ProjectLIT

Acevedo, E. (2017). The Poet X. HarperTeen. https://search.follettsoftware.com/metasearch/ui/25439

Xiomara Batista narrates her story through poetry, her main passion, but her mami expects her to be devoted to religion. Her strict upbringing frustrates her because she is tired of hiding her voice.

Xiomara expresses, "I only know that learning to believe in the power of my own words has been the most freeing experience of my life. It has brought me the most light. And isn’t that what a poem is? A lantern glowing in the dark."

Ahmed, S. (2019). Internment. Little, Brown & Company. https://search.follettsoftware.com/metasearch/ui/25439

Set in a future dystopian United States, constitutional rights are stripped away and Muslim Americans are sent to internment camps. Layla Amin and her family are separated from the lives they know. She realizes political resistance is dangerous, but necessary.

Samira believes, “I think of all the people throughout history who found themselves in a place like this, stepping out from the shadows, raising their voices. Finding their courage, facing their fears so that they could be free. There were so many we lost, the ones who were taken, cut down, for the color of their skin, or the religion they practiced, or the person they loved. All they wanted was to live.”

Jackson, T. D. (2017). Allegedly. Katherine Tegen Books. https://search.follettsoftware.com/metasearch/ui/25439

Eight years ago, Mary Addison allegedly killed a baby. Now living in a group home with other troubled girls, she fights for survival and a future with her own new family. The system and her duplicitous mother won't listen, let alone help.

Mary describes, “The group home is always muggy, like we live in an old shoe, smelling like corn chips mixed with roach spray. I never call the group home 'home.' It’s not a home. No house where you fear for your life can be considered a home.”

Reynolds, J. & Kendi, I. X. (2020). Stamped: Racism, antiracism, and you. Little, Brown and Company. https://search.follettsoftware.com/metasearch/ui/25439

Jason Reynolds breaks down the big ideas in Kendi's non-fiction work about racism. He delves into centuries of systemic racism in the United States and relates what we need to do to make our country true.

Reynolds, J. (2017). Long way down. Atheneum. https://search.follettsoftware.com/metasearch/ui/25439

Using a series of poems, Will narrates the one minute trip down seven flights in an elevator where he encounters the ghosts of seven people he's known lost to gun violence. He feels his brother's gun in the waist of his jeans as he listens to their interwinding stories.

Will contemplates, “ANOTHER THING ABOUT THE RULES/They weren't meant to be broken./ They were meant for the broken/to follow.”

Sanchez, E. L. (2019). I am not your perfect Mexican daughter. Ember. https://search.follettsoftware.com/metasearch/ui/25439

Julia's older sister Olga recently died, and it's obvious that she was the favorite. As her family grieves, she realizes she didn't even know her that well and tries to find out more about her by going through her room. What she finds shows that people aren't always what they seem.

Julia thinks, “But how do we live with these secrets locked within us? How do we tie our shoes, brush our hair, drink coffee, wash the dishes, and go to sleep, pretending everything is fine? How do we laugh and feel happiness despite the buried things growing inside? How can we do that day after day?”

Slayer, D. (2017). The 57 bus. Farrar Straus Giroux Books. https://search.follettsoftware.com/metasearch/ui/25439

The 57 bus makes its route through Oakland, California. This nonfiction work explores the lives of two very different students and how one moment changed both their lives forever.

The narrator notes, "That was the dilemma all of them faced in one form or another. If your friends were on a dangerous path, adults told you to cast them aside. But without your friends, who could you trust? Who could you count on to have your back?"

Stone, N. (2017). Dear Martin. Crown Books. https://search.follettsoftware.com/metasearch/ui/25439

The main character Justyce McAllister plans to attend Yale next year. He's top of his class, the debate team captain, and one of the only Black kids who attend his private school. After he endures an unjust abuse of power from an irascible police officer, he begins a journal to Martin Luther King, Jr. and shares his feelings about racism in the United States.

Justyce writes, “DEAR MARTIN, You know, I don't get how you did it. Just being straight up. Every day I walk through the halls of that elitist-ass school, I feel like I don't belong there, and every time Jared or one of them opens their damn mouth, I'm reminded they agree. Every time I turn on the news and see another black person gunned down, I'm reminded that people look at me and see a threat instead of a human being.”