Young Adult Fiction HOME

Working Group HOME

Michele Delattre's Notes on:

Novels of Living Under Occupation or Oppression

Arab themes in modern setting - Rafik Schami.

Adventure Novels

• Linda Sue Park. When My Name Was Keoko. New York: Dell Yearling Book, 2002. $5.39
• Deborah Ellis. The Breadwinner (first book of a trilogy about an Afghan girl) Groundwood Book, 2001. $5.95
• Melody Ermachild Chavis. Meena: Heroine of Afghanistan. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2003.  $19.95. (biography)
• Elizabeth Laird (with Sonia Nimr). A Little Piece of Ground. London: Macmillan Children's Books, 2003. ISBN 0330437437 CDN $9.99
• Daniella Carmi's, Samir and Yonatan ((Scholastic, 2000 [English edition]) $4.99  translated from Hebrew
• Naomi Shihab Nye's Habibi (New York: Aladdin Paperbacks, 1997. $4.99
• Marjane Satrapi. Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood. Pantheon, translation from French, 2003. $11.95

Novels about living under political occupation or oppression are powerful but challenging to teach as history - especially ones with contemporary settings. By personalizing conflict through fiction you make it more compelling, but on the other hand necessarily stress a very particular point of view. Each of these novels makes some attempt to humanize the oppressor. Nonetheless, it's hard to present a story from the point of view of the oppressed without demonizing the oppressor. Some of this potential for racism might be avoided by teaching about point of view in fiction and reading several books in different settings stressing universal themes like the experience of occupation, political responsibility, and national identity.

Despite challenges associated with teaching these novels, history and current conflicts are full of incidents of occupation and it is foolish to avoid the topic in literature. Especially when the United States itself is, for better or worse, associated with occupation abroad, the experience of growing up under occupation is incredibly important to understand. I recommend you read these yourself.

All of these books have good stories but I think Linda Sue Park, Elizabeth Laird, Daniella Carmi, and Marjane Satrapi are particularly successful at delivering an authentic feel for being inside the culture.

Some themes in common:

• Responsibility: loyalty to nation vs. loyalty to individuals; loyalty to family vs. personal interest
• Education as a political action. Political nature of curriculum in schools. Critical thinking. (Underground school for Afghan girls; Keoko's secret education at home; Japanese curriculum as a tool of suppression and method of attacking Korean culture.)
• Books and writing as political action. (hidden books; underground magazine)
• The importance of language, names and script as a marker for personal and national identity.  (Can be compared to dialect and bi-lingual issues in the U. S.; underground newspaper published by resistance; Korean language and script forbidden; use of diaries to maintain personal identity.)

Story of a Korean brother and sister living in Korea under Japanese occupation in 1940's. The story is told in alternating first person narratives from the brother (Tae-yul) and his younger sister (Sun-hee). The first few chapters are a little slow while setting up the background for life in occupied Korea, but the plot moves quickly in the second half of the book. Good author's notes and bibliography.

From Booklist
Gr. 5-9. Except for Sook Nyul Choi's Year of Impossible Goodbyes (1991), very little has been written for young people about the Japanese occupation of Korea. Park, who won the Newbery Medal this year for A Single Shard, set in twelfth-century Korea, draws on her parents' experiences as well as extensive historical research for this story. The plot unfolds through the alternating first-person narratives of Sun-hee, who is 10 years old in 1940, and her older brother, Tae-yul. They lose their names and their language when they are forced to use Japanese at school and in public. The far-off war comes closer and hardship increases with brutal neighborhood roundups. Always there are secrets: Who's a traitor? Who's pretending to be a traitor? Sun-hee tries to help her uncle in the resistance, and she's overcome with guilt when she puts him in terrible danger. Tae-yul becomes a kamikaze pilot for the Japanese: he loves learning to fly, but his secret aim is to help the Americans. There's also family conflict, especially about the submissive role of a young girl: does she disobey her father for the good of her country? Why doesn't her father resist? The two young voices sound very much the same, and the historical background sometimes takes over the narrative. The drama is in the facts about the war, and Park does a fine job of showing how the politics of the occupation and resistance affect ordinary people. Be sure to check out Park's Writers and Readers column, "Staying on Past Canal Street: Reflections on Asian Identity," [BKL Ja 1 & 15 02]. Hazel Rochman

Deborah Ellis. The Breadwinner (first book of a trilogy about an Afghan girl) Groundwood Book, 2001. $5.95
Winner of the 2001 Middle East Book Award http://socialscience.tjc.edu/mkho/MEOC/

The story takes place in Kabul under Taliban rule. The women in a family of foreign-educated intellectuals have been forced to hide in their home under the misogynist rule of the Taliban. When the father is suddenly arrested and taken to prison they have no means of support. A young adolescent daughter disguises herself as a boy to support her family in the market. There she meets an old school friend who has also taken a male disguise for similar reasons. She and her friend have surprisingly little trouble passing for boys shopping and selling goods in the market.

This book is written in a younger style than When My Name Was Keoko. Content aside, I would say stylistically it is accessible for students reading at the 4th grade level. The author does a good time showing instead of telling what life is like under the Taliban and as a result the plot gets off to a faster start and even in the shorter format the characters are well developed.

The Breadwinner has a helpful glossary but doesn't dwell much on details of the political or historic background. If students are interested in finding out more about the real women who fought for freedom under the Taliban, you can find material in the biography of Meena, the martyr who founded the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA). Melody Ermachild Chavis. Meena: Heroine of Afghanistan. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2003. $19.95.

Elizabeth Laird (with Sonia Nimr). A Little Piece of Ground. London: Macmillan Children's Books, 2003. ISBN 0330437437 CDN $9.99

You won't be able to buy this book in the United States where it has been boycotted widely. (I bought it from Amazon.com in Canada. A little ironic since I think the boycott started with a Canadian bookseller.) For a background on the boycott see the newspaper article in the British paper, the Guardian at http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,1028075,00.html

Given its controversial history I have a feeling it would be a fight to get district approval. This is a powerful, very well-written book but I would not assign it without including other books of occupation like the ones above and spending a lot of time in class discussion. Though it's targeted to a middle school audience, it would be an interesting high school text. Although Laird shows the miserable side of occupation for both occupier and occupied, there is no question that the Jewish soldiers come off as faceless "bad guys" from the passionately prejudiced point of view of an adolescent boy. A more balanced (though slower and younger) book working with the same themes is Samir and Yonatan (see below).

A considerably less daring and more gentle approach to introducing the Palestinian experience is Naomi Shihab Nye's Habibi (New York: Aladdin Paperbacks, 1997. $4.99) It has won a lot of awards including the ALA Best Book for Young Adults and the Middle East Book Award. It takes the point of view of a young adolescent coming from the United States with her Palestinian father to live in Jerusalem where she learns about traditional Palestinian life from her wonderful grandmother living on the West Bank and falls in love with a Jewish boy in Jerusalem. Since the heroine is an outsider she experiences the tension of Palestinian life with a detachment makes it relatively easy for her to envision a peaceful future. I found the book a tad slow and sentimental - though some readers will love it.

For exploring similar themes of Jewish/Arab co-existence, I prefer another Middle East Book Award winner, Daniella Carmi's, Samir and Yonatan ((Scholastic, 2000 [English edition]) $4.99 translated from Hebrew

From School Library Journal
Grade 4-8-Riding his bicycle down the market steps, a young Palestinian falls and smashes his knee so badly that he needs surgery. For the first time in his life, Samir leaves his home in the Occupied Territories to go to a Jewish hospital where an American doctor will operate on him. While waiting for the procedure, Samir gets to know the other children on his ward, all Jews. Beautiful Ludmilla is pining away for her home in Russia and refusing to eat. Razia hides under her bed in fear of her father. Hyperactive Tzahi can't urinate properly and, most importantly, Yonatan with the crippled arm introduces Samir to the stars, computer games, and the way imagination can take one away from a place of pain. As Samir thinks about the home he misses, details of his family life are revealed. Readers learn that his younger brother was killed, shot while playing in the street by a man wearing the same uniform that Tzahi's brother wears when he visits. His older brother has gone to Kuwait to earn money and his mother works two jobs. His father has stopped talking. As the hospitalized children spend time together, they come to support one another, forming a team that crosses cultural boundaries. Samir and Yonatan take an illegal night outing to commandeer an office computer to play a game. Life in the hospital is described as clearly as life in the Occupied Territories and readers will sympathize with Samir's fear and loneliness and welcome his new friendships. Written in Hebrew but published first in Germany, the book is smoothly translated and will have wide appeal.
Kathleen Isaacs, Edmund Burke School, Washington, DC

Marjane Satrapi. Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood. Pantheon, translation from French, 2003. $11.95 This is a graphic novel (comic) but not written for children. A good high school book. It chronicles Marjane Satrapi's childhood growing up in a Marxist intellectual family in Tehran during the Islamic Revolution. By using a graphic novel format Satrapi can show what the child sees at the same time as she illustrates the adult drama. Captions fill in historic and political background. This is both an engaging eyewitness account of revolution and a great "coming of age" novel.

Rafik Schami. Damascus Nights. Translated from German by Philip Boehm. New York: Farra, Straus and Giroux, 1993. hardback Also Simon & Schuster 1995 paperback. This book seems to be out of print at the moment, but used copies are readily available.
This is an adult novel suitable for high school. It falls in the happily at the center of the continuum between exotic and realistic setting for an novel set in the Middle East. A circle of male friends in Damascus meet over a period of seven nights to tell stories in an attempt to break a spell that has struck one of their number dumb. It evokes both the Arabian nights and life in Damascus during 1959. Finally one of the wives joins the story circle and tells the final story. A great read. Schami won the 1991 Mildred Batchelder Award (for juvenile fiction translated into English) for his young adult book, A Handful of Stars (below) and has also authored a few picture books using folktale formats.

Rafik Schami. A Handful of Stars.

From School Library Journal
Grade 7 Up-- This well-told coming-of-age story uses a journal format to recount the 14th through 18th years in the unnamed narrator's life in contemporary Syria. Excelling at school, the boy is frustrated at having to work in his father's bakery. Feeding his intellectual hunger are Uncle Salim, a beloved, grandfatherly neighbor whose tales instruct, comfort, and entertain; and Habib, a wasted but honorable journalist. Friends Mahmud and Josef, girlfriend Nadia, and an interesting cast of minor characters provide important insights into the narrator's maturation. His love for Nadia grows from meaningful glances to sexual involvement. His dream of becoming a journalist blossoms into the daring undertaking of publishing an underground newspaper despite the very real dangers posed by the government. The ending will be perceived as upbeat by most adolescent readers--Habib will be released from jail, and the protagonist will marry Nadia, grow closer to his father, become a famous and respected journalist, etc. Other, unhappier futures, are perhaps more plausible. The translation lends an appealing accent to the voices, an exotic air to the settings. As Walter Dean Myers' early books portrayed Harlem as just another neighborhood in which to grow up, this book shows Damascus to be a place where teen readers can identify with characters and situations beyond their direct experience. Events slowly build the narrator's social and political understanding about government and police corruption, and he makes his own ethical choices. Emphasizing the power of the individual and of the written word, this book pushes the subject of censorship way beyond the usual YA problems with principals and graduation to matters of life and death. --Joel Shoemaker, Tilford Middle School, Vinton, IA

ADVENTURE NOVELS:

• Cameron Dokey. The Storyteller's Daughter. Simon & Schuster (Simon Pulse), 2002.
• Chitra Banergee Divakaruni. The Conch Bearer. New York: Aladdin Paperbacks, 2003.

As the mother of two boys who hated reading literature with a social agenda in middle school, I appreciate the fact that you can internationalize the literature curriculum with adventure books as well. These follow "journey of the hero" patterns.

Cameron Dokey. The Storyteller's Daughter. Simon & Schuster (Simon Pulse), 2002. $5.95 (grades 6 -7) This is part love story, part coming-of-age and part adventure of political intrigue very loosely based on the central characters from the Arabian Nights. It's an entertaining story with strong female characters and might lead the reader to want to find out about the Arabian Nights. It's too "exotic" and far from the source to be really used in a history context, but it would make a good companion piece for other middle school novels drawing on the international romance or epic traditions (such as Arthurian stories). In this same vein I would more highly recommend Lloyd Alexander's The Iron Ring. New York: Dutton, 1997;  (paperback - Puffin. 1999.$5.39) Alexander's story uses themes and characters from the Indian epic tradition. Though his story is mostly original, it works so well with Hindu concepts that it strongly supports the 6^th grade history standards.

Chitra Banergee Divakaruni. The Conch Bearer. New York: Aladdin Paperbacks, 2003. $5.99 (grades 5-8) This book is a classic page-turner with a quest adventure that combines a Joseph Campbell outline with a sensory-rich Indian setting -just as one would expect from the author of the adult novel Mistress of Spices. Like the Storyteller's Daughter, it is more "exotic" literature than realistic regional education but it conveys an authentic sense of the space. It's a great book for the reluctant reader and could be a good way to interest students in going on to read South Asian epic adventures like the Ramayana.

ORIAS Working Groups are established to provide professional development support for K-14 teachers with shared interests in international studies. The working groups provide teachers with the opportunity to extend their content knowledge by participating in seminars with University scholars; meet with colleagues to share resources and experiences; and work independently or collaboratively on classroom materials with ORIAS staff.

Co-sponsored by the Office of Resources for International and Area Studies (ORIAS), the Bay Area Global Education Program (BAGEP) at the World Affairs Council of Northern California and the Robbins Collection at the School of Law, U. C. Berkeley.

For further information contact Michele Delattre at ORIAS: 510-643-0868 or orias@berkeley.edu