Anthologies are a superb way to quickly expose teens to new authors, genres, and subject areas. Here are just four of the many outstanding recent YA anthologies that belong on every classroom and library shelf.
Black Enough: Stories of Being Young & Black in America (Balzer + Bray), edited by Ibi Zoboi, includes 17 stories highlighting just a few of the many ways there are of being a black teen. As our review stated, “In these stories, black kids are nerds and geeks, gay and lesbian, first gen and immigrants, outdoorsy and artists, conflicted and confused, grieving and succeeding, thriving and surviving—in short, they’re fully human.” This is a remarkable contribution, given that black characters are too often relegated to best friend/sidekick status or certain well-worn roles in “problem” novels and historical fiction. This anthology showcases black characters many readers have never met before, and it will leave them eager for more fiction that breaks the mold. Coe Booth’s gem, “Hackathon Summers,” is a poignant love story in which Garry from upstate New York crosses paths every summer at an NYU coding event with Inaaya—and spends each intervening year pining for her. But how well does he really know her, and what will she choose when it comes to dating him or prioritizing her faith?
Among the many extraordinary things about the personal stories and artwork in I Am the Night Sky & Other Reflections by Muslim American Youth by Next Wave Muslim Initiative Writers (Shout Mouse Press), not least is that all the contributors are young adults. In it, a group of high school students from different ethnic backgrounds courageously share snippets of their lives with humor, wit, and vulnerability, writing and drawing in a variety of formats and styles. Together they present a tapestry of voices that will be a comfort to many and a necessary corrective for others. Bethesda, Maryland, teen Leyla Rasheed pointedly writes in her poem “Moments I Remember I’m Muslim”:
“Don’t get me wrong.
I like being unique and having my differences,
but sometimes it’s the little things,
like having to explain a personal matter to the world,
that get to me.
Now it’s my turn to ask:
Why is my religion questioned
by people who go day-to-day
without having to explain a single part
of their lifestyle?
Why am I singled out for everyone to watch?”
Hungry Hearts, edited by Elsie Chapman and Caroline Tung Richmond (Simon Pulse), includes 13 delicious, interconnected stories, all set in the same fictional multicultural neighborhood where food binds families and communities. Food represents love, caring, history, culture, and so much more—in the book as in real life. In the final story in the volume, Anna-Marie McLemore’s evocative “Panadería-Pastelería,” a Mexican family who run a bakery that has become a local institution are forced out of the neighborhood by gentrification. Lila, the daughter of the family, speaks rarely: “I have always said in bread and pastry what I do not know how to say in words.” When trans boy Gael, a long-ago childhood acquaintance, and his mother appear, bringing tamales for the bakery to sell, love blossoms and Lila again expresses her feelings through food. “With a concha sugared as teal as our bakery door, I whisper, I’m sorry I barely remember you, but I want to know you as you are now.”
Sangu Mandanna edited Color Outside the Lines: Stories About Love (Soho Teen, Nov. 12), a collection of #ownvoices stories about navigating love across different backgrounds. It’s a book I wish I’d had when I was young and unsure how to respond when people challenged the validity of my parents’ interracial, interreligious marriage or told me I could not/should not identify as I did. It’s unfortunate that stories such as these are still critical and relevant, but a gift to the world that this book exists. Mandanna contributed the memorable “Five Times Shiva Met Harry,” about budding love between a British Asian girl and a white British boy. It shows the calculus that everyone from marginalized groups will find familiar: Deciding how much energy and emotion to invest in a relationship with someone who doesn’t get it, in hopes that someday they will. As Shiva says to Harry, “ ‘I didn’t want to have this conversation. I wanted to drink cider and not do our homework and go get Chinese food. But I’m not going to not say things either.’ ”
Laura Simeon is the young adult editor.
