two elderly white women will change seats after the black father sits between them. The edgy joke-flirting between a Jewish violinist and Asian comedian in Cherry Cheva’s “Talent Show” and the hero of David Yoo’s “Becoming Henry Lee,” who comically embraces Asian stereotypes in an effort to fit in, will leave readers thinking about the ways that humor can be a survival tool in a world that tends to put people in boxes. Ages 12–up. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

[W]ill leave readers thinking about the ways that humor can be a survival tool in a world that tends to put people in boxes.
—Publishers Weekly

[A] noteworthy anthology, which robustly proves Perkins’s assertion that “funny is powerful.”
—The Horn Book

The stories are varied in format ... [b]ut all invite sometimes rueful smiles or chuckles of recognition. And all demonstrate that in the specific we find the universal, and that borders are meant to be breached.
—Booklist

Teachers will find some powerful material here about how the young can become discomfited and find solace in their multifaceted cultural communities. ... Purchase where schools seek useful pieces about YAs who identify with multiple cultures.
—School Library Journal

It’s often said that good literature for young people can act as a mirror to one’s own experiences and a window into others’ — this anthology fills the bill, providing an accessible assessment of contemporary race relations, while also being as honest, refreshing, and frank as the titular open mic suggests.
—Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

Perkins organizes the stories wisely in this collection that hopes to put a humorous spin on a topical, deeply uncomfortable subject... These tales in particular dance between humor and heartache, ending on notes of triumph as we look toward a hopeful future.
—VOYA

From the Publisher

09/01/2013
Gr 6–10—More likely to be used with teens pedagogically than recreationally, this collection of short tales in a variety of genres explores the experiences of young people bridging cultures. Perkins's contribution is a memoir about the Guy Game she and her two older sisters played in their secret pursuit of points earned by being asked out, complimented, or kissed by boys. She tells about when a boy the color of deli turkey takes this chocolate-hued Indian girl on a church trip to an amusement park for a memorable three-point experience. Other highlights include Gene Yang's comic about why he boycotted a Hollywood version of the Avatar narratives that celebrate Asian culture in other formats but cast only white actors in this incarnation. A poem tells a wryly humorous story of unsettling white Berliners with a biracial family while another story focuses on a Korean kid who eschews Asian stereotypes until it becomes expedient to experiment with a reputation for math and martial-arts skills for a rung or two on the social ladder. Teachers will find some powerful material here about how the young can become discomfited and find solace in their multifaceted cultural communities. Francisco X. Stork relates unexpected acceptance and support for a gay Latino teen, while in other selections, characters proudly wave a Black Geek flag or grieve the loss of an Arab father who reached out with both hands to overcome prejudices. Purchase where schools seek useful pieces about YAs who identify with multiple cultures.—Suzanne Gordon, Lanier High School, Sugar Hill, GA

School Library Journal

Perkins’s collection of short pieces—some fiction, one poem, and some nonfiction—is aimed at young adults. Each narrator takes on the voice of one or more authors, each of whom tells a story about growing up in a mainstream culture in which he or she was different from everyone else. The cultural backgrounds of some of the storytellers are obvious from the first words of the narrators. Others are not as obvious. The narrators and their presentation styles are as diverse as the characters in the stories. The authors of the stories are listed at the end of the narration; however, the list doesn’t identify the narrators. J .E.M. © AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine

DECEMBER 2013 - AudioFile

Perkins’s collection of short pieces—some fiction, one poem, and some nonfiction—is aimed at young adults. Each narrator takes on the voice of one or more authors, each of whom tells a story about growing up in a mainstream culture in which he or she was different from everyone else. The cultural backgrounds of some of the storytellers are obvious from the first words of the narrators. Others are not as obvious. The narrators and their presentation styles are as diverse as the characters in the stories. The authors of the stories are listed at the end of the narration; however, the list doesn’t identify the narrators. J .E.M. © AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine

DECEMBER 2013 - AudioFile

2013-08-15
First the good news: Half the pieces in this uneven anthology are standouts. The Korean-American teen in David Yoo's story makes an unwanted, undeserved Asian "model minority" label work for him, acquiring unexpected life skills in the process. The sole black student at a Vermont boarding school is unsettled when black twin sisters also enroll in Varian Johnson's nuanced tale. Gene Luen Yang's graphic anecdote demonstrates how standing up for one's beliefs can yield rewards beyond self-esteem. Luis' siblings give him permission and support to transcend cultural constraints and be himself in Francisco X. Stork's gentle tale. Naomi Shihab Nye's wistful, bittersweet poem "Lexicon" looks at the power of words to unite or separate, exemplified by her Palestinian father and his fading hopes for peace. The remaining pieces are significantly weaker. Perkins salutes the value of lightening up in her introduction: "Conversations about race can be so serious, right? People get all tense or touchy." She offers ground rules: Good humor pokes fun at the powerful, not the weak; builds affection for the "other"; and is usually self-deprecatory. Yet too few pieces here reflect those rules or appear to have been conceived as humor. Undisclosed selection criteria, author bios that don't always speak to identity, and weak and dated content are problematic. The sweeping racial and cultural judgments and hostile--occasionally mean-spirited--tones of several pieces disappoint; angry venting may be justified and therapeutic, but it's seldom funny. Leaves readers with more questions than answers. (Anthology. 12 & up)

Kirkus Reviews

Related collections and offers

Overview

Product Details

About the Author

Related Subjects

Customer Reviews