Art & Poetry Challenge 2023

 Winner of the 2021 Ezra Jack Keats New Writer Award!
In this moving story that celebrates cultural diversity, a shy girl brings her West African grandmother--whose face bears traditional tribal markings--to meet her classmates. This is a perfect read for back to school!

 Recipient of a Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor Award
A Kirkus Reviews Best Picture Book of 2019
A young slave girl witnesses the heartbreak and hopefulness of her family and their plantation community when her brother escapes for freedom in this brilliantly conceived picture book by Coretta Scott King Award winner James E. Ransome. 

 From the award-winning duo behind the bestselling Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt comes the stunning, richly illustrated sequel about a young enslaved girl who follows a quilt’s message to freedom.

 Discover the true story of how environmentalist Farmer Tantoh is transforming the landscape in his home country of Cameroon.
When Tantoh Nforba was a child, his fellow students mocked him for his interest in gardening. Today he's an environmental hero, bringing clean water and bountiful gardens to the central African nation of Cameroon. Authors Miranda Paul and Baptiste Paul share Farmer Tantoh's inspiring story. 

 "Queen of Physics: How Wu Chien Shiung Helped Unlock the Secrets of the Atom" is Teresa's debut picture book. It won numerous awards, among them the 2020 APALA Winner in the Picture Book category, the ILA Children's and Young Adults' Book Awards Honor, and the NCTE Orbis Pictus Recommended Book. 

 Set against the backdrop of Karachi, Pakistan, Saadia Faruqi’s middle grade novel tells the story of two girls navigating a summer of change and family upheaval. 

Efrén Nava’s Amá is his Superwoman—or Soperwoman, named after the delicious Mexican sopes his mother often prepares. Both Amá and Apá work hard all day to provide for the family, making sure Efrén and his younger siblings Max and Mía feel safe and loved.

 Running. That's all that Ghost (real name Castle Cranshaw) has ever known. But never for a track team. Nope, his game has always been ball. But when Ghost impulsively challenges an elite sprinter to a race—and wins—the Olympic medalist track coach sees he has something: crazy natural talent. Thing is, Ghost has something else: a lot of anger, and a past that he is trying to outrun. Can Ghost harness his raw talent for speed and meld with the team, or will his past finally catch up to him? 

 M. O. Yuksel’s beautiful text celebrates the joys and traditions found in every mosque around the world and is brought to life with stunning artwork by New York Times bestselling illustrator Hatem Aly (Yasmin series, The Proudest Blue, The Inquisitor’s Tale). The book also includes backmatter with an author’s note, a glossary, and more information about many historical and significant mosques around the world. 

 As a young Navajo boy, Chester Nez had to leave the reservation and attend boarding school, where he was taught that his native language and culture were useless. But Chester refused to give up his heritage. Years later, during World War II, Chester and other Navajo men like him were recruited by the US Marines to use the Navajo language to create an unbreakable military code. Suddenly the language he had been told to forget was needed to fight a war. 

 Children’s book icon Joseph Bruchac tells the fascinating story of a Seneca (Iroquois) Civil War officer. Ely S. Parker (1828–1895) 

An empowering celebration of identity, acceptance and Hawaiian culture based on the true story of a young girl in Hawaiʻi who dreams of leading the boys-only hula troupe at her school. 

 From award-winning author Tonya Bolden comes a biography of the first Black woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and the first Black woman to run for president with a major political party: Shirley Chisholm. 

 Discover an inspiring picture book biography about Hazel Ying Lee, the first Chinese American woman to fly for the US military. 

 In a novel-in-verse that brims with grief and love, National Book Award-winning and New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth Acevedo writes about the devastation of loss, the difficulty of forgiveness, and the bittersweet bonds that shape our lives.  

When her sister Olga dies in a tragic accident, Julia is left to pick up the pieces of her family. She is also expected to fill the shoes of her sister. But Julia has never been the perfect Mexican daughter.As Julia struggles to find her place in the world, she discovers Olga was not as perfect as everyone thought. Who was her sister really? And how can Julia even attempt to live up to an impossible ideal?

 Acclaimed author of Ash Malinda Lo returns with her most personal and ambitious novel yet, a gripping story of love and duty set in San Francisco's Chinatown during the Red Scare. "Do you hear me' Everyone knows you're a good Chinese girl. This is just a mistake." For American-born Lily Hu, "good Chinese girl" feels like a mask she's only recently discovered she's been wearing.

Inspired by true events, David Safier's 28 Days: A Novel of Resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto is a harrowing historical YA that chronicles the brutality of the Holocaust.

Going beyond the story of America as a country “discovered” by a few brave men in the “New World,” Indigenous human rights advocate Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz reveals the roles that settler colonialism and policies of American Indian genocide played in forming our national identity.

 George Takei has captured hearts and minds worldwide with his magnetic performances, sharp wit, and outspoken commitment to equal rights. But long before he braved new frontiers in STAR TREK, he woke up as a four-year-old boy to find his own birth country at war with his father's -- and their entire family forced from their home into an uncertain future.

 As a child in a small rural village in Sierra Leone, Mariatu Kamara lived peacefully surrounded by family and friends. Rumors of rebel attacks were no more than a distant worry. But one day when 12-year-old Mariatu set out for a neighboring village, she never arrived. 

Hip hop is one of the most dominant and influential cultures in America, giving new voice to the younger generation. It defines a generation's worldview. Exploring hip hop's beginnings up to the present day, Jeff Chang and Dave "Davey D" Cook provide a provocative look into the new world that the hip hop generation has created.

The word cowboy conjures up vivid images of rugged men on saddled horses—men lassoing cattle, riding bulls, or brandishing guns in a shoot-out. White men, as Hollywood remembers them. What is woefully missing from these scenes is their counterparts: the black cowboys who made up one-fourth of the wranglers and rodeo riders. This book tells their story.

Fifteen-year-old Ana Cancion never dreamed of moving to America, the way the girls she grew up with in the Dominican countryside did. But when Juan Ruiz proposes and promises to take her to New York City, she has to say yes. It doesn’t matter that he is twice her age, that there is no love between them. Their marriage is an opportunity for her entire close-knit family to eventually immigrate.

A compulsively readable debut novel about marriage, immigration, class, race, and the trapdoors in the American Dream—the unforgettable story of a young Cameroonian couple making a new life in New York just as the Great Recession upends the economy. 

 Dana, a modern black woman, is celebrating her twenty-sixth birthday with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from her home in California and transported to the antebellum South. Rufus, the white son of a plantation owner, is drowning, and Dana has been summoned to save him. 

“A haunted work, full of voices old and new. It is about a family’s reckoning with loss and injustice, and it is about a people trying for the same. The journey of this family’s way home is full—in equal measure—of melancholy and love.”

—Tommy Orange, author of There There

 Irene Redfield is a Black woman living an affluent, comfortable life with her husband and children in the thriving neighborhood of Harlem in the 1920s. When she reconnects with her childhood friend Clare Kendry, who is similarly light-skinned, Irene discovers that Clare has been passing for a white woman after severing ties to her past—even hiding the truth from her racist husband.
 

 A truly remarkable work of art that is already one of the most talked-about books of the season.

"Tan's lovingly laid out and masterfully rendered tale about the immigrant experience is a documentary magically told. 

The astonishing untold history of America’s first black millionaires—former slaves who endured incredible challenges to amass and maintain their wealth for a century, from the Jacksonian period to the Roaring Twenties—self-made entrepreneurs whose unknown success mirrored that of American business heroes such as Henry Ford, John D. Rockefeller, and Thomas Edison.

Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer, yet her cells--taken without her knowledge--became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first "immortal" human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer and viruses; helped lead to in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions. 

 In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, the Osage rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study in Europe.

Then, one by one, the Osage began to be killed off. The family of an Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, became a prime target. 

 When George Washington was elected president, he reluctantly left behind his beloved Mount Vernon to serve in Philadelphia, the temporary seat of the nation’s capital. In setting up his household he brought along nine slaves, including Ona Judge. As the President grew accustomed to Northern ways, there was one change he couldn’t abide: Pennsylvania law required enslaved people be set free after six months of residency in the state. 

 In this enlightening book, scholars and activists Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Dina Gilio-Whitaker tackle a wide range of myths about Native American culture and history that have misinformed generations. Tracing how these ideas evolved, and drawing from history, the authors disrupt long-held and enduring myths

In Firsting and Lasting, Jean M. O’Brien argues that local histories became a primary means by which European Americans asserted their own modernity while denying it to Indian peoples. Erasing and then memorializing Indian peoples also served a more pragmatic colonial goal: refuting Indian claims to land and rights. Drawing on more than six hundred local histories from Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island written between 1820 and 1880, as well as censuses, monuments, and accounts of historical pageants and commemorations, O’Brien explores how these narratives inculcated the myth of Indian extinction, a myth that has stubbornly remained in the American consciousness.

Racial Unity Team hosts Art & Poetry Challenge for New Hampshire residents of all ages

Visit the exhibit

Prizes awarded for Racial Justice Art

The Bow Times. 

Find the article on page 12

SAU 16 students win top prizes in Art & Poetry Challenge  

Portsmouth Herald 

Art & Poetry Challenge Exhibit

Carriage Town News

Tomasen M. Carey, M.Ed., is a Senior Lecturer in the English Department at the University of New Hampshire. She is the Director of the UNH Writers Academy, the Field Coordinator for the Learning Through Teaching Program, and Instructor of the New Hampshire Literacy Institutes. She loves working alongside writers of all ages to help them find their creative spirit and voice. She is the voice behind the blog, conversationeducation.com.

Emily M. Hinnov, Ph.D., is a professor of English and program coordinator for the English major at Great Bay Community College, where she teaches college writing, women's literature, film studies, and British literature from Beowulf to Virginia Woolf. As a scholar in the field of literary modernism, she has published several essays and chapters in academic books and journals, as well as a monograph and a co-edited volume. At Great Bay, she is a regular contributor to and supporter of the NH Humanities Collaborative, an Andrew Mellon Foundation-funded initiative to bring humanities programming to NH students and citizens across the community college and university systems.

Courtney Marshall, Ph.D., posted on her Facebook page: “I am a Black feminist fitness instructor and high school English teacher. Let’s get free!” Courtney leads dialogues on race, gender, and social justice issues and is an advocate for—and writer on—prison reform. She was a facilitator for the UNH MLK Leadership Summit for students and has run literacy groups at the Berlin, New Hampshire, Correctional Facility in hopes of improving prison life by bringing literature to inmates. Over the years she has taught as a professor of English and Women’s and Gender Studies at UNH and as an English teacher at Phillips Exeter Academy.  

Hannah Rubin is an eleventh grader at Phillips Exeter Academy. Her writing has been honored by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards and 2021 Racial Unity Art & Poetry Challenge competition and has been featured in The Poet’s Touchstone and the Black Matter is Life poetry series. She is a member of the NH Teen Poet Laureate Team, part of the Writing the Land project, and the Submissions Coordinator for The Poet’s Touchstone volume 64, issue 1. At her school, she is a co-head of three clubs related to classical music, trans-disciplinary art, and volunteer music lessons.

Kathleen McCaffery-Pomerleau is a compassionate dynamic educator, who has taught second graders for 15 years at the Main Street School, in Exeter, New Hampshire. She earned, from the University of New Hampshire, a Bachelor of Arts with a concentration in Studio Arts, and a Master of Education in Art Education K-12  and Elementary Education K-6. She recently worked on updating the NH Arts Standards with the Department of Education. She has worked with the Lorenzo De’ Medici School of Art and UNH FAMILYHOSTEL to plan art education units for families touring the artistic sites of Florence, Italy, including the Uffizi Gallery. 

Cynthia Velasquez is a native of Los Angeles, California, and her work reimagines home as a space shaped by queer diaspora and memory. Her spatial reimagining is influenced by a frugal use of cultural materials. Using photos, storytelling, song, and scent, she develops a visual element toward remembering in a more permanent way. Mediums include multimedia painting, ink, clay, and photography. She has participated in several solo and group shows and film festivals nationally and internationally. She studied at Cal Arts in the Aesthetics & Politics Program, School of Critical Studies. Cynthia is an Admissions Counselor for Diversity at UNH. She serves as a gallery reviewer for 3S Artspace and other national organizations like Escondido Canyon (Art House) and Movimiento Archivo (archive) and does digital and analog portraits!  www.cynthiakvelasquez.com