Freedom lessons : a novel
Record details
- ISBN: 1631526103
- ISBN: 9781631526107
- ISBN: 9781631526107 : PAP
- ISBN: 1631526103 : PAP
-
Physical Description:
ix, 245 pages ; 22 cm
print - Publisher: Berkeley, California : She Writes Press, a BookSparks imprint, a division of SparkPointStudio, LLC, 2019.
- Copyright: ©2019
Content descriptions
General Note: | Includes book club discussion questions (pages 244-245). |
Summary, etc.: | "Louisiana. 1969. Colleen, a white northern teacher, enters into the unfamiliar culture of a small southern town and its unwritten rules as the town surrenders to mandated school integration. Frank, a black high school football player, protects his family with a secret. And Evelyn, an experienced teacher and prominent member of the local black community, must decide whether she is willing to place trust in her new white colleague. Told alternatively by Colleen, Frank, and Evelyn, Freedom lessons is the story of how the lives of these three very different people intersect in a time when our nation faced, as it does today, a crisis of race, unity, and identity"--Page 4 of cover. |
Search for related items by subject
Genre: | Historical fiction. |
Available copies
- 4 of 4 copies available at Bibliomation.
Holds
- 0 current holds with 4 total copies.
Location | Call Number / Copy Notes | Barcode | Shelving Location | Status | Due Date |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Burroughs-Saden Main - Bridgeport | FIC SANCHEZ (Text) | 34000147847602 | Adult Fiction | Available | - |
North Branch - Bridgeport | FIC SANCHEZ (Text) | 34000147847610 | Adult Fiction | Available | - |
Somers Public Library | FIC SAN (Text) | 34042146589280 | Adult Fiction | Available | - |
Thompson Public Library | Sanchez (Text) | 34038118646041 | Adult Fiction | Available | - |
Library Journal Review
Freedom Lessons : A Novel
Library Journal
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
DEBUT In 1969, Colleen Rodrigues leaves New Jersey to teach in Louisiana while her husband, a Cuban immigrant and Vietnam veteran, takes a position on an army base. Colleen deals with racism toward her husband and a public school system that has found a loophole in the Brown vs. Board of Education decision of 1954 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The schools offer "Freedom of Choice," and as none of the black students willingly choose to attend the white schools, segregation continues. The narrative is told through the voices of Colleen, who becomes the only white teacher at the black elementary school; Frank, a black high school football star who lost his father to racial violence and yearns for a college scholarship; and Evelyn, the experienced black teacher who is assigned to be Colleen's mentor despite feeling that a white woman cannot teach black children. Racial tension comes to a head when the school system is forced to integrate immediately or lose federal funding. VERDICT Debut novelist Sanchez has crafted a moving and timely story, based on her own experiences, about school integration in the South in 1969 and the issues that still linger today. This powerful tale offers a beacon of hope that individuals can inspire change.--Catherine Coyne, Mansfield P.L., MA
Kirkus Review
Freedom Lessons : A Novel
Kirkus Reviews
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
When "all deliberate speed" becomes "all of a sudden," not much changes.Written from the author's own experience as an elementary school teacher, Sanchez's debut chronicles one school year, 1969-70, during which Colleen Rodriguez and her husband, Miguel, are transplanted from New Jersey to Kettle Creek, Louisiana. Miguel, a Cuban migr, will serve as a drill sergeant on a nearby Army base, and Colleen, a white woman, begins teaching second grade at West Hill, the "Negro school." As a preface points out, Brown v. Board of Education, ordering desegregation, was decided in 1954, but many Southern school districts adopted a "Freedom of Choice" policy, which delayed integration of schools. But now, the federal government has mandated immediate integration. West Hill is closed overnight, and its elementary and high school students are shoehorned, no longer separate but still far from equal, into the hitherto all-white Kettle Creek schools. West Hill elementary pupils are shunted off into trailers near their new school, and their black teachers are let go, with the exception of two, including Evelyn, Colleen's reluctant mentor. Frank, West Hill's star football player, had hoped for an athletic scholarship, but at Kettle Creek High, he and the other black players are demoted to second string. He is forced to find a job to have any hope of affording collegeand the prospect of Vietnam looms. This is only the beginning of many outrages to follow. Sanchez sensitively depicts this grudging desegregation and its many Catch-22s for the black students and teachers. When it's time to fight back, Evelyn's and Frank's perspectives take over, and Colleen steps back; though, as an afterword suggests, Sanchez, a white woman, is quite aware that she is not an #ownvoices author, she isn't trying to write "a white savior story." Percolating in the background is an underdeveloped murder mystery involving an unsolved hate crime against Frank's late father. A major plot thread is left dangling while overattention to day-to-day minutiae feels like padding.An intermittently potent illustration of the formidable obstacles to equality that remainedand persistpost-Brown v. Board of Education. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.