The Good Braider
Description
The Good Braider was selected as the Bank Street College of Education Best Book of the Year and a Book of Outstanding Merit.
In spare free verse laced with unforgettable images, Viola's strikingly original voice sings out the story of her family's journey from war-torn Sudan, to Cairo, and finally to Portland, Maine. Here, in the sometimes too close embrace of the local Southern Sudanese Community, she dreams of South Sudan while she tries to navigate the strange world of America--a world where a girl can wear a short skirt, get a tattoo, or even date a boy; a world that puts her into sharp conflict with her traditional mother who, like Viola, is struggling to braid together the strands of a displaced life. Terry Farish's haunting novel is not only a riveting story of escape and survival, but the universal tale of a young immigrant's struggle to build a life on the cusp of two cultures.
The author of The Good Braider has donated this book to the Worldreader program.
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Person
As a child I had many secret loves and one was a book I tried to hide behind the stacks at my town library so it would always be there for me. As an adult, one of my greatest loves is also a book, The Old Man and the Sea. I remember when I first read it, in one lit corner of my house, my child asleep, reading for the first time Hemingway's simple acts of human grace in that story. I also really like multicultural literature (see my blog at The Elephant Rag). One of my favorite stories I mention in The Elephant Rag is from Jamaica which offers a slang phrase for telling stories - "pop tory a me ears." I continue to make discoveries under a single light in a quiet house. I share many of these stories in the literacy program I coordinate for the NH Humanities Council, Connections.