When Clouds Touch Us by Thanhha Lai

Eleven-year-old Ha lives with her mother and her brothers Quang and Khoi in Alabama. They fled their home country of Vietnam, without her father who was missing in action, something her mother won't talk about. Ha's middle brother, Vu Lee lives in San Francisco.

Ha is in grade six and has a best friend, Pam who wants to celebrate their birthdays together. She decides they will celebrate this on Ha's birth date with a special party.

At a family meeting, Ha's mother announces that she wants to move the family to Texas where Vietnamese seem to have more opportunities. Ha's mother wants this because she hopes this will take some of the responsibility away from Ha's older brother Quang who is working as a mechanic and so that Khoi can study to become an animal doctor. She also doesn't like that Pam's mother pays for Ha when the two girls do things together.

A first family vote has the three children Quang, Khoi and Ha vote to stay in Alabama. But a second vote sees Khoi side with their mother, creating a tie. Ha knows that her mother is scheming and will bring Vu Lee into the vote. He does return home and the family decides to move to Texas. They begin packing but Ha's mother delays their travel to Texas so Ha can have her day-of-birth party with Pam. After the party and roller skating, Ha, her mother and Khoi leave. 

In her new school in Texas, no one remembers Ha's name and she finds herself the only Asian student. Her mother works in a radio factory, while Vu Lee works in a bakery as well as at a second job finishing wood. They live in a pay-by-week rental. Eventually, Ha and her family move into an apartment. They have no furniture or beds. Starting over is hard, and for Ha this is just the beginning of many more changes.

Discussion

Thanhha Lai has crafted a realistic portrayal of a Vietnamese family's struggles to settle in 1977 America. The Vietnam War, which the Americans and South Vietnamese lost, has only been over for two years. Initially Ha's family, having fled Vietnam without her father, had settled in Alabama. However, Ha's mother has heard there is a larger Vietnamese community in Texas along with better job opportunities. In the beginning, life seems no better for Ha in Texas.

When the family moves into their first apartment they have very little - five boxes and four pillowcases. But her mother tells them to "...lengthen your gaze, toward where land meets cloud."  All Ha wants though, is an end to refugee living. She is in her third Grade Six class in the past month and she misses evenings with her mother who works late. Added to this, Ha has her first menstrual period at school despite some help by her teacher, she is left waiting on a bench for over two hours for her bus. 

Although she meets a few friend, Diggy, who is Puerto Rican, she knows this friendship will likely not survive their eventual move to a house. When Ha tells her mother about things that happen at school, her mother  panics, trying to protect her only daughter by having Ha presented at a Buddhist temple where she is scrutinized by Vietnamese mothers looking for prospective wives for their sons. Because her mother works long hours, Ha takes to signing school forms and her report card.

Ha also has to endure an insensitive class discussion of the My Lai Massacre which she doesn't know about because she was three-years-old when it happened in 1968. Charlie Company, part of the American Division's 11th Infantry Brigade, numbering less than one hundred men, was ordered to search for Viet Cong guerillas in nearby Son My. However, when they searched the village, they found no guerillas, only women, children and elderly men. Lieutenant William Calley, after ordering the villagers rounded up, gave the order to shoot them. The soldiers also raped a number of women. The massacre was only stopped by Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson who placed his helicopter between the soldiers and the fleeing villagers. They flew many wounded villagers to a medical hospital for care. Five hundred and four people were killed, including one hundred eighty-two women, seventeen of whom were pregnant. The U.S. military attempted a cover-up but the war crime was exposed when Rod Ridenhour, a soldier in the 11th Brigade gave an interview to an investigative reporter after the military refused to act.

When Ha confronts her mother about this event, she tells Ha that she has invested in her children rather than being angry. 

"Instead I chose you children,

vowing to educate

your minds and hearts

so you would know the result

of your every action.

Choices to no

pick up a gun,

glorify a leader,

hide behind commands,

claim honor, blame others.

You would then 

begin to create

a different history." 

Ha's mother advises,
"Contemplate on yourself

until you're a solid anchor,

then ensure kindness to family

then society then earth."

Beautiful words, that ring true for everyone.

The lack of understanding between Vietnamese and American culture reaches a crisis point when Ha's mother is accused of abuse, after Ha returns to school having been ill. Treated at home by her mother, Ha has a leaf imprint on her back which is mistaken for the marks of a beating. Ha's mother stands up to school officials and with the help of a Vietnamese doctor they are exonerated.

When Clouds Touch ends on a much happier note: with the help of her brothers and her own contribution, Ha's family is able to buy a home. The clouds on the horizon have dived down to touch Ha and her family. And Ha discovers that her mother is their true anchor, working to provide a home that they can return to, one that replaces what was lost from war. Even more so, her mother refuses Ha's offer to study nearby, to be with her mother. But Ha's mother tells her,
"I relinquish you

to a world

unknown to me."

In some ways all mothers do so, but even more so, the refugee mother.

When Clouds Touch Us is a fitting sequel to Inside Out & Back Again which was written over a decade ago..

Book Details:

When Clouds Touch Us by Thanhha Lai

New York: Harper Collins Children's Books    2023

244 pp.

March by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell

This graphic novel is the first in a series telling the story of civil rights leader and former Democratic Congressman, John Robert Lewis, one of the "Big Six" leaders who organized the March on Washington in 1963. March opens in the present and then flashes back to Lewis' humble beginnings on his family's farm in Alabama.

John Lewis wakes up the morning of January 20, 2009 - the beginning of a very special day. Lewis shows up at the Cannon House Office Building where he meets Rosa Parks. Suddenly three people enter his office, a lady with her two sons, Jacob and Esau. She has brought them to see Congressman John Lewis' office. She wants them to "know how far we've come..."

As he points out some of the key photographs in the picture, one of the boys asks him why he has so many chickens in his office. This triggers Lewis' memory of growing up and he begins to tell them his story. He starts with when it was his responsibility to care for his family's chickens. They lived on 110 acres of land in Pike County, Alabama that his father bought in 1940 for three hundred dollars. Lewis knew all the different kinds of chickens on their farm and even named some of them. He loved them so much, he would conduct funerals for them when they died, and he would deliver a eulogy. He often protested his parents treatment of the chickens and wouldn't be at family chicken dinners. 

John's eyes were opened when he was taken on a trip north by his uncle, Otis Carter.  Otis lived in Dothan, where he was a teacher and school principal. The trip north meant no stopping at restaurants because there was no where for them to eat as black people. Uncle Otis knew which gas stations to stop at, offering colored washrooms. Alabama, Tennessee and Kentucky were the states they had to be careful in. Once they got to Ohio, they felt safer. In Buffalo, New York, Lewis was thrilled; the city was busy and his uncle's home had white people living side by side with them. Lewis was able to visit a department store. He saw that life was different and after that trip he was different.

When Lewis started riding the bus to school that fall he could see once again how different life was for black Americans. Roads into "colored" communities were not paved until whites had to drive through them. The books and buses in Black schools were hand-me-downs. White schools were nice with playground equipment while the colored schools were cinder block with a dirt field to play in. Lewis also noticed the people working in the fields or on the prison gangs were usually blacks too. But sometimes, Lewis' family needed help on the farm. His father wanted him to stay home and help out but Lewis would hide. 

Then in 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the doctrine of "separate but equal" upon which segregation was based, was ruled unconstitutional. Lewis was certain things would change, that he would be going to an integrated school with a nice bus. Lewis noticed that the ministers at church never mentioned the injustices that were happening.

In 1955, he heard a young preacher out of Atlanta, Georgia on the radio. His name was Martin Luther King Jr. and he preached the social Gospel. That spring another ruling by the Supreme Court, which struck down segregation, saw segregationists insist they would defy the law. In August, the body of fourteen-year-old Emmett Till, a black boy visiting Money, Mississippi was pulled from the Tallahatchie River.  He had been forcibly taken from his relatives' home after calling a white woman, "baby". Despite the testimony of a black farmer who witnessed what really happened, the white men were acquitted. 

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks refused to sit at the back of the bus and was arrested. Martin Luther King led a boycott of the buses in Montgomery, Alabama. Lewis was inspired by King and so five days before his sixteenth birthday, he preached his first sermon.

The woman in his office wants to know how he managed to attend college. He tells her that his mother helped him by encouraging him to apply to the American Baptist Theological Seminary, a school for Black men and women. He was accepted Lewis got a job washing dishes and serving food. But he wanted to do more for Black rights.

Lewis wanted to attend Troy State, which was closer to his parents' home, but Black students weren't accepted. He applied as a transfer student but when he never heard back he wrote to Martin Luther King Jr. He also began communicating with Rev. Ralph Abernathy and a lawyer, Fred Gray who represented Rosa Parks.

In the spring of 1958, Lewis met up with Fred Gray and Martin Luther King Jr. After questioning him, they told Lewis that if he wanted to attend Troy, he would have to sue both the State of Alabama and the Board of Education. Because he wasn't old enough, Lewis would need the permission of his parents. They also pointed out that he and his parents would most likely face serious repercussions. Ultimately, Lewis' parents decided against giving him their permission to proceed.

Lewis is interrupted in telling his story and told he must leave to meet Rosa Parks, but is also told he has a message from Jim Lawson. In 1958, Jim Lawson ran a series of workshops on non-violent action and passive resistance. After this, Lewis and others, as part of the Nashville Student Movement began protesting segregation at department store lunch counters. It was the beginning for Lewis, of real action, nonviolent protest to end segregation in Nashville and across America.

Discussion

March is the first of three comic books that tell the story of John Robert Lewis, a congressman and civil rights leader. Lewis, who was born near Troy, Alabama, was the son of sharecroppers and by his own admission grew up poor. Most of the area where he lived and grew up had few white people, yet everything was segregated. He and his siblings were denied the use of the local public library, being told it was for whites only. His trip north to Buffalo, New York opened Lewis's eyes to the extent of segregation and its impact on himself and his family. He saw that things could be profoundly different and he wanted to change America, supposedly founded on the belief that "all men are created equal" and yet not in practice.

Lewis had to counter not only white America and its segregationist practices, but the views of the older Black generation exemplified by Thurgood Marshall and local Black ministers who seemed to want to maintain the status quo. And yet, as is told in March, Lewis and the Nashville Student Movement were successful in their first nonviolent protests. 

The beginning of Lewis's civil rights work is a story of courage and determination. Lewis acted on his belief that all men are created equal and that he and other African Americans had the same rights as white Americans. To achieve the goal of dismantling segregation, Lewis and many other civil rights leaders began to implement nonviolent forms of protest, at great personal risk. He states that he felt this calling at a young age and it seemed to intensify as he grew older and saw the world as it really was.

Lewis' story is told with the assistance of  Andrew Aydin, who served as his Digital Director & Policy Advisor while Lewis was a Congressional representative. It is told as a story within a story: the book begins with Lewis getting ready to meet Rosa Parks in 2009 in preparation for attending the inauguration of Barak Obama as president of the United States. Illustrating Lewis' story is the artwork of Nate Powell, an accomplished and award-winning graphic novelist. 

The graphic novel format makes John Lewis' story accessible to readers of all ages and backgrounds. The visual character of the graphic novel conveys  the reality of what segregation entailed for millions of Black Americans in the 20th century and highlights the significant efforts these early civil rights activists had to resort to, in order to undo a deeply entrenched system of discrimination and hatred. It also visually portrays the violence, hatred and ugliness of those determined to prevent Black Americans from gaining their God-given right to be treated with respect, dignity and equality.

March is a book for people because it is only in reading about and studying the past, can we make a better future for everyone.

Book Details:

The March by John Lews, Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell
Marietta, Georgia: Top Shelf Production   2013
121 pp.

Finding Langston by Lesa Cline-Ransome

Langston lives in Bronzeville, a part of Chicago also called the Black Ghetto or the Black Belt. Langston and his father moved from Alabama one week after the death of his mama. They live in a kitchenette apartment at 4501 Wabash Avenue. It's a room with two beds, a table and two chairs and walls covered with newspapers to hide the holes but it does have running water and an indoor toilet. Langston attends Haines Junior High School while his father works at the Maxwell Brothers plant. A neighbour, Miss Fulton who teaches high school across town, lives above them and often asks Langston to help her bring groceries up the stairs.

Langston is usually the first one to get to school and sits in the front desk closest to his teacher, Miss Robins. His rundown shoes, overalls and the way he speaks marks him as poor and from the South, with some students calling him "country boy." Every day after school, Langston finds himself confronted by three boys, Lymon, Erroll and Clem but it is Lymon who mostly bullies him. Langston tries to ignore them allowing Lymon to push him around until he gets bored and leaves.

At home, Langston is sad, missing his mama's home cooking and life in Alabama. One day after school, after helping carry out a box for Miss Robins, Langston manages to sneak unseen through the fence away from school. By the time he stops to catch his breath, he realizes he is in a strange neighbourhood with neat homes and large trees. On the corner is a large building called the George Cleveland Hall Library. Remembering that his mama once told him a "library is a place you borrow books", Langston decides to find out what it's like.

A lady who turns out to be one of the librarians,  leads him into the library, telling him he can borrow any book he wants. Langston, scanning the shelves, pulls a book with his first name on the cover. The words in the book resonate with Langston, and he stays until the library closes. When he returns home late Langston lies to his father about the library, telling him he was out playing with some boys.

Langston returns to the library the very next day and asks the librarian, Mrs. Kimble about the photographs of colored people on the walls. She tells him that they are authors from a lecture series held at the library and that the library is named for a prominent Negro physician. Langston returns to the section of the library containing "the book with the words from my heart."  When it comes time to leave, Langston learns from Miss Cook, the children's librarian about taking out books using a library card. Langston is overwhelmed at this prospect and signs out the book of poetry by Langston Hughes.

As Langston struggles to adapt to life in Chicago, the library and the poetry of Langston Hughes prove to be the lifeline he needs to move forward.

Discussion

Finding Langston is a wonderful short novel, set in 1946 Chicago, chronicling a young black boy's struggle to adapt to life without his beloved mama in a strange city.

Langston misses just about everything that characterizes life in Alabama. In Alabama Langston had friends, and life was slower, the people more polite. Often Langston finds himself comparing Chicago to life at home in Alabama. "Streetlights shine through the window in the front of the room. In Alabama only lights I saw at night were the moon and stars. Sometimes so bright a curtain couldn't block them out...."

He finds the crowded busy city of Chicago difficult to get used to.
"Back home, we couldn't see a neighbor for miles. I'll never get used to people living on top of each other. I'll never get used to everybody knowing what time you get up in the morning and what you're cooking for breakfast. And everyone to busy to say a decent 'Mornin' when you see them on the street. Back home I had space to breathe. Had to walk down the road a ways to get to our nearest neighbor, but if somebody got sick, or was in need of a hand, folks were there to help 'fore you knew it. I knew I had to act right, because someone was always watching, waiting to get word back to my folks....."

Langston misses his friends and the sense of belonging. "Back home I had friends. Not a lot, but enough to make me fell like I fit. At lunch, outside, we'd play marbles together, sometimes climb the tree in the back of the school. No one laughed when I talked, or pointed at my run-over shoes and overalls."

But what Langston misses most is his mama. "But Mama made it seem like I was all she ever wanted. Like I filled her up. Like any more would have been too much. ...She loved me hard as she could till she left this world." Langston feels the loss of his mama keenly. "I close my eyes and try to picture Mama. I can still see her smile with the space between her teeth. Smooth brown skin and eyes that laughed along with her. Before I know it, the tears start and won't stop."

In an effort to avoid being bullied, Langston discovers a nearby public library that is open to all people regardless of the colour of their skin. And it is there that he discovers a book by a poet, Langston Hughes who has the same first name. At first, the coincidence of their same first names seems unimportant to Langston, who has no idea why his parents chose his name.

When he reads some of his mama's letters to his father, he comes across several lines of poetry,

Langston Hughes 1942

"My black one,
Thou are not beautiful
Yet thou hast
A loveliness
Surpassing beauty."
Langston is moved by these lines but is certain they were not written by his mama who had no time to read, something she did before she was married, and definitely even less time to write poetry. 

Langston signs out a book, The Weary Blues, by Langston Hughes and discovers a poem, "Poem 4: To The Black Beloved" that has the words he saw in his mama's letter. This makes Langston understand that his mama also loved the poetry of Langston Hughes. He knows his father doesn't know the words in her letter were from a Langston Hughes poem, a secret he decides not to reveal.
"She never told him that Langston Hughes made her heart sing the way he does mine. That she wanted to name her baby boy after the poet she copied in her letters." Langston believes that his mama, in naming him after Langston Hughes whose poetry she loved, gave him a way to deal with the pain of her death and the loneliness of a strange city and ultimately to find a place to belong.

The library and poetry books also bring together Langston and his first friend in Chicago. When the boy who has been bullying Langston rips pages out of The Weary Blues, Clem retrieves all the pages and helps Langston explain to the librarian what happened. It is the beginning of a friendship. The two boys discover they have both suffered the loss of a loved one: Langston has lost his mother while Clem's father was killed in the munitions explosion on the SS E.A. Bryan in what came to be known as the Port Chicago disaster.

Langston is an endearing character, whose struggles are portrayed in a genuine and affecting way to all readers by Cline-Ransome. In spite of his loneliness, his sadness over the death of his mama and the difficulties of fitting in, Langston stays true to his southern values of honesty, kindness and helping others. But he also begins to find those same values in people like Clem who has also suffered the loss of someone he loves, and in his neighbour Miss Fulton, who shares his love of poetry.

Finding Langston is a truly beautiful story about loss, hope, starting over and belonging. It is about the power of libraries, and the written word and how books help us deal with life. It is as Clem says, after Langston explains why he likes poetry, " So the poetry you read is a way of putting all the things you feel inside on the outside."  Poetry and stories will always be a help to understanding both the joys and troubles of life.

Author Lesa Cline-Ransome offers some historical context in her Author's Note at the back, explaining the migration of hundreds of thousands of blacks from the South to cities in the North. The result for Chicago was the development of a rich cultural scene that included people like Louis Armstrong, Muddy Waters, Gwendolyn Brooks and many others including the poet Langston Hughes. The library in Finding Langston is real. The George Cleveland Hall Branch of the Chicago Public Library was built due to the efforts of Dr. George Cleveland Hall who wanted a library for the constituents of Bronzeville. Unlike libraries in Alabama in 1946, everyone was welcome.

Langston Hall image:  https://www.britannica.com/biography/Langston-Hughes/images-videos#/media/1/274926/11795

Book Details:

Finding Langston by Lesa Cline-Ransome
New York: Holiday House    2018
107 pp.