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ENTRY TYPE: new
WORK TITLE: Ida, In Love and In Trouble
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.veronicachambers.com/
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
LAST VOLUME: LRC February 2021
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born in Panama; married: Jason.
EDUCATION:Bard College, B.A.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and editor. Hearst Corporation, Director of Brand Development; Stanford University, JSK Knight fellow; Light Bulb Ink, founder, 2013-; New York Times, writer and editor, 2018-. Has taught writing at numerous institutions, including Bowdoin College, Bard College, Rutgers University, and Stanford University.
AWARDS:James Beard Award for Writing and Literature, 2013, for Yes Chef.
WRITINGS
Contributor to numerous anthologies, magazines, and periodicals, including New York Times Magazine, Newsweek, Esquire, and O: The Oprah Magazine.
SIDELIGHTS
[OPEN NEW]
Veronica Chambers is a writer, editor, and publishing executive who has scaled the heights of publishing success. She was the first Black female editor at the New York Times Magazine. She was also the Director of Brand Development at Hearst Corporation, which included the shaping of some of the biggest magazines in the world, including Good Housekeeping.
She has written for adults, young adults, and children. She has written nonfiction and fiction. Her nonfiction works have included biographies, a memoir, histories, and books on cultural topics. She has even written a book on double Dutch rope skipping (Double Dutch: A Celebration of Jump Rope, Rhyme, and Sisterhood). She has also cowritten nonfiction works with some of the biggest names in media, including Robin Roberts, Michael Strahan, and Timbaland.
Chambers has also written numerous nonfiction and fiction works for children, largely for middle schoolers and high schoolers. Her early works included an illustrated book about the people on the Amistad slave ship and a history of the Harlem Renaissance. Her debut novel, published in 1999, was Marisol and Magdalena: The Sound of Our Sisterhood. Chambers was born in Panama and raised in Brooklyn, and she has talked about how her Black Latina heritage has shaped her writing.
One of Chambers’s most significant nonfiction works was Resist: 35 Profiles of Ordinary People Who Rose Up against Tyranny and Injustice. Written with middle schoolers in mind, the book profiled everyone from Sojourner Truth to Sitting Bull to Mohandas Gandhi. The book was originally published in 2018, during the middle of the Donald Trump administration, when many people were looking to resist what they saw as his discriminatory policies. Chambers’s short biographies focused on people who had stood up to oppression and for freedom and equality. Two years later, Chambers released an updated version that included five more profiles.
Reviewers of the 2018 book praised it as a tremendous resource for young people. A writer in Kirkus Reviews wrote that the profiles were “inspiring rather than overwhelming or distancing.” They also appreciated how each one included a “resist lesson” that students could emulate. Angela Leeper, writing in Booklist, predicted that “young activists will find these stories irresistible.” She praised Chambers for how she emphasized “everyday traits and actions” that anyone could adopt.
In 2021, Chambers focused on a whole movement rather than a disparate group of people. Call and Response: The Story of Black Lives Matter told the history of the movement in a way that was accessible for young adults. The book begins by profiling the three women who started the movement, but it also puts it in the larger context of the civil rights movement of the mid-twentieth century. The book also covers topics such as systemic racism, calls to defund the police, and how music has been a part of protest actions throughout history. The book also features numerous quotations from various activists, a timeline of civil rights history, and other source material.
Writing in Booklist, Julia Smith wrote that the book “provides essential foundational knowledge and sets new activists up for success.” Smith praised it as a “dynamic, boots-on-the-ground accounting” of the movement, including the “massive amounts of organizing and networking” it has involved. A writer in Kirkus Reviews recommended the book for both students and adults. They liked the book’s “clarity and honesty” and how the language is “accessible to preteen readers and adults alike.” They also appreciated the book’s “logical progression.”
Two of Chambers’s more recent fiction works are Flora la Fresca & the Art of Friendship and Ida, in Love and in Trouble. The former is geared towards middle schoolers and has been advertised as the first of a series. The titular protagonist is a Panamanian American, like Chambers herself. Flora is ten years old and is heartbroken when she finds out her best friend Clara is moving all the way across the country to California. Flora struggles to find a new group of friends and struggles even more when Clara immediately finds her own new friends after the move. Things turn around for Flora, however, after a new student from Lebanon arrives in her school.
“Realistic familial dynamics and a fair amount of tween antics” was how a reviewer in Publishers Weekly described the novel. They praised it as a “warm friendship story” with “vivacious prose.” A contributor in Kirkus Reviews agreed, writing that the story portrays the “deep, intense emotions of childhood bonds.” The result is a novel that is “funny, heartwarming, and sweet.”
Ida, in Love and in Trouble is targeted more at a young adult audience. Inspired by the early civil rights figure Ida B. Wells, the book is a fictionalized story that imagines both her professional and romantic life. The historical novel covers everything from the society parties she attends to the prejudice she faces to her landmark investigative journalism about the rise of lynching in the South. The book includes snippets of Wells’s actual letters, diaries, and newspaper columns, and the narrative particularly focuses on her romantic prospects.
A writer in Publishers Weekly described it as an “expansive historical novel” that enables readers to “uncover new insight” about both Wells and how women were treated in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They praised Chambers’s “thorough research.” A reviewer in Kirkus Reviews was even more enthusiastic, lauding Chambers’s “lively writing” and the “riveting journey” the story tells. The result is a “vivid, timely, and immersive introduction” to an important historical figure.
[CLOSE NEW]
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Black Issues Book Review, March-April, 2003, E. Assata Wright, review of Having It All?: Black Women and Success, pp. 56+.
Booklist, October 1, 1998, Sally Estes, review of Marisol and Magdalena: The Sound of Our Sisterhood, p. 324; April 15, 2004, Hazel Rochman, review of When Did You Stop Loving Me, p. 1422; March 15, 2006, Emily Cook, review of The Joy of Doing Things Badly: A Girl’s Guide to Love, Life, and Foolish Bravery, p. 12; April 1, 2014, Vanessa Bush, review of Everybody’s Got Something, p. 9; June 1, 2015, Michael Cart, review of Make It Messy: My Perfectly Imperfect Life, p. 83; December 1, 2016, Vanessa Bush, review of The Meaning of Michelle: 15 Writers on the Iconic First Lady and How Her Journey Inspires Our Own, p. 12; August 1, 2018, Angela Leeper, review of Resist: 35 Profiles of Ordinary People Who Rose Up against Tyranny and Injustice, p. 62; February 15, 2019, Annie Bostrom, review of Queen Bey: A Celebration of the Power and Creativity of Beyonce Knowles-Carter, p. 9; July 1, 2021, Julia Smith, review of Call and Response: The Story of Black Lives Matter, p. 64.
Kirkus Reviews, December 1, 2002, review of Having It All?; March 15, 2004, review of When Did You Stop Loving Me; April 1, 2009, review of Plus; April 15, 2010, review of Fifteen Candles; April 1, 2014, review of Everybody’s Got Something; October 15, 2016, review of The Meaning of Michelle; April 1, 2017, review of The Go-Between; July 15, 2018, review of Resist; January 1, 2019, review of Queen Bey; August 1, 2021, review of Call and Response; May 15, 2023, review of Flora la Fresca & the Art of Friendship; July 1, 2024, review of Ida, in Love and in Trouble.
New York Times Book Review, March 30, 2003, Diane Scharper, “Having It All?” review of Having It All?, p. 16; June 5, 2016, Lisa Abend, “Kitchen Calling,” review of 32 Yolks: From My Mother’s Table to Working the Line, p. 51.
Publishers Weekly, May 6, 1996, review of Mama’s Girl, p. 63; March 16, 1998, review of Amistad Rising: A Story of Freedom, p. 64; November 20, 2006, review of Kickboxing Geishas, p. 55; September 14, 2015, review of Wake Up Happy: The Dream Big, Win Big Guide to Transforming Your Life, p. 59; April 4, 2016, review of 32 Yolks, p. 77; May 29, 2023, review of Flora la Fresca & the Art of Friendship, p. 118; June 17, 2024, review of Ida, in Love and in Trouble, pp. 119+.
Voice of Youth Advocates, April, 2017, Bethany Martin, review of The Go-Between, pp. 56+.
Washington Monthly, April, 2003, Debra J. Dickerson, “Post-Ghetto Fabulous: Coming to Grips with Black Women’s Success,” review of Having It All?, pp. 50+.
Women’s Review of Books, March-April, 2018, Kimberly Palmer, review of Kickboxing Geishas: How Modern Japanese Women Are Changing Their Nation, pp. 14+.
ONLINE
From the Mixed-Up Files, https://fromthemixedupfiles.com/ (January 6, 2025), Hillary Homzie, author interview.
Inkwell Management, https://inkwellmanagement.com/ (January 6, 2025), author profile.
Literary Hub, https://lithub.com/ (April 15, 2019), Will Schwalbe, author interview.
Nerd Daily, https://thenerddaily.com/ (September 7, 2024), Elise Dumpleton, author interview.
New York Times Company, https://www.nytco.com/ (July 29, 2020), author profile.
Stanford Daily, https://stanforddaily.com/ (February 6, 2017), Ellie Bowe, author interview.
Veronica Chambers website, https://www.veronicachambers.com/ (January 6, 2025).
About Veronica
Veronica Chambers is a prolific author, best known for her critically acclaimed memoir, Mama's Girl which has been course adopted by hundreds of high schools and colleges throughout the country. The New Yorker called Mama's Girl, "a troubling testament to grit and mother love… one of the finest and most evenhanded in the genre in recent years." Born in Panama and raised in Brooklyn, her work often reflects her Afro-Latina heritage.
She coauthored the award-winning memoir Yes Chef with chef Marcus Samuelsson as well as Samuelsson’s young adult memoir Make It Messy, and has collaborated on four New York Times bestsellers, most recently 32 Yolks, which she cowrote with chef Eric Ripert. She has been a senior editor at the New York Times Magazine, Newsweek, and Glamour. Born in Panama and raised in Brooklyn, she writes often about her Afro-Latina heritage. She speaks, reads, and writes Spanish, but she is truly fluent in Spanglish. She is currently a JSK Knight fellow at Stanford University.
The Light Bulb Ink Story
Veronica Chambers launched Light Bulb Ink in 2013.
Light Bulb Ink specializes in bringing projects from concept to reality, as well as providing guidance to creatives about how they can make this possible themselves.
Successful projects include the launch of the magazines Glam Belleza Latina and Women’s Day Latina, and four New York Times best-selling books in four years.
Its clients have included media companies including Hearst and Condé Nast, consultancies such as Brain Reserve, and non-fiction collaborations with Eric Ripert, Michael Strahan, Robin Roberts, Marcus Samuelson, and others.
July 29, 2020
Promotion for Veronica Chambers
Veronica becomes editor, Narrative Projects, a role in which she’ll steer large projects in Special Projects. Read more in this note from Monica Drake.
We are pleased to announce that Veronica Chambers has been promoted to editor, Narrative Projects.
In this new role, Veronica will steer several large projects a year within Special Projects and in partnership with desks including Style, Culture, International and Sports. In addition, she will continue to develop projects that can play in longer form, as books, podcast episodes, and on stage as events.
This role will allow Veronica to continue the work that she has already done with The Times, including Juneteenth, a digital and print package that was also a virtual event, Dance, a package curated by Misty Copeland with a live event, and Suffrage, a series of stories tied to the 19th Amendment centennial that is also being released as a young adult book, as an event series and as a virtual theater production.
Veronica will bring on board a deputy to help realize projects, and her pod will continue to roll up to the Special Projects operation that reports to Monica Drake. Because of our ambitions for international audiences, Veronica’s role will be based in London.
Veronica came to the Times two years ago as editor of Past Tense, the story team that published articles inspired by photography that The Times rediscovered as we digitized our photo archives.
Before coming to The Times, Veronica wrote and edited several books and anthologies. Her recent work, “Between Harlem and Heaven,” a collection of recipes inspired by the culinary intersections between the Asian and African diaspora in American cuisine, won the James Beard Award for best American cookbook in 2019. She has written more than a dozen books for children, including the critically acclaimed “Celia Cruz, Queen of Salsa.” Veronica also has experience in television: she spent two seasons as an executive story editor for the CW series “Girlfriends,” and has also written and developed projects for Fox and The N. A graduate of Bard College at Simon’s Rock, Veronica has been the recipient of several fellowships and awards, including the Hodder fellowship for emerging novelists at Princeton University, a National Endowment for the Arts fiction award and a Knight Journalism Fellowship at Stanford.
— Monica
Veronica Chambers
Veronica Chambers is the editor of Narrative Projects, a team dedicated to starting up multi-layered series and packages at The Times. Veronica came to the paper as editor of Past Tense, the story team that published articles inspired by photography that The Times rediscovered as we digitized our photo archives. For her work at the Times, she has won awards from the Newswomen’s Club of New York and the Jane Addams Peace Association.
AboutLatest
Before coming to The Times, Veronica wrote and edited several books and anthologies. Including “Mama’s Girl,” a critically acclaimed memoir and several children’s books including, “Shirley Chisholm is a Verb.” She co-wrote “Yes, Chef” with Marcus Samuelsson and “32 Yolks” with Eric Ripert. Her recent work, “Between Harlem and Heaven,” a collection of recipes inspired by the culinary intersections between the Asian and African diaspora in American cuisine, won the James Beard Award for best American cookbook in 2019. A graduate of Bard College at Simon's Rock, she was a 2017 John S. Knight fellow in journalism entrepreneurship and innovation at Stanford University.
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Mama's Girl" redirects here. For the Philippine drama film, see Mama's Girl (film).
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Veronica Chambers
Veronica Chambers in New York City
Veronica Chambers in New York City
Notable awards 2013 James Beard Award for Writing and Literature
Veronica Chambers is an Afro-Latina author, teacher, and magazine executive. Chambers has been an editor and writer for New York Times Magazine, Newsweek, Glamour, Good Housekeeping, Premiere, Esquire, Parade and O, The Oprah Magazine.[1]
Early life
Chambers was born in Panama and raised in Brooklyn.[2] Chambers attended Bard College at Simon's Rock, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, where she received a B.A. in Literary Studies, summa cum laude.[3]
Career
Chambers taught writing at Stanford University,[4] Bowdoin College,[5] Bard College at Simon's Rock,[4] and the Rutgers University Summer Program.[citation needed] She has been a fellow at Columbia University's Freedom Forum.[6] the Japan Society Media Fellows Program[4] in New York and Tokyo, and Stanford University's John S. Knight Journalism Fellowship.[4]
In 2012, New York Times editor Dwight Garner wrote Yes, Chef was "one of the great culinary stories of our time".[7] In 2014, Chambers co-wrote the New York Times bestseller Everybody’s Got Something with journalist, Robin Roberts.[8]
In May 2016, Random House published 32 Yolks, the memoir Chambers co-authored with chef Eric Ripert.[9] Chambers’ other memoir collaborations include Wake Up Happy with morning TV host and NFL Hall of Famer Michael Strahan and Emperor of Sound with multi-platinum producer Timbaland.[10][11]
In 2017, Chambers edited The Meaning of Michelle: 16 Writers on Our Iconic First Lady, and How Her Journey Inspires Our Own.[12] Time Magazine named it one of the top 10 non-fiction books of 2017.[13] In 2012, Chambers received the James Beard Award for Best American Cookbook for her work onYes, Chef, which she co-authored with Marcus Samuelsson.[14][15][16]
In 2018, she joined the Archival Storytelling Team at the New York Times, where she edits "Past Tense", a new initiative devoted to articles based on photographs from the newspaper's six million-photo archive.[17] The following year (2019), Chambers edited Queen Bey: A Celebration of the Power and Creativity of Beyoncé Knowles-Carter.[18]
Magazine executive
As a Director of Brand Development at Hearst Corporation, Chambers and an executive team led the relaunch of Good Housekeeping and Goodhousekeeping.com. Chambers also developed and launched the magazine Glam Latina for Condé Nast and Women's Day Latina for the Hearst Company.[19]
Social impact
In 2014, Chambers and her husband, Jason, established the Loud Emily scholarship, in honor of Emily Fisher, Veronica's mentor in philanthropy. The Loud Emily scholarship provides full tuition for two girls to the Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls in New York. The recipients are chosen based on their submissions of essays and short creative videos, explaining how and why they use their voices and music to speak about the causes they believe in.[20] Chambers, with her husband, endowed three music and literature scholarships at Bard College at Simon's Rock.[20]
Works
Between Harlem and Heaven: Afro-Asian-American Cookbook (Flatiron/Macmillan, 2018)
The Meaning of Michelle: 16 Writers on Our Iconic First Lady and How Her Journey Inspires Our Own, Editor (St. Martin's Press, 2017)
The Go-Between Young Adult novel (Delacorte/Random House, 2017)
32 Yolks (co-written with Eric Ripert) (Random House, 2016)
Wake Up Happy (co-written with Michael Strahan) (37 Ink, 2015)
Everybody’s Got Something (co-written with Robin Roberts) Grand Central Publishing, 2014)
Yes Chef (co-written with Marcus Samuelsson) (Random House, 2012)
Kickboxing Geishas: How Modern Japanese Women Are Changing Their Nation (Free Press, 2007)
The Joy of Doing Things Badly: A Girls’ Guide to Love, Life and Foolish Bravery (Doubleday, 2006)
Miss Black America (Doubleday, 2005)
Celia Cruz, Queen of Salsa (Dial, 2005)
Having It All? Black Women and Success (Doubleday, 2003)
Double Dutch: Jump Rope, Rhyme and Sisterhood (Hyperion, 2002)
Quinceañera Means Sweet Fifteen (Hyperion, 2001)
Marisol & Magdalena (Hyperion, 1998)
The Harlem Renaissance (Chelsea House, 1998)
Amistad Rising (Harcourt Brace, 1998)
Mama's Girl (Riverhead, 1996)
Poetic Justice: Filmmaking South Central Style (Dell, 1992)
Anthology contributions
The Bitch is Back, Editor Cathi Hanauer (William Morrow, 2016)
Black Cool, Editor Rebecca Walker (Soft Skull, 2012)
Mommy Wars, Editor Leslie Steiner (Random House, 2006)
Rhetorical Contexts, Editors LouAnn Thompson and Suzanne Webb (Longman Publishers, 2003)
¿Que Te Parece? Editors James Lee, Doly Jesuita Young, et al. (McGraw Hill, 2003)
The Bitch In the House: 26 Women Tell the Truth About Sex, Solitude, Work, Motherhood, and Marriage, Editor Cathi Hanauer (William Morrow, 2002)
Black Hair: Art, Style and Culture, Editor Ima Ebong (Rizzoli, 2001)
Listen Up: Voices of the Next Feminist Generation, Editors Barbara Findlen (Seal Press, 2001)
Becoming American: Personal Essays by First Generation Women, Editor Meri Danquah (Hyperion, 2000)
Growing Up Ethnic in America, Editor Maria Mazzioti Gilliam and Jennifer Gillian (Penguin Books, 1999)
Veronica Chambers
Links
» Website
» Twitter
News
Alexis Coe Recommends Several InkWell Authors for President’s Day Reads
Congratulations Veronica Chambers, Children’s Book Award 2020 Finalist!
2019 James Beard Awards Restaurant, Chef, and Media Finalists
2017 International Latino Book Award
Veronica Chambers
Veronica Chambers is a prolific author, best known for her critically acclaimed memoir Mama’s Girl and the New York Times Bestseller Yes Chef, which was co-authored with chef Marcus Samuelsson.
In 2012 Yes Chef won the prestigious James Beard literary award and was on the New York Times’ bestseller list for more than two months. In 2014, she co-authored her second New York Times bestseller, Everybody’s Got Something with GMA host, Robin Roberts.
Veronica’s upcoming collaborations include Wake Up Happy with award-winning morning TV host and NFL Hall of Famer Michael Strahan.
The New Yorker called Veronica’s own memoir, Mama’s Girl, “a troubling testament to grit and mother love … one of the finest and most evenhanded in the genre in recent years.” It has been course adopted by hundreds of high schools and colleges. Born in Panama and raised in Brooklyn, she writes often about her Afro-Latina heritage.
Veronica’s personal book projects reflect her curiosity, her passion for travel, and her love of children. Her non-fiction books include Kickboxing Geishas: How Japanese Women Are Changing Their Nation and The Joy of Doing Things Badly: A Girl’s Guide to Love, Life and Foolish Bravery.
She’s been a top editor at Glamour, Good Housekeeping, and Newsweek, among other magazines. In 2012 and 2013, she developed and launched Latina magazines for Conde Nast and Hearst.
She has also written more than a dozen books for children, most recently the critically acclaimed Celia Cruz, Queen of Salsa and the body confidence young adult novel Plus. Her teen series Amigas is being developed for MTV with Jennifer Lopez attached as executive producer.
Veronica spent two seasons as an executive story editor for the CW network’s hit series Girlfriends and earned a BET Comedy Award for her writing on the show. She has also written and developed projects for Fox and the N. Veronica has contributed to several anthologies including the best-selling Bitch in the House, edited by Cathi Hanuaer and Mommy Wars, edited by Leslie Morgan Steiner.
In 2014, Veronica Chambers and her husband, Jason, launched the Loud Emily scholarship, in honor of Emily Fisher, Veronica’s mentor in philanthropy. The Loud Emily scholarship provides full tuition for two girls to the Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls in New York. The girls are chosen on the basis of essays and short creative videos that explain how and why they rock out for the causes they believe in.
A graduate of Bard College at Simon’s Rock, Veronica and her husband have endowed three scholarships at the college in the fields of music and literature. She has been the recipient of several awards including the Hodder fellowship for emerging novelists at Princeton University and a National Endowment for the Arts fiction award.
She speaks, reads and writes Spanish, but she is truly fluent in Spanglish. She lives with her husband and daughter in Hoboken, New Jersey.
Veronica Chambers on Her
Storytelling Education
In Conversation with Will Schwalbe on But That's Another Story
By But That's Another Story
April 15, 2019
Will Schwalbe: Hi. I’m Will Schwalbe, and you’re listening to But That’s Another Story. I’ll never forget the first night my parents ever left me alone—totally alone—in our house. I was nine or so, and they wouldn’t be out late, and they left a phone number to call in case of emergency. I could do whatever I wanted—read, watch TV—and then put myself to bed. Total freedom. I decided to watch TV first, of course, but the only show that seemed interesting that evening was a terrifying episode of The Night Gallery, a horror anthology. I soon switched it off and decided to turn to a book to distract myself from the sinking feeling in my stomach. There was one in particular that had just made its way into our house. All the adults had been discussing it. They agreed it was much too mature for a child to read—so I knew this was my opportunity. The book was by a guy named William Peter Blatty, and if that doesn’t sound familiar, I bet the title will—The Exorcist. When my parents came home, I was under the covers. They thought I was fast asleep but I was wide awake and in a cold sweat. I never read another page of that book. I still can’t. But recently, I got to talking about a not so scary ghost story one that actually provided comfort—with today’s guest.
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Veronica Chambers: I’m Veronica Chambers, and I’m a writer and editor.
WS: Veronica Chambers has written in just about every genre you can think of—from her own memoir to children’s books to film criticism, and most recently, she put together a collection of essays about Beyoncé called Queen Bey. But the more you learn about Veronica, the more you understand how she became such a gifted storyteller. It turns out that Veronica has been thinking in stories her entire life.
VC: I kind of had a very nomadic experience that doesn’t really fit together. So, my family is from Panama, and I was born in Panama. And then when I was two, we moved to Northern England. Which is why I always say I have the most jacked Spanish accent. Whenever I speak Spanish, people are like, what language are you speaking? And I’m like, working class Northern England Spanish, what else!?
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WS: A love of reading was instilled in Veronica early on.
VC: My whole family were big readers. My grandmother, she came from Martinique to Panama to work on the Canal, and she taught herself English by reading illustrated Western novels. My grandmother was always a big reader. And then, you know, those few years we spent in England, my mom absolutely fell in love with like Agatha Christie and murderous theory. So that was something I grew up with too. So, I would borrow those from my mom and the funny thing is, even to this day, you ask my mother what she thinks about my writing and she’s like, I can’t believe they pay you to write. I mean, you’re no Agatha Christie.
WS: Though reading was important to Veronica, books were not the only place she learned the art of storytelling.
VC: One of the earliest stories my grandmother told me was how my uncle was murdered by his wife. She was like, “We know he was murdered because he ate this food and he fell dead at the table,” and then the dog had, I guess, reached up on the table eating the same thing, and they were both there, dead. And I was always like, Oh my God, what a terrible thing. And then, later when I was a teenager, I was going to California for something and my mom said, “You should call your aunt and you should go over to your aunt’s for dinner.” And I was like, “I didn’t know I had an aunt in California and why would I go there for dinner?” And she said, “Your aunt who murdered your uncle?” And I said, “With food?” And she’s like, “As far as we know, she hasn’t murdered anyone else.”
WS: The stories Veronica’s relatives told were not limited to family lore.
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VC: All the kind of Afro Latino deities like Shangó and Yemayá and Oshún. And then of course, like ghost stories, and ancestors, and lighting candles for ancestors. Literally my whole life was populated by a world of people I’d never met, a world of deities that were to be respected and called upon. And also the sense that in the African American tradition, when they say, every sleep ain’t shuteye every goodbye ain’t gone, that people can die and still be very much present.
They were constantly trying to tell stories to give us a sense of where we had come from. Because I don’t think, especially my mom, she was like a very homesick immigrant. I think that she didn’t feel like Brooklyn was home. Brooklyn was just the place we were living because there was work there. So, the idea was to tell us what home was like.
WS: Although Veronica’s life at home was a rich education in how to tell stories, the one at school left more to be desired.
VC: I was always trying to demand a better education. Our schools were super segregated in Brooklyn. This is the late 70s and 80s. And we moved a lot just because of our circumstances. And you know, sometimes we had more money or we had less money and I was always trying to get into the gifted and talented class. And I remember in fifth grade, I was put into this class and it was bad. This girl was making me do her homework and threatening to beat me up. And I literally would sit and just do everybody’s homework. And I finally went to the teacher and I was like, “I really don’t think I belong in this class.” And it was like a constant thing just like, “Well, who do you think you are?” Like, “Where do you belong?” The minute you go to the principal and you say, I want more and they’re like, well, you’re no genius. Like, who are you? I just always was trying to get that.
WS: Soon, Veronica found herself going after that education.
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VC: I went to Bard at Simon’s Rock College and it’s a college for kids who want to go to college early. And I went when I was 16, but half of my class was 15 and some of my class was 14, and we had a couple of 13 year olds. So I still felt kind of on the stupid side, because I was one of the oldest freshmen.
When I started college, it was the late 80s. It was before the age of political correctness and it was a really weird time because I think people were having very mixed feelings about affirmative action. It was weird because it was a very, I think, kind of hostile feeling. I felt like some people felt like—there were only 12 black kids in my school. And I think people were kind of like, well, how did you get here? And you’re on scholarship. And I was on super, super scholarship. I had like no money. I couldn’t even complete freshman orientation ’cause I just had to start working in the kitchen. So I started working in the kitchen. I worked in the library, I worked at the switchboard. I did babysitting. I mean I literally just to make my family contribution and pay for books and stuff. I worked probably 30 to 50 hours a week, which is kind of a lot for a full-time liberal arts college experience and minimum wage at that time was $3.50 an hour. So to make enough money to pay for anything, you had to work a lot of hours.
WS: Most of Veronica’s classmates were not working minimum wage jobs—or any jobs at all.
VC: I remember so well that during freshman week this girl came around begging for quarters for the laundry mat. And I remember thinking, Oh my God, what if I don’t have enough quarters? Don’t make enough to knock door to door for the laundry mat. And then literally the first break, her parents flew a jet and landed on the campus. And I was like, Oh my God. It wasn’t just that our lives were different. It was like there was a constant pretending to be things, a kind of sense of what was owed to people. I think one of the things about being immigrant and first generation—I think it’s a very common cultural characteristic to be super humble and to be super unassuming and to be really diligent and respectful to the point of not crossing boundaries. And I feel like my classmates, to a large degree, had a very different way of presenting themselves. So I think that I just felt really out of sync.
WS: Veronica also felt out of place in the classroom.
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VC: I literally went right into the first year of college—had never written a paper. The schools that I attended in Brooklyn where some of the first schools to have metal detectors. There were constantly guns at my school and knives. It was at a point where the teachers were barely teaching a lot of the time, so to walk into this kind of like really rigorous—you had to write a paper a week for every subject, including math. It was an overwhelming amount of work for me, for someone who hadn’t gone to a prep school or a boarding school. I wasn’t trained in the ways that they were trained.
WS: Veronica Chambers had grown up in a household with a rich tradition of storytelling. As she started college, she also found her upbringing gave her another special skill.
VC: The one thing I had going for me is that by the time I got to college I could read, write, read and write and speak Spanish.
WS: Her freshman year, Veronica tested into a junior level Spanish literature course. It was there that she first came across Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits.
VC: It’s a book about a Latin American family. It’s about love, but it’s also about death and the main character’s a clairvoyant.
WS: The novel’s use of magical realism felt familiar to Veronica.
VC: I felt like, I mean obviously Isabel Allende is one of the finest writers that we’ve had from Latin America. I think that it reminded me of my family stories. I think the characters felt both familiar, but masterful. I felt like she added layers to things that I could connect to very quickly. There was something there in the excellence of narrative and structure and the elegance and the high—it’s high brow, right? It’s highbrow literature, yet it’s very Latin and it’s unafraid of all the ways in which being Latin can seem like magic realism and can seem like messy or unintellectual, because it came from a tradition in which whole countries of people understood what it was being written in. Whereas I felt like I was growing up in a place where people didn’t fully understand on any level, what my background was and where I came from and what it reflected. So I felt very isolated and I do think it was the beginning of something very important for me.
It was interesting because it was in that class that I first heard the term magic realism and I remember really getting into arguments with my classmates. I’m like, what you call “magic realism,” I might call “realism realism.” I could feel myself plummeting in their opinion. They’re like, this is a work of literature. This is a genre called magic realism. When you have ghosts that speak and people speak from the dead and all of this—this is something that has happened in Latin American literature and explaining it to me as if I’m not from Latin America. And I’m like, “I totally understand that in an academic setting you have created this conversation.” And what I’m saying is that for me in this book, it reflects a very different conversation that I have with people who are not part of academia. I stood up for myself, but the pushback was strong.
WS: Though Veronica loved the book, the classroom discussion lessened her enjoyment.
VC: I felt like part of what was happening in the classroom was that there was constantly a pushing away from any kind of emotional truth and really always asking kind of what was the truth of the architecture of the book, and how it fit into questions of structure and storytelling and artifice, but also I think cultural anthropology. In some ways, I felt like every time I went to this class, it was like going to a book club where they suck the life out of you. It just was like, God, I used to love this book and now I have to come here and talk about it with youth fools and now I hate being here. So thanks for that.
WS: Despite this, The House of the Spirits still managed to take hold of Veronica.
VC: When I was reading House of the Spirits, I thought I was going to be a pre-law major. I had no intention of being a writer or a creative writer because to me that equals starving. I grew up in a lucky time in some ways in that The House of the Spirits was being taught, Toni Morrison was being taught. So I was reading those books along with the Faulkner and everything else. And I think in some ways, they were such towering works of fiction that I couldn’t really imagine myself as a fiction writer.
I actually started writing because one of my, like, ten jobs in college was tutoring someone in Spanish and she used to write for a teen magazine called Young Miss. And she said it was like money for nothing and chicks for free. She was just like, “You should totally write for a teen magazine.” She said, “Young Miss won’t take another girl from our school, but you should try Seventeen.” And I call Seventeen and they said no, ’cause I hadn’t written for a school paper or anything. So, I actually went to the library and I got the New York City telephone book. I looked up magazines and I literally called every magazine. Starting with A, and I ended at S, and I got Sassy, which had just launched. And they were like, “Yeah, do you want to come in?” And I went in and I started writing for Sassy and that was kind of the beginning.
WS: The beginning of a career in magazines that has included work for Life magazine, Premiere, Newsweek, The New York Times magazine, and many, many more. And Veronica’s work as a magazine writer also led to writing books—including children’s books.
VC: Because I was like, younger at magazines, I always had friends who were older and they were about 10 years older than me, so they often had young kids and I would often buy children’s books. And I remember writing to my agent at the time who was Sandy Dykstra, who was great and saying, could I write kids books? And she was like, “It’s such a specific genre,” and yada, yada, yada. But at the time, she had someone working for this great guy named Steve Malk, who’s a children’s book agent now, but he had come from three generations of a family that own children’s bookstores. And so he was like a great guide for me. So I wrote a few picture books. I wrote some middle grade books.
So I was writing books about like Black Latino people and it was really hard for them to figure out where to sell it and where to put it. And, and so I feel like I wrote all the stuff that nobody really read. The nice thing is that it’s actually constantly excerpted in textbooks now. I call it my “cute shoe money”—like when I get a little textbook payment and I go buy some really cute shoes.
WS: Cute shoe money aside, the children’s books represent a larger theme in Veronica’s work—the power of writing to make people feel seen. It was an experience that was especially significant for her with her memoir, Mama’s Girl.
VC: You know, I went to the Well-Read Black Girl festival and they announced me as the author of Mama’s Girl, and I’m sitting in a room, and literally you could hear the reaction and I felt like J.K. Rowling for a second. I’m so often one of only a few people of color in whatever space that I’m in, that to be in a room full of black women who were like, “That book. That book. I remember that book,” was so amazing, but that book was really about me tuning into my family and using the voices around me.
WS: A process of listening to the voices around her that began with the reading of The House of the Spirits.
VC: You know, it’s funny cause I haven’t read House of the Spirits in years. I feel like there was a time when there was always a copy of The House of the Spirits so close to me. Like I needed to be able to like get up in the middle of the night and like reach that book. I think that it was like the beginning of a conversation for me.
In my own work, my work works when I listen closely to the voices around me.
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But That’s Another Story is produced by Katie Ferguson, with editing help from Alyssa Martino. Thanks to Veronica Chambers. If you’d like to learn more about the books we’ve mentioned in this week’s episode, you can find out more in our show notes. You can also find a transcript of this episode and past ones on LitHub. If you’ve been enjoying the show, please be sure to rate and review on iTunes—it really helps others discover the program. And subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you listen. If there’s a book that changed your life, we want to hear about it. Send us an email at anotherstory@macmillan.com.
Q&A: Veronica Chambers, Author of ‘Ida, in Love and in Trouble’
Elise Dumpleton·Writers Corner·September 7, 2024·4 min read
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We chat with author Veronica Chambers about Ida, in Love and in Trouble, which follows the courageous (and flirtatious) Ida B. Wells as she navigates society parties and society prejudices to become a civil rights crusader.
Hi, Veronica! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
I always describe myself as a reader first and a writer second. But I think three of the most defining things about me are:
I grew up a Third Space, first generation American, and the first books I loved were mysteries. My mother loved books by authors like Agatha Christie. And I did, and I do. It’s not a book but I think the BBC Sherlock Holmes series is such perfection. I love the idea of a brain palace and I love the satisfying feeling of getting to the bottom of a mystery.
I am also an editor at the New York Times which is its own kind of professional heaven.
I live in London, which is a city I’ve long loved. It’s such a great city for book lovers. Rainy days, the fog, lots of bookstores and lots of reasons to stay inside and read. Also it’s the land of Austen. And I love Jane Austen.
When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?
I think being first generation made me a very voracious reader. I was intensely interested in what it meant to be American and what other families, towns, friendships, romances, were like.
But I started reading my moms’ mysteries that she borrowed from the library and I took it from there.
Quick lightning round! Tell us:
The first book you ever remember reading: I remember distinctly reading the Beatrix Potter books when I was very small.
The one that made you want to become an author: I think this is a tie between Nikki Giovanni’s Cotton Candy on a Rainy Day, Toni Morrison’s Sula and A.S. Byatt’s Possession.
The one that you can’t stop thinking about: I love the back and forth between the past and present in Possession, I think it’s one of the things that really drew me to historical fiction. How does the past impact our now? I felt that constantly in writing Ida.
Your latest novel, Ida, in Love and in Trouble, is out September 10th! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
How about 5 words/phrases?
Brave
Romantic
Justice-driven
Surprising
Inspiring
What can readers expect?
I think readers can expect a story of becoming. It’s about how a young woman, who moved to a big city with no connections and nobody backing her, became a force in journalism and American politics, and left an imprint in the world that has lasted more than a hundred years.
We tell kids all the time, “dreams can come true.” This book is really intricate about Ida’s dreams, how they were shaped, how they were thwarted and how she went above, under and beyond the obstacles that were placed in front of her.
Where did the inspiration for Ida, in Love and in Trouble come from?
Journalism is my life blood, so I knew Ida as a pioneer of what we now call investigative journalism. How she investigated the crimes of lynching would be a riveting true crime podcast. (There were Pinkerton detectives involved!)
But when I read the diaries she kept in her early twenties, I found a young woman falling in and out of love. It made me think of books I loved by Jane Austen as well as books like The Age of Innocence and I realized “Wow, Ida wasn’t just a social justice hero. She was a young Victorian woman, she was courted and dated in the Gilded Age.”
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
Oooh, I loved writing the love letters. And the fashions. But there are two moments I really loved. Writing about Ida’s friendship/mentorship with Frederick Douglass and a scene I constructed where she hears Lewis Latimer speak. Latimer worked for Edison and was a scientist and an inventor. And I’m a bit of a science geek. So that was heaven.
Can you tell us a bit about your research process?
Well, I write every draft by hand. And I read everything I could. I just had dozens of notebooks with notes about dialogue, maps that I drew, quotes that I pulled in, how love letters began and end… Oh, and this was fun—when reading about how Ida met Mary Church Terrell, who had studied classics at Oberlin, I had a really fun WhatsApp conversation with a friend who is Greek about just what Mary Church Terrell might have said in Greek back then. It was just endless amounts of geeky fun.
What do you hope readers take away from Ida, in Love and in Trouble?
I hope readers take away the idea that it’s okay to feel lost on your path to your own great thing. Ida did, again and again. But that’s why history, and historical fiction, is so vital. We need reminders that mistakes, mishaps and misfortune are not only inevitable, they are necessary plot twists on the path. The mistake isn’t the mistake. It’s not learning from the lesson.
See also
Q&A: Lucy Vine, Author of ‘Seven Exes’
I also thought a lot about something Ava Duvernay once said, which is something I think Ida believed deeply: if your dream is just about you, you’re dreaming too small.
What’s next for you?
Another historical novel, with my amazing editor, Margaret Raymo. This one is about Josephine Baker. And believe me, as Mademoiselle Baker might have said, c’est si bon!
Will you be picking up Ida, in Love and in Trouble? Tell us in the comments below!
An interview with New York Times Editor Veronica Chambers on Call and Response: The Story of Black Lives Matters
Today, on the Mixed Up Files, we welcome Veronica Chambers, who is the lead author of Call and Response: The Story of Black Lives Matters.
Chambers is the editor for Narrative Projects at the New York Times. As an author, she is best known for the New York Times-bestseller Finish the Fight!, which was named a best book of the year by the Washington Post and the New York Public Library. Her other works include the critically acclaimed memoir Mama’s Girl, Shirley Chisholm Is a Verb, and the anthologies The Meaning of Michelle—a collection of writers celebrating former first lady Michelle Obama—and Queen Bey: A Celebration of the Power and Creativity of Beyoncé Knowles-Carter. Born in Panama and raised in Brooklyn, she writes often about her Afro-Latino heritage. You can find her online at veronicachambers.com or on Twitter and Instagram @vvchambers
Congratulations to you and your team at the New York Times on the release of Call and Response: The Story of Black Lives Matters.
I can’t wait to virtually sit down with you and ask you some questions about this essential history of the Black Lives Matter movement for young people. I’m especially excited since I share certain New York City experiences with you, having been a journalist there (features writer for New York Newsday) and living for awhile in Brooklyn. I love that you’re bridging a career as an editor/journalist with being an author.
In the book, readers are introduced to the concept that “the power of the people is greater than the people in power.” Can you elaborate a little bit about that?
Sure. Experts believe that up to 26 million Americans participated in some sort of Black Lives Matters protest, which would make it one of the largest protests in the nation’s history.
Peaceful protest is the most effective form of protest in the world. A study conducted by researchers Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan compared the outcomes of hundreds of violent insurgencies with those of major nonviolent resistance campaigns from 1900 to 2006; they found that over 50 percent of the nonviolent movements succeeded, compared with about 25 percent of the violent insurgencies.
The text addresses some universal questions, such as how does a movement become a movement? You spend time looking at contemporary events and leaders as well as historical antecedents and galvanizing moments. Was it hard for you and your team to figure out how you wanted to balance all of these elements?
There’s a famous phrase that “journalism is the first draft of history.” The Black Lives Matter protests of 2020 were still ongoing when we started working on the book. There was a real challenge in trying to figure out what to immortalize in a book when the story was changing and growing every day.
That’s why the decision to lean in on the incredible photography of the New York Times was so meaningful to us. This is what the great photojournalists who contribute to the daily report saw and while we wrote text that put the movement in a broad historical context, each of the photos tells a deep and powerful story of its own, without any need for us to editorialize or comment on the images.
You make a point that the protest is larger than the people gathering in the street (although is certainly part of it). Protest can mean “making art with a message” or “calling elected officials.” How would you define protest for children?
Protest is anything we do to say we want things to be different. I think a lot about the kid I was when I’m working on these books. When I was growing up, and reading about the modern civil rights movement, I thought those are stories about heroes whose bravery and wisdom I could never match. I’ll never make a difference in those ways.
I understood as I got older that we all have a role to play in shaping the world we live in. Coretta Scott King once said, “Struggle is a never-ending process. Freedom is never really won. You earn it and win it in every generation.” I think that’s some of the truest words ever uttered.
The book makes a point to say that children are never too young to lead. In the text, you offer many examples of young leaders from teen environmentalist Greta Thunberg to eight-year-old Mari Copeny, who protested the water conditions in Flint Michigan. How might younger children participate in standing up for what they believe in?
One of the highlights of my year was this piece I did about Paola Velez and Bakers Against Racism. Bake sales associated with that group have raised more than two million dollars in a single year towards social justice causes.
Paola is not just an incredible culinary talent but also one of the most eloquent, thoughtful people I’ve ever interviewed. One of the things she said was this: “When we speak about issues that we care about, we do it with a pie in hand. And so sometimes it’s a little more graceful and a little more palatable because there’s something sweet at the end of this, like, very charged, very truth-forward statement that we have to make.”
The piece is here.
The founders of Black Lives Matters are three women: Alicia Garza, Opal Tometi and Patrisse Cullors. They were all in their late twenties or early thirties when they started BLM. However, I was intrigued to learn that Garza began her activism at the age of 12, focusing on reproductive rights. And it was in high school that Tometi became aware of the need to stand up for the rights of immigrants, particularly the undocumented. And Cullors learned first-hand about systemic racism as a kid when her family would go hungry. Veronica, did you have any powerful experiences as a child that also led you to career as an author, journalist and editor?
I think being a chronic outsider really helped me become a reader and then a writer. My family is from Panama, I’m Afro-Latina. I came to the country when I was 5, just becoming a reader and one of the things I was looking at books to do was teach me how to be an American. So many of the books published today remind me of the curiosity I felt at that moment – how do things work or don’t work here?
Black Lives Matter is the story of collaboration. It was Garza who wrote on Facebook in response to the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the death of Trayvon Martin; it was Cullors who created the hashtag “blacklivesmatter,” and it was Tometti who created the initial Facebook, Twitter and other social media accounts for the movement. In your career as an editor and writer, why is the collaborative experience so important?
Collaboration is one of my super powers. But when I was a kid, it was something I really railed against. I hated having to do projects or presentations as a team. I think it was because I was shy and I felt like I never got the credit for all my hard work.
But I’m also a huge fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and in some ways, I think that oeuvre really mimics the creative journey. Turns out you need more than one superhero to save the world. Similarly, you need lots of great minds to make extraordinary journalism.
You write that the book is “built upon the work of incredible photographers and photo editors.” How did you work with Photo Editor Anika Burgess to select the images? There must have been so many to choose from.
Anika Burgess, the photo editor on the project, as well as Jennifer Harlan, my co-author, had all worked on a history based project at the Times called Past Tense. We had a years long history of sifting through hundreds of photos and really sitting back together and discussing what moves us. What’s incredible was that 90% of the time, the photos we loved the most, we all had the same reaction to. Viewing a powerful photo is like hearing a truly great pop song, it just grabs you. What was hard was winnowing it down. There are more than 100 photos in the book. I would love to have run 200 photos. Making those cuts was brutal.
In an interview with National Geographic in 2020, Garza said, “In the midst of the all the grief and rage and pain, there’s hopefulness.” Can you speak to that and elaborate on hopefulness?
I’m incredibly hopeful. As a first generation American, what I’ve always gotten from black history is that, despite all of the challenges, African-Americans are in the business of Hope. Every decade, every chapter of the history of black people in this country is infused with countless moments of hope, resilience and creativity. I think that at this particular moment in the nation, black history and its masterclass in hope and possibility, can be useful to Americans of all backgrounds.
Hillary Homzie is the author of the Ellie May chapter book series (Charlesbridge, 2018), Apple Pie Promises (Sky Pony/Swirl, 2018), Pumpkin Spice Secrets (Sky Pony/Swirl, 2017), Queen of Likes (Simon & Schuster MIX 2016), The Hot List (Simon & Schuster MIX 2011) and Things Are Gonna Get Ugly (Simon & Schuster, 2009) as well as the Alien Clones From Outer Space (Simon & Schuster Aladdin 2002) chapter book series. She’s also a contributor to the Kate the Chemist middle grade series (Philomel Books/Penguin Random House). Her forthcoming nonfiction picture book, If You Were a Princess: True Stories of Brave Leaders From Around the World is a look at historical and current princesses from many diverse lands who have made their mark (Simon & Schuster in August 2022). During the year, Hillary teaches at Sonoma State University and, in the summers, she teaches in the graduate program in children’s literature, writing and illustration at Hollins University. She also is an instructor for the Children’s Book Academy.
She can be found at hillaryhomzie.com and on her Facebook page as well as on Twitter.
Q&A with Veronica Chambers, author of “The Meaning of Michelle”
Courtesy of Jason Clampet Veronica Chambers' recently published book examines Michelle Obama' and her legacy.
By Ellie Bowen
Feb. 6, 2017, 12:28 a.m.
Veronica Chambers, John S. Knight fellow at Stanford, is a prolific author and journalist. Her latest work, “The Meaning of Michelle: 16 Writers on the Iconic First Lady and How Her Journey Inspires Our Own,” offers essays from 16 noteworthy contributors on what Michelle Obama means to American culture. Chambers will hold a panel on Feb. 7 at Books Inc. in Town & Country to discuss the book. The Daily chatted with Chambers about race, our current political climate and Obama’s illustrious biceps.
Q&A with Veronica Chambers, author of "The Meaning of Michelle"
Veronica Chambers’ recently published book examines Michelle Obama’ and her legacy. (Courtesy of Jason Clampet)
The Stanford Daily (TSD): How does “The Meaning of Michelle” compare to your other works, and what, in your opinion, is the role of this type of biographical storytelling?
Veronica Chambers (VC): I had written for other anthologies before, and I always loved being in a collection with other writers. I think it’s a great way to amplify your voice. One of the very first collections I was in was a book called “The Bitch in the House,” which is women writing about work, marriage and motherhood, and at the time, I wasn’t married or a mother, but I was in this book with all these more established writers. It was a chance for other people to get to know my work … When the publication date came out for [“The Meaning of Michelle”], it wasn’t just my book — it was the conversation of 16 other people. So it’s very nice to share it, because writing is usually so solitary. It’s nice to have a project like this where it’s about conversation and ideas.
TSD: What most inspires you about Michelle Obama?
VC: Oh my god, let me count the ways. I think that from the time of the first campaign to the eight years in the White House, it meant a lot to me. When I was growing up, there weren’t a lot of women who had brown skin, who looked like me, in prominent places, either in the media or movies or TV. Then to have someone who’s not an actress … a real woman who’s accomplished, who’s super educated, excelling in her life — it’s really important and it creates a real sense of possibility. People always ask me what I think Michelle Obama’s legacy will be, and I think it’s authenticity and possibility.
TSD: In what ways will Michelle Obama use her platform as the first African-American FLOTUS to speak to the minorities in America?
VC: I think she has great bipartisan support. One of the things that she did that was very inspiring was that she took on the cause of military families. My mom was a military mom, and my dad was in the Air Force, and military families tend to be more conservative — it tends to be more Middle America, not so coastal. I think that she’ll continue to do that kind of work, looking to support communities and families that need it the most. That’s a bipartisan issue handled with grace, and I hope we get back there very soon.
TSD: In an interview with New York Public Radio, you stated that Michelle Obama “lived the questions out loud.” What kind of questions did she live out loud, and how do you think her graceful and confident example facing these questions influence women of color?
VC: I think that being a first or only is really tough. And unfortunately, we’re still at a time where there is a first black president and black first lady. When you do something that no one who looks like you has done before, there are a lot of questions — like how will you handle it? How are you different from other people? How are you the same? Are you as good as this person?
I was the first black woman editor at the New York Times Magazine – that’s crazy! I’m not that old where you’d think I could be the New York Times’ first anything, but I was… People wanted to know about things, they had questions about my hair, they wanted to know where I was from, they wanted to know if I only listen to hip-hop. When people aren’t exposed to difference, there’s a lot of burden put on you to explain.
I think one of the things that the Obamas did really well is that they really took their jobs as the president and first lady seriously, and they really handled the questions and distractions with grace. And I think that takes a lot of confidence. As the first black woman editor, I felt like I couldn’t just fade in. I never had an off-day. If I wasn’t prepared for the meeting – some of the guys would come in and say, “Oh, I was out late last night” – but if I didn’t prepare for the meeting, it was like, “Oh, we hired a black woman and look, she doesn’t have her ideas.”
The time I was there, I had so little social life, because I was trying to do my job perfectly. One of the essays in the book talks about how Michelle Obama is flawlessly imperfect. She says, “I’m not perfect, but I’m doing my best.” When I was younger, I didn’t really have the confidence to say that, because I felt that if I failed, I failed everybody who ever looked like me and whoever came before me. And that’s like a lot of pressure.
TSD: The New York Times review of your book mentioned that you wake up at 5 a.m. twice a week to get guns like Michelle — what’s your lifting routine?
VC: Well, I still don’t have her arms. But I think it’s possible. I just have not figured out the right thing for me. But I do not give up. I think the fitness that she advocated and taking care of yourself is so amazing. The president joked at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner that he looked older while she seemed to be aging backwards. Though, if you google “Michelle Obama workout routine,” there’s some things from her trainer.
TSD: “The Meaning of Michelle” was nominated as one of Book Riot’s “11 Books to Help Us Make It Through a Trump Presidency.” In today’s political climate, what kind of effects do Michelle’s words, actions and example have on our society?
VC: I was so happy when I saw that! I feel like we’re all in a little bit of a PTSD from the inauguration. So many things have happened in the last few weeks that [are] — I don’t think it’s unfair to say — shocking and frightening. But the thing is, I think that we have to carry history with us. The last eight years can’t just disappear because of what we are dealing with now. It’s been quicker and more than we expected, but we can carry the experience and the inspiration with us because I think it’s really important that we don’t fall in to disappear or give up… I really agree with [Senator Cory Booker ’91 M.A. ’92] when he says, “the power of the people is always greater than the people in power.” I think if we can keep that in mind, then we’ll be okay. It’s not gonna be easy, but we’ll be okay.
This transcript has been condensed and lightly edited.
Contact Ellie Bowen at ebowen ‘at’ stanford.edu.
Ida, in Love and in Trouble
Veronica Chambers. Little, Brown, $18.99 (400p) ISBN 978-0-316-50016-6
Chambers (Finish the Fight) crafts a fictionalized account of the professional and romantic life of civil rights figure Ida B. Wells in this expansive historical novel. As the daughter of formerly enslaved people who died when she was a child, teenage Ida is determined to overcome the adversities she faces as a Black woman in America to make something of herself and her family name ("If fear was insistent on shackling itself to her side, then it better be prepared to go all the places Ida intended to go"). Starting with Ida's career as a teacher in Memphis, where she also wrote articles about race relations for Black-owned newspapers, Chambers chronicles Ida's interpersonal developments, such as the years in which she kept up correspondence with several suitors. Selections from protagonist Ida's columns, letters to and from romantic prospects, and entries from her diary are interspersed throughout the narrative, which reads more like a biography than a youthful imagining of the subject's life. Still, the creator's thorough research will allow readers to uncover new insight into the figure's experience navigating societal standards for women--especially Black women--in the late 19th century. Ages 14-up. Agent: Kim Witherspoon, InkWell Management. (Sept.)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
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"Ida, in Love and in Trouble." Publishers Weekly, vol. 271, no. 24, 17 June 2024, pp. 119+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A800405184/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=04d2bbd0. Accessed 17 Nov. 2024.
Chambers, Veronica IDA, IN LOVE AND IN TROUBLE Little, Brown (Teen None) $18.99 9, 10 ISBN: 9780316500166
A fictionalized account of a pivotal decade in the life of pioneering journalist and suffragist Ida B. Wells, focusing on her burgeoning career and active love life.
Born in Mississippi, the oldest in a large family, Wells lost her parents to yellow fever. She began her career as a schoolteacher in Memphis, Tennessee, a coveted position for a woman at the time. Her people were unknown to the Black elite of the Upper Tenth, but Wells, an ardent admirer of arts and literature, found community at the Memphis Lyceum literary salon and was appointed editor of its literary journal. As her editorials appeared in Black weeklies in other cities, she built a reputation for her writing. She had no shortage of attention from interested gentlemen near and far, but Wells remained keenly aware of the domestic societal pressures on women. Chambers offers a riveting account of the early-adult years of a revolutionary journalist whose work was "pinned on [her] heart, more permanently than any suitor ever could be." The book, which spans the years 1885-1895, maintains historical continuity and doesn't shy away from (or overdramatize) Wells' own documented introspection about her love life. The lively writing invites readers on a riveting journey through Wells' rise to becoming one of the most important journalists in a country that was in constant turmoil and transition.
A vivid, timely, and immersive introduction to an activist and her enduring legacy. (author's note, sources, bibliography) (Historical fiction. 13-18)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
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"Chambers, Veronica: IDA, IN LOVE AND IN TROUBLE." Kirkus Reviews, 1 July 2024, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A799332804/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=ed13b22a. Accessed 17 Nov. 2024.
Flora La Fresca & the Art of Friendship
Veronica Chambers, illus. by Sujean Rim.
Dial, $17.99 (272p) ISBN 978-0-525-55629-9
Afro-Panamanian American 10-year-old Flora Violeta LeFevte and her Argentinian American BFF Clara Ocampo Londra have experienced everything together, including agonizing Saturday Spanish lessons and daring adventures at the local skate park. So Flora is devastated when Clara has to move from their Rhode Island hometown to California because of Clara's mother's new job. As the besties lament Clara's impending move, they hang out as much as they can and create, using coding tool Scratch, a BFF-ometer test to help them make new friends. While Clara seems to immediately find a new friend group, Flora can't imagine anyone replacing Clara. It's even difficult to connect with her sister Maylin, who's too preoccupied with planning her quinceanera to offer Flora comfort. But when Lebanese new student Zaidee Khal arrives from Paris, Flora begins to believe that maybe she won't feel lonely forever. Pencil-like b&w sketches from Rim (Take a Chance) pepper vivacious prose by Chamber (Finish the Fight!), punctuating Flora's moments of elation and sorrow as she works to navigate her shifting relationships. Realistic familial dynamics and a fair amount of tween antics from Flora and company add verve to this warm friendship story. Ages 8-12. (July)
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"Flora La Fresca & the Art of Friendship." Publishers Weekly, vol. 270, no. 22, 29 May 2023, p. 118. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A753088984/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=a7680bb6. Accessed 17 Nov. 2024.
Chambers, Veronica FLORA LA FRESCA & THE ART OF FRIENDSHIP Dial Books (Children's None) $17.99 7, 18 ISBN: 9780525556299
Ten-year-old Flora struggles after her best friend moves away.
Flora LeFevre would rate her best friend, Clara Londra, full marks on the BFF-ometer the girls programmed in Scratch. Clara makes Saturday Spanish school bearable, and she's down for any adventure. They both have parents from far away--Flora's are from Panama, and Clara's are from Argentina. So, when Clara's mother announces that they are leaving Rhode Island to move to California, Flora feels lost even though the girls resolve to remain best friends no matter what. Maylin, Flora's older sister, is too obsessed with planning her quinceañera to pay attention to her. Worse, Clara quickly finds a new friend in California. Flora thinks no one can hold a candle to Clara until a new student arrives in class: Hailing from Paris, Lebanese Zaidee Khal seems too sophisticated for fifth grade. As Flora slowly warms up to Zaidee, they begin to form a new friendship. But can Flora have two besties? Chambers places universal friendship trials within the specific joy and beauty of an Afro-Panamanian family, capturing the deep, intense emotions of childhood bonds. Rim's delightful illustrations punctuate the text and capture the mood of the characters' journeys. The dialogue is peppered with Spanish in the natural cadence of bilingual families, with each member possessing varying degrees of proficiency. Non-Spanish-speaking readers won't miss a beat and may even pick up a phrase or two.
Funny, heartwarming, and sweet. (Fiction. 8-12)
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"Chambers, Veronica: FLORA LA FRESCA & THE ART OF FRIENDSHIP." Kirkus Reviews, 15 May 2023, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A748974054/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=45b2efdf. Accessed 17 Nov. 2024.
Call and Response: The Story of Black Lives Matter. By Veronica Chambers. Aug. 2021. 160p. Illus. HMH/Versify, $21.99 (9780358573418). Gr. 7-12.323.
To call this a history of Black Lives Matter isn't enough, as Chambers captures the context of current events; situates this movement within the larger story of slavery in the U.S. and the civil rights movement of the 1950s and '60s; collects wise words from activists to inspire the next generation to join the fight with whatever talents they have; and scatters images of protesters young and old, from the past to the present. It's a dynamic, boots-on-the-ground accounting of an active movement devoted to "ending racial injustice and police brutality" and the massive amounts of organizing and networking that make it possible--BLM is much more than a hashtag. The first chapter introduces the three incredible women who started Black Lives Matter--Alicia Garza, Opal Tometi, and Patrisse Cullors--telling readers about their backgrounds, entries into activism, and first steps in forming Black Lives Matter. Exercising her excellent journalism skills, Chambers weaves their stories and that of the growing Black Lives Matter movement into the subsequent nine chapters, which tackle topics like systemic racism, art and music in protest (including nine pages of photographed Black Lives Matter murals), civil rights history in the U.S. told via an incredible annotated time line, and explanations of the movement's calls to defund the police. Comprehensive, propulsive, and packed with quotes and source material, this book provides essential foundational knowledge and sets new activists up for success.--Julia Smith
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2021 American Library Association
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Smith, Julia. "Call and Response: The Story of Black Lives Matter." Booklist, vol. 117, no. 21, 1 July 2021, p. 64. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A669809444/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=fe98fea4. Accessed 17 Nov. 2024.
Chambers, Veronica CALL AND RESPONSE Versify/HarperCollins (Children's None) $18.49 8, 17 ISBN: 978-0-358-57341-8
An explanatory lesson about the historical protests of June 2020 and what led up to them.
Basing their account heavily on firsthand accounts of various Black Lives Matter leaders and New York Times reporters, the authors explore the origins of the movement and the impact it has had along with the historical events that its leaders built it upon. Beginning with how BLM founders Opal Tometi, Patrisse Cullors, and Alicia Garza came separately to activism and then together in 2013 via a Black leadership network, they tell the stories of victims such as Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and George Floyd in the context of the roles they played in the movement’s development. The second half delves deeper into history with discussions of systemic racism and comparisons to the civil rights and Black Power movements, allowing readers to clearly identify parallels to the impact on Black Americans today. The roles played by athletes, musicians, and artists may inspire readers to find their unique paths to activism. The authors write with clarity and honesty, holding back no truths, but with language that makes the book accessible to preteen readers and adults alike. A logical progression of chapters punctuated by informational breakouts and concise paragraphs accompanied by photographs on each page make for a clean layout and easy reading.
An educational introduction for young readers and a comprehensive primer for adults. (authors' note, further reading, photo credits, bibliography, index) (Nonfiction. 11-adult)
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"Chambers, Veronica: CALL AND RESPONSE." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Aug. 2021, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A669986650/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=1c8a36af. Accessed 17 Nov. 2024.
Queen Bey: A Celebration of the Power and Creativity of Beyonce Knowles-Carter. Ed. by Veronica Chambers. Mar. 2019. 240p. St. Martin's, $26.99 (9781250200525). 782.42164.
After similarly anthologizing pieces about the former First Lady in The Meaning of Michelle (2017), editor and writer Chambers shares 19 essays celebrating superstar Beyonce. In her introduction, Chambers writes that Beyonce has opened the very possibilities for what Black girls might be, a thought echoed by the following essays, which consider Beyonce's influence for the Latinx and gay communities as well. The contributors' own work invariably influences what Beyonce means to them. Choreographer Fatima Robinson, for instance, knows firsthand that Beyonce is the greatest performer since Michael Jackson. Data-heads will appreciate Meredith Broussard's essay in infographics. Other pieces consider Beyonce's southernness, spirituality, motherhood, and marriage, as well as her use of social media and the artist-empowering shift it represents, and the ways her creations interact with other works of art. Chambers includes detracting perspectives, too, most affectingly in an essay authored by professor Melissa Harris Perry and her former student Mankaprr Conteh, in which each woman learns from the other. Caroline Clarke's nostalgic, reverent look at her now-grown daughter's "Beyoncession" closes the collection with appropriate strength.--Annie Bostrom
YA: A natural choice for teen members of the Beyhive. AB.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2019 American Library Association
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Bostrom, Annie. "Queen Bey: A Celebration of the Power and Creativity of Beyonce Knowles-Carter." Booklist, vol. 115, no. 12, 15 Feb. 2019, p. 9. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A575009890/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=c4f9b2ae. Accessed 17 Nov. 2024.
Chambers, Veronica QUEEN BEY St. Martin's (Adult Nonfiction) $27.99 3, 5 ISBN: 978-1-250-20052-5
A diverse chorus of voices praises the acclaimed songstress and cultural icon.
Chambers (The Go-Between, 2017, etc.), the editor of the New York Times archival storytelling team, who, in addition to her own books, has co-authored books by Michael Strahan, Timbaland, Robin Roberts, Eric Ripert, and Marcus Samuelsson, collects essays from distinguished professionals in entertainment, media, and social activism. In an introduction celebrating the "fire in her belly, the almost otherworldly level of focus and ambition in her eyes," Chambers lauds Beyonce's "soundtrack of power and possibility," which buoyed the editor through unexpected life changes. Nigerian author and speaker Luvvie Ajayi rhapsodizes over the singer's immense cultural influence and celebrates her memorable, career-defining performance at the 2018 Coachella Festival. Data journalist Meredith Broussard's graphic biography of "Bey" vividly combines art and geographical statistics. The perspectives Chambers assembles are delightfully manifold and aptly representative of Beyonce as a veteran entertainer and an influential cultural icon transcending age and social status. YouTube sensation Kid Fury commends Beyonce on how much her inclusive productions have consistently impacted the gay community. Other contributors examine Beyonce's referential, allusive artistry, her evolving feminism, her Instagram account, and career comparisons to the upper echelon of female rappers, and there are fair-minded criticisms of her "Formation" and "Lemonade" albums. Collectively, these well-balanced essays amplify the popularity and reach of Beyonce's music and persona across generations of women (and men). The anthology closes with award-winning journalist Caroline Clarke attesting that while perfectionism can be a common trap for girls, when it is applied to superstars like Beyonce, it makes her "a pretty damn good role model for my daughter or anyone, including me." With such a dynamic ensemble of opinions and reflections, the collection will be sweet reading not just for Beyonce's superfans, but also for activists, feminists, and budding vocalists.
An uplifting and resounding ovation.
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"Chambers, Veronica: QUEEN BEY." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Jan. 2019. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A567651678/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=39a9497f. Accessed 17 Nov. 2024.
Chambers, Veronica RESIST Harper/HarperCollins (Children's Informational) $16.99 9, 25 ISBN: 978-0-06-279625-7
From Joan of Arc in 1429 to the Movement for Black Lives and the Women's March in 2017, profiles of ordinary people resisting the status quo on principle lead to lessons for young people.
Throughout the ages and spanning the globe, people have needed to raise their voices and wield pens, swords, or nonviolent bodies to call attention to societal wrongs. In this collective biography, readers meet 35 such change-makers from history distant and recent. Martin Luther and Galileo openly challenged major institutions. Sitting Bull, Queen Liliuokalani, and Mohandas Gandhi resisted the colonialists who took over their land and oppressed their people. Some inspired through art or environmentalism, and many fought for the right to be treated equally regardless of gender, race, color, sexual orientation, or gender identity. Most readers will find stories they haven't heard before in this volume and will discover new inspiration from the familiar. Each brief profile begins with a quote and ends with a "resist lesson" such as "One voice can shake the earth" or "Oppression isolates us. Resistance unites us." They are written in an engaging third-person narrative style highlighting what distinguishes their subjects and occasionally what we can learn from their examples ("Not all powerful people shout"). Despite their subjects' renown, they are presented so that their strength is inspiring rather than overwhelming or distancing, often a result of personal growth, key moments, and intentional networking.
A resource to enrich the shelves of every home and library. (suggested reading, viewing, listening) (Collective biography. 9-16)
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"Chambers, Veronica: RESIST." Kirkus Reviews, 15 July 2018. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A546323147/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=648cb968. Accessed 17 Nov. 2024.
Resist: 35 Profiles of Ordinary People Who Rose Up against Tyranny and Injustice.
By Veronica Chambers.
Sept. 2018. 224p. Harper, $16.99 (9780062796257). Gr. 4-7. 303.48.
In his foreword, Senator Corey Booker likens "the power to make change" to "the story of humanity." Chambers calls this resistance and offers 35 profiles of people who resisted injustice during their lifetime. Arranged chronologically, the diverse profiles range from the expected Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Cesar Chavez, and Malaia Yousafzai to the equally compelling Lozen the Apache Warrior, Hawaii's Queen Liliuokalani, actress (and inventor!) Hedy Lamarr, and Harvey Milk. They begin with the year of resistance and a defining quote from the individual, before describing a social injustice and how resistance opened minds and hearts, strove to better society, and sometimes even saved lives. A concluding "#resist lesson" recognizes the impact of social media and reinforces that anyone can make a difference. In telling the stories of these seemingly larger-than-life protesters, Chambers highlights everyday traits and actions that all can exemplify. For instance, quiet Sojourner Truth did not have to be loud to be powerful. And through conversation and social media, three friends--Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi--formed the Black Lives Matter movement. The final profile pays tribute to the million participants in the Women's March of 2017. Collectively, the profiles show common themes and connections among the protesters. Young activists will find these stories irresistible. --Angela Leeper
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 American Library Association
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Leeper, Angela. "Resist: 35 Profiles of Ordinary People Who Rose Up against Tyranny and Injustice." Booklist, vol. 114, no. 22, 1 Aug. 2018, p. 62. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A550613282/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=b5786b70. Accessed 17 Nov. 2024.
Chambers, Veronica. The Go-Between. Delacorte/Penguin Random House, 2017. 208p. $16.99. 978-1-101-93095-3.
Camilla del Valle leads a seemingly charmed life. The daughter of one of Mexico's biggest telenovela stars and the most successful voice-over actor, Cami enjoys material comforts and luxuries most people only dream of--private planes, chauffeurs, an AmEx Black card--but she has trouble making friends, never sure who actually likes her and who is just in awe of her mother. When Cami's mother lands a role on an American television show, the family moves to L.A. While Cami misses her Mexico City home, she is excited to create a new, American version of herself with people whose friendship she can trust. When school friends assume she is a poor, scholarship student, Cami goes along with it as a sort-of sociological experiment; however, she soon finds herself going to great lengths to keep up the charade.
The feeling of being caught between two worlds is one to which many young adults, particularly those from immigrant backgrounds, will relate. Issues of subtle (and not-so-subtle) racism, assimilation, and social class are addressed. Most characters, though, including Cami, and the relationships among them are not developed, leaving readers unsure if any particular action is in-character or represents change or growth. Some characters who are introduced, like the chemistry teacher, have no relevance to the plot. Descriptive passages are wordy and repetitive. More young adult books addressing the issues in The Go-Between are needed, but flaws in the writing and lack of character development make this a secondary purchase.--Bethany Martin.
QUALITY
5Q Hard to imagine it being better written.
4Q Better than most, marred only by occasional lapses.
3Q Readable, without serious defects.
2Q Better editing or work by the author might have warranted a 3Q.
1Q Hard to understand how it got published, except in relation to its P rating (and not even then sometimes).
POPULARITY
5P Every YA (who reads) was dying to read it yesterday.
4P Broad general or genre YA appeal.
3P Will appeal with pushing.
2P For the YA reader with a special interest in the subject.
1P No YA will read unless forced to for assignments.
GRADE LEVEL INTEREST
M Middle School (defined as grades 6-8).
J Junior High (defined as grades 7-9).
S Senior High (defined as grades 10-12).
A/YA Adult-marketed book recommended for YAs.
NA New Adult (defined as college-age).
R Reluctant readers (defined as particularly suited for reluctant readers).
(a) Highlighted Reviews Graphic Novel Format
(G) Graphic Novel Format
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 E L Kurdyla Publishing LLC
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Martin, Bethany. "Chambers, Veronica. The Go-Between." Voice of Youth Advocates, vol. 40, no. 1, Apr. 2017, pp. 56+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A491949470/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=2a2dcde3. Accessed 17 Nov. 2024.
Chambers, Veronica THE GO-BETWEEN Delacorte (Children's Fiction) $16.99 5, 9 ISBN: 978-1-101-93095-3
The daughter of a Mexican telenovela superstar pretends to be a poor scholarship kid at a posh Los Angeles prep school. In Mexico City, everyone knows Camilla's A-list family: her mother, Carolina del Valle, is a paparazzi-besieged leading lady, and her father, Reinaldo, is a voice-over actor for Hollywood movies dubbed in Spanish. When the tabloids find out Camilla's mom is on anti-anxiety meds, the family decides to temporarily move to Beverly Hills, so Carolina can work on her first English-language project: an American sitcom. At tony private school Polestar Academy, Camilla befriends Rooney, the sweet and talented African-American school chef--causing two classmates (one biracial, one white) to mistakenly believe Camilla is a low-income student--and the daughter of "a domestic." Equally annoyed and amused, likable if naive Camilla plays along with their misconceptions, since her mom is a maid...on television. A bottle blonde with designer clothes, Camilla never thought of herself as a person of color in her native Mexico, but pretending opens her eyes to how Latinos in the U.S. are treated and underestimated. There's a well-researched authenticity to the author's descriptions of everything from Mexican culture to couture clothing, but it's the story's exploration of stereotypes that makes it memorable. One misstep, however, is the romance, which is so light it's ultimately unnecessary. There's much to appreciate in this teen soap with heart, even if it wraps up a little too neatly. (Fiction. 12-16)
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"Chambers, Veronica: THE GO-BETWEEN." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Apr. 2017. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A487668425/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=3234df43. Accessed 17 Nov. 2024.
Chambers, Veronica THE MEANING OF MICHELLE St. Martin's (Adult Nonfiction) $25.99 1, 10 ISBN: 978-1-250-11496-9
A collection of essays that genuflect before a first lady like no other.Though many will miss President Barack Obama, this book suggests that Michelle Obama will be missed even more and that her popularity, accomplishments, and sheer presence have bolstered her husband's. "If he found a way to convince this amazing woman to accept his hand and have his children, he's exactly the type of man I want to be my president," explains Damon Young, a columnist and contributing editor for Ebony and one of the few male contributors to a collection dominated by African-American women. He's not the only one to comment on her "curvy behind," though he's the only one who uses that term. Wherever historians end up ranking the Obama presidency, early returns suggest that no first lady has been as beloved and influential since Jackie Kennedy. Michelle has served as "a game changer for Black women, and it turned out all women," writes editor Chambers, giving her a singular legacy that she is still plenty young enough to extend (as Roxane Gay suggests in her concluding essay). The variety of contributors allows for different perspectives on their common subject--as a fashion icon, a cultural arbiter, the self-proclaimed "mom-in-chief," partner in a mutual girl crush with Beyoncé, fitness and food advocate, and a wife who supports but does not defer. "The irony is that Michelle Obama makes it look so easy because she is so complicated," writes Tiffany Dufu. "Simultaneously flawless and imperfect, she brilliantly navigates opposing forces. And in the tension we can all see ourselves." As Rebecca Carroll suggests, "she represents at least 60 percent of what America will miss most about the Obama presidency." While writing about the first lady, most of these perceptive essayists are also writing about themselves and their country, showing the shifts in perception and possibility that she has helped inspire.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Kirkus Media LLC
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"Chambers, Veronica: THE MEANING OF MICHELLE." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Oct. 2016, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A466329329/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=daf9f548. Accessed 17 Nov. 2024.
The Meaning of Michelle: 15 Writers on the Iconic First Lady and How Her Journey Inspires Our Own. Ed. by Veronica Chambers. Jan. 2017. 240p. St. Martin's, $25.99 (9781250114969). 973.932092.
When Michelle Obama stepped on the national stage as the First Lady, she challenged the view most Americans had about that largely ceremonial position. She had been criticized during the campaign as an "angry black woman" and scrutinized for everything from her bangs to her fist bumps. But all along, Obama has had admirers who applauded her sense of authenticity as well as her sense of style. Writer and editor Chambers gathered essays from a wide range of admirers who examine Obama's indelible impact on American culture as they explore what her First Ladyship has meant to them as artists, writers, social commentators, and journalists. The contributors recall Obama's Bring Back Our Girls campaign when 276 Nigerian girls were kidnapped by terrorists, and her role as mom-in-chief campaigning to fight childhood obesity. They also recall criticisms by some feminists for her traditional role and applause from black women delighted to see a traditional black family on national display. Many praise her accessibility, her combination of success and a "home girl" quality that has validated the ambitions of women, particularly black women. Among the 16 contributors are novelist Benilde Litde; Tony-nominated actress Phillipa Soo; film director Ava Duvernay; and Charlene McCray, First Lady of New York City. This is a glorious tribute to an incredible woman.--Vanessa Bush
YA: This collection of incisive portraits of a trailblazing African American woman will inspire YAs. VB.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association
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Bush, Vanessa. "The Meaning of Michelle: 15 Writers on the Iconic First Lady and How Her Journey Inspires Our Own." Booklist, vol. 113, no. 7, 1 Dec. 2016, p. 12. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A474717006/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=3cff0acd. Accessed 17 Nov. 2024.
32 Yolks: From My Mother's Table to Working the Line
Eric Ripert, with Veronica Chambers. Random House, $28 (220p) ISBN 978-0-8129-9298-4
Food enthusiasts who have seen the finesse of Ripert's delicate plates on television shows and have attempted recipes from Le Bernardin Cookbook will be delighted to meet the man behind the recipes. In this engaging memoir, Ripert shares his life as a young boy in Southern France. Ripert refines his palette and learns to treat food like a gift. He watches his mother set the table with exquisite care even for his daily gouter, or after-school snack. At age 11, after the death of his father, Ripert finds solace and inspiration in the kitchen. Ripert begins to cook in some of the finest kitchens in France, under the thumb of some of the most notorious culinary masters; his apprenticeships involve painful, long hours and no social life. After his obligatory military service, he gets back to the line, discovers a particular love for seafood, and dives into his culinary passions with an unmatched drive. He masters some of the most difficult techniques, and eventually follows his dream to the U.S. With his exacting prose and eye for detail, Ripert has created a wonderful memoir about his early days as a chef. (May)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
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"32 Yolks: From My Mother's Table to Working the Line." Publishers Weekly, vol. 263, no. 14, 4 Apr. 2016, p. 77. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A448902753/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=854af5ee. Accessed 17 Nov. 2024.
32 YOLKSFrom My Mother's Table to Working the LineBy Eric Ripert with Veronica Chambers247 pp. Random House. $28.
It says something about our food-obsessed times that the chef's memoir has become a genre in its own right. A mere three decades ago, cooking was the fallback career for high-school dropouts and ex-cons, hardly considered the stuff (pace Orwell) of literature. Now, however, chefs are not merely respected professionals; they're the celebrated producers of our fetishized, farm-to-table hopes and dreams. So celebrated, in fact, that their stories have acquired narrative conventions no less rigid than that of your average romantic comedy. Here, then, is the troubled child who finds refuge in a female relative's kitchen; here the brutal apprenticeship punctuated with much shouting and projectile cast iron; here the grim determination to master a hollandaise and, finally, the starry triumph.
In ''32 Yolks,'' Eric Ripert hews closely to the template. The chef and a co-owner of New York's much acclaimed Le Bernardin, Ripert owes his unhappy childhood in southern France and Andorra to his parents' divorce and his mother's subsequent boyfriend, an abusive and insecure man who nevertheless shared Ripert's mother's love of good food. A stint in culinary school was followed by a position as commis at one of France's most storied restaurants, La Tour d'Argent, where the young cook committed the requisite gaffes, including scalding himself with a pot full of lobster stock and burning two dozen ducks in one go.
That these tales are enjoyable despite their general familiarity is a tribute to the vividness with which Ripert (aided by his co-writer, Veronica Chambers) conveys them. Young Eric's first scoop of caviar, so rich and salty, is all the more seductive for the winking nods to its aphrodisiac powers made by the men who introduce him to it. The astonishing succession that has him spilling drinks on a single table multiple times (and thereby ending his career as a waiter) induces delicious cringes.
What distinguishes a good chef's memoir from the forgettable ones, after all, are the anecdotes. And Ripert has one very big anecdote in the form of Jol Robuchon. At 19, he went to work at Jamin, the tiny Parisian restaurant where Robuchon was noisily overturning French tradition with innovative flavor combinations and a near maniacal quest for perfection. For the great chef, that meant not only using the very best ingredients but employing a savantlike precision that was as likely to drive a cook mad as it was to inspire him. A lobster salad, with its crystalline bouillon, its separate cookings of claw and tail, its garnishes of apple and tomato and avocado balls and its multiple sauces, was challenging enough even before the young cook given the unfortunate job of preparing it began squeezing onto the plate the 90 perfectly spaced dots of sauce that were one of Robuchon's signature flourishes. So nightmarishly consuming was the work, Ripert says, that he regularly dreamed of dots.
The stories of his efforts to keep up with his chef's unreasonable demands -- and the sulky, unrelenting tirades unleashed by his failures -- make for the funniest passages in the book. Ripert recalls hiding pre-made rabbit terrines in the refrigerator lest Robuchon reject one as it went over the pass and insist he make another on the spot (an impossibility, since the terrine took six hours to prepare). Then there was the need to cook a meal for the chef's dog each night -- and withstand the animal's critique, as conveyed by its owner. Throughout, Ripert conveys the terror and dread the great chef cultivated; Robuchon wanted his cooks to fear him.
Ripert is not the first to tread on this terrain; in his own memoir, Gordon Ramsay described his time in Robuchon's kitchen as similar to a stint in the British special forces. But Ripert is a more introspective soul, and we can see him still struggling, some 30 years later, to reconcile his conflicting images of Robuchon as genius and jackass, and to assess what the anxiety and pressure did to him as both a chef and a man.
We never get to see that for ourselves. ''32 Yolks'' ends abruptly with the 24-year-old Ripert about to depart for a new job in the United States. The happy ending that most readers know to expect never materializes. (Le Bernardin had already been awarded four stars by The New York Times by the time Ripert became chef there in 1994, and it has held them ever since.) Perhaps it's being saved for a second volume. But like the first glimpse of Buddhism that captures the young chef's attention in an airport bookstore, the question of what he will make of all that training and abuse, that terror and creative vision, once he has his own restaurant remains unaddressed. It's a curiously frustrating end to a book that, until this point, had been satisfying indeed.
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PHOTO: Eric Ripert (PHOTOGRAPH BY DANIEL KRIEGER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)
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Abend, Lisa. "Kitchen Calling." The New York Times Book Review, 5 June 2016, p. 51(L). Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A457151740/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=a92e678f. Accessed 17 Nov. 2024.
Make It Messy: My Perfectly Imperfect Life. By Marcus Samuelsson and Veronica Chambers.
June 2015. 224p. illus. Delacorte, $16.99 (9780385744003); lib. ed., $19.99 (9780375991448). 641.5092. Gr. 7-12.
Based on Yes, Chef (2012), his best-selling adult memoir, tbis charts celebrity chef Samuelsson's culinary evolution. Born in Ethiopia, he was adopted by a Swedish couple and raised as a self-described black Swede. When a hoped-for career as a soccer player falls through, he turns to food as an alternate career and never looks back, having quickly come to love the "organized chaos" of the kitchen. Readers will share his excitement as he quickly rises through the ranks to become, at age 25, executive chef of Aquavit, one of the most famous restaurants in New York, as well as the youngest chef ever to receive a three-star review from The New York Times. Samuelsson asserts, and his story evinces, that three things have stood him in good stead: he is humble, he works hard, and he loves food. This smoothly written account, coauthored with Chambers, brings the drama of the kitchen to vivid and memorable life. Bon appetit!--Michael Cart
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2015 American Library Association
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Cart, Michael. "Make It Messy: My Perfectly Imperfect Life." Booklist, vol. 111, no. 19-20, 1 June 2015, p. 83. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A421080363/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=5d4d9401. Accessed 17 Nov. 2024.
Wake Up Happy: The Dream Big, Win Big Guide to Transforming Your Life
Michael Strahan, with Veronica Chambers. Atria, $26.99 (224p) ISBN 978-1-4767-7568-5
Former New York Giants football star and current TV host Strahan, with support from writer Chambers, goes beyond psychobabble in this practical pep talk about creating a winning attitude to solve "the puzzle of life" and achieve any goal. Strahan, the youngest of six children, was raised on a German army base, where he learned his family's values of pride, hard work, and problem solving. He employed these effectively to stand out from the football squad at Texas Southern University before being drafted by the Giants in 1993. His upbeat message sounds a bit familiar, but he throws off the celebrity image when he praises fatherhood, responsibility, achievement, paying attention to detail, mental toughness, and "just showing up for life." Strahan, a truly nice guy, never dishes the dirt on his former teammates, cohost Kelly Ripa, or his ex-wives, avoiding anything resembling "tabloid fodder." His comments about motivation are not the stale Dale Carnegie variety, but instead new and updated streamlined solutions for a hectic modern world. Agent: EricSimonoff, WME. (Oct.)
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"Wake Up Happy: The Dream Big, Win Big Guide to Transforming Your Life." Publishers Weekly, vol. 262, no. 37, 14 Sept. 2015, p. 59. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A429090441/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=3bce9156. Accessed 17 Nov. 2024.
Everybody's Got Something. By Robin Roberts and Veronica Chambers. Apr. 2014.272p. illus. Grand Central, $27 (9781455578450). 791.450.
When Good Morning America cohost Roberts was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2007, she mounted a very public battle. Five years after completing treatment, she faced a rare bone-marrow disorder, likely caused by the cancer treatment, that again tested her strength and resolve, again in public. Following her mother's time-honored advice to "make your mess your message," Roberts offers an inspiring memoir of her life, from her home base in Mississippi to her home in New York and the glamorous though grueling life of a television reporter. Roberts prevailed through a painful bone-marrow transplant, with her sister as donor; the death of her mother; and her triumphant return to GMA after her medical leave, proudly wearing her bald head on air. With the infectious personality for which she's known, Roberts details the support of family and friends and the people she's met in her life and career who've inspired her by overcoming their own challenges with the "something" that everybody inevitably faces. Photos enhance this inspiring memoir.--Vanessa Bush
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2014 American Library Association
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Bush, Vanessa. "Everybody's Got Something." Booklist, vol. 110, no. 15, 1 Apr. 2014, p. 9. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A365457199/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=79f4552e. Accessed 17 Nov. 2024.
Roberts, Robin EVERYBODY'S GOT SOMETHING Grand Central Publishing (Adult Nonfiction) $27.00 4, 22 ISBN: 978-1-4555-7845-0
With the assistance of Chambers (co-author; Yes, Chef, 2012, etc.), broadcaster Roberts (From the Heart: Eight Rules to Live By, 2008) chronicles her struggles with myelodysplastic syndrome, a rare condition that affects blood and bone marrow. The author is a well-known newscaster, formerly on SportsCenter and now one of the anchors of Good Morning America. In 2007, she was diagnosed with breast cancer, which she successfully fought with surgery, chemotherapy and radiation treatment. Five years later, after returning from her news assignment covering the 2012 Academy Awards, she learned that chemotherapy had resulted in her developing MDS, which led to an acute form of leukemia. Without a bone marrow transplant, her projected life expectancy was two years. While Roberts searched for a compatible donor and prepared for the transplant, her aging mother's health also began to gravely deteriorate. Roberts faced her misfortune with an athlete's mentality, showing strength against both her disease and the loss of her mother. This is reflected in her narration, which rarely veers toward melodrama or self-pity. Even in the chapters describing the transplantion process and its immediate aftermath, which make for the most intimate parts of the book, Roberts maintains her positivity. However, despite the author's best efforts to communicate the challenges of her experience and inspire empathy, readers are constantly reminded of her celebrity status and, as a result, are always kept at arm's length. The sections involving Roberts' family partly counter this problem, since it is in these scenes that she becomes any daughter, any sister, any lover, struggling with a life-threatening disease. "[I]f there's one thing that spending a year fighting for your life against a rare and insidious-disease will teach you," she writes, "it's that time is not to be wasted." At-times inspirational memoir about a journalist's battle with a grave disease she had to face while also dealing with her mother's passing.
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"Roberts, Robin: EVERYBODY'S GOT SOMETHING." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Apr. 2014, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A363187549/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=ee88b713. Accessed 17 Nov. 2024.
Chambers, Veronica FIFTEEN CANDLES Disney Hyperion (Children's) May 11, 2010 ISBN: 978-1-4231-2362-0
A guilty-pleasure page-turner introduces a wealthy and spoiled Cuban-American teenager, Alicia Cruz, 15, whose passion to start her own business will take her and her closest friends, Carmen, Jamie and Gaz, on a roller coaster when she decides to organize Sarita's quincea~era party. But not a traditional one. Alicia has her own avant-garde ideas, and although she did not have her own quince, she is determined to become an entrepreneur in the party industry serving Miami's exclusive high-class society. Alicia's parents, the deputy mayor and a judge, witness how Alicia turns her internship at the City Hall into her own business headquarters with predictable consequences. A frivolous but charming story that accurately presents the antics, motivations and dreams of a very small sector of the diverse Latino juvenile population in South Florida, one that adores pop culture and fashion icons but at the same time remains respectful of conventional family values and traditions--just right as the opener for this Spanish-accented chick-lit series. (Fiction. 13-16)
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"Chambers, Veronica: FIFTEEN CANDLES." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Apr. 2010. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A223761080/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=5caf9968. Accessed 17 Nov. 2024.
Chambers, Veronica PLUS Razorbill/Penguin (Children's) Apr. 1, 2009 ISBN: 978-1-59514-165-1
This frothy fashion fancy keeps the pages turning despite much implausibility. Seventeen-year-old premed Columbia freshman Bee becomes a plus-size supermodel overnight when an agent spots her in a trendy caf. Despite international travel and glamorous modeling shoots, Bee pines for her heartless ex-boyfriend. Sensible readers will roll their eyes at her clueless desire for the obvious cad, while activism-inclined readers may chafe at Chambers's use of environmentalism and Amnesty International for character mockery. Racial stereotypes ("angry Latina mode"; "gypsies" with crystal balls) and a distinction between plus-size models and truly fat people whose "sweat smells bad" make the text almost as unpleasant as Bee is self-centered. Pass diction ("youtube.com" rather than simply "youtube") and sloppy copyediting distract. By attempting both wish-fulfillment (instant modeling success for this supposed everygirl) and realism (hard interpersonal lessons and ever-more-necessary dieting tips), the narrative tries to have its cake and eat it too. Still, Bee's rollicking, name-brand-laden story is fizzy and funny, dissolving like cotton candy but enjoyable along the way. (Fiction. YA)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2009 Kirkus Media LLC
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"Chambers, Veronica: PLUS." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Apr. 2009, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A196581477/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=b720b04a. Accessed 17 Nov. 2024.
Kickboxing Geishas: How Modern Japanese Women are Changing Their Nation
By Veronica Chambers
Free Press, New York, 2007, $25.00, 288 pages, hardcover
The title of Veronica Chambers' new book, Kickboxing Geishas, suggests an image of traditional Japanese women embracing empowerment with a flourish. It implies that, no longer demure tea-pourers, a new generation of young women is taking control of their lives. Whether or not such a sea change is actually occurring is the focus of Chambers' insightful and enjoyable book.
She doesn't hide the alarming facts: Japan has fewer female representatives in its government than any other developed nation. Most Japanese companies treat their female employees like "glorified secretaries," expecting them to make tea and quit soon after marriage. The number of women in management positions at companies has hardly budged since 1985, the year the Equal Opportunity Employment Act passed. Japanese law does not require maternity leave or other family-friendly policies; as a result, Chambers says, women quit their jobs when they get married "as if bowing out gracefully from a competition they know they cannot win." Chambers also points out that Japanese women can't even purchase career clothes; they have no Ann Taylor equivalent.
It's like the United States in 1974, says Chambers, although things are changing quickly--as they did during the seventies in this country. "I wanted to learn from Japanese women how they married the traditional with the feminist, how they balanced work with marriage and motherhood," she writes. What she finds is that the pursuit of serious careers has spread far beyond just a handful of women. "The more women I talked to, the more obvious it became that women are breaking the traditional mold in many ways, and that a revolution is underway not only in their lives, but in the whole culture," Chambers writes.
That, in essence, is her thesis, and she goes about demonstrating it through a series of profiles. She interviews a prominent politician, a popular deejay, corporate executives, and successful entrepreneurs. Chambers writes in an easy-to-read, chatty style, often slipping in her own reflections. After describing a single, thirty-year-old woman's vision of being married with two children and a career by age forty, Chambers writes:
I'm struck by how many women find
themselves in Miho's position of making a
ten-year plan and not having it come out the
way they imagined. We tend to see it as
failure, but is it really? I wonder why we can't
see holding onto the same dreams within a
new and changed timetable for what it is--a
benchmark for our own growing clarity,
maturity, and experience.
One of her subjects, Yukiko, works as a tour guide, a job she chose because it gives her the flexibility one of her college professors had told her she would require if she expected to continue working when she had kids. Says Chambers,
It seems too simple. "If you want children,
choose a career where you can make it work."
At the same time, isn't it a little problematic?
Shouldn't a woman be able to choose any
career and have a family? And why is it just
the woman's job to make it work? All I can
think is that life just isn't fair. If it was, then I
could eat French fries every day and fit into
my skinny jeans.
Most of the women Chambers interviewed consciously buck tradition in some way. The politician she profiles came out as a lesbian, the first one to do so in Japan. She tells Chambers of her struggles to get her colleagues to take her seriously, and of her optimism that "slowly changes are happening." One corporate executive Chambers interviews was successful, in part, because she refused to pour tea for her colleagues, as female employees traditionally have done. She also refused to change her name after she got married, as a symbol of that fact that she was still the same person, the same hard worker.
In many ways, the entrepreneurs she highlights seem happiest. They are fulfilling huge ambitions while keeping control of their schedules and lives. Kay Otsuka, editor of an annual magazine aimed at working women, says that smart, ambitious women are most satisfied by starting their own business because they don't have to mimic the life paths of men, which can be impossible for those intent on having families.
One of those women is Yasuko Nakamura, founder of Boom, Inc., a marketing firm that studies the habits of teenage girls. She started her career as a traditional "office lady" at an insurance company, setting up her business in her spare time. Nakamura's company, now over twenty years old, has taken off, as marketers have grown increasingly aware of teenage girls as a powerful consumer segment.
Other examples include a cafe owner who plans her store's hours around her daughter's school schedule, and a jewelry designer with a husband who attends parent-teacher conferences and brings cookies to school. (Others are not always so accepting of these avant-garde families; the jewelry designer's husband is often asked where his wife is.)
Despite her focus on women who are on the cutting edge of social change, Chambers doesn't forget the fact that most women in Japan still opt to get married and become housewives. She visits an upscale wedding dress store and meets Masami Ito, an office lady at a large company. She plans to quit shortly after marriage. "It's a story I'll hear over and over again, though the frankness of it will continue to catch me by surprise," writes Chambers. "It's not that women in the US don't sometimes leave their jobs, but the impetus is usually motherhood, not marriage." Chambers doesn't fully explore the question of why marriage causes so many Japanese women to quite their jobs, although she implies that being a wife, in Japan, is still a full-time job.
Some of her most interesting passages are on how Japanese men are faring as women become more empowered. Chambers sympathizes with men whose wives divorce them at middle age, and whose girlfriends (or ex-girlfriends) deride them as bossy, inexpressive, or bad lovers. Because Japanese men who work for companies typically work early mornings and late nights, and go on work-related vacations, they often have few friends of their own after retirement. If they get divorced, they are left without a social network altogether.
Chambers focuses on the Japanese men who are exploring new roles for themselves, as househusbands or even male geishas. She sits in on a cooking class for older men who are trying to learn how to take care of themselves as well as to have some fun. She talks to a 26-year-old man married to a career woman who says his wife inspires him. "I'm not very career-oriented or goal-oriented so when I have a woman like her, she lets me know that I have to be something more, that I have to do more."
Although Chambers does discover these forward-thinking young men, she also observes simmering tensions between the genders: In 2000, she writes, one-quarter of all Japanese women between 30 and 34 were single, about double the number who were in 1990, which was almost double the number in 1970. "Marriage these days is simply not that appealing," concludes Chambers. She doesn't explore why it might be so unappealing other than to show how time-consuming it is; perhaps that topic would deserve a book in itself.
She also draws some unexpected and fascinating parallels between Japanese and African American culture. Chambers, who is also the author of Having It All? Black Women and Success, says the changes Japanese women are experiencing are similar to those African American women recently went through, including significant gains in education, opportunity, confidence, and overall success. She doesn't want to repeat the insults and slurs against Japanese men that she heard from the women she spoke with, she says,
but the reporter in me needs to make it clear, as I did in my book
about black women and success, that Japanese men and women are at
an impasse. The falling birthrate and the delay in marriage have as
much to do with Japanese women's flat-out frustration with
traditional Japanese men as with their quests for independence.
Reading the book feels a bit like sitting down to coffee with one woman after another; it's fun, but doesn't always offer the broad context or analysis you'd need to answer the question Chambers repeatedly raises: "Is there an actual movement or is it just a few women getting ahead, on their own terms, in their own way?"
But then, maybe the question is impossible to answer. Even the most sweeping changes tend to happen gradually, starting with just a few individuals; in the early stages, it's impossible to know how significant the shift will be. Chambers presents a strong case for seeing Japan at a tipping point, with a minority of women making significant strides that will soon be felt by the larger culture.
Kimberly Palmer lived in Japan for a year, during which time she wrote her e-book, Not a Geisha. Now a reporter at US News & World Report, she writes a blog, Creating Ms. Perfect (www.creatingmsperfect.blogspot.com) on women's advice book culture.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2008 Old City Publishing, Inc.
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Palmer, Kimberly. "No more tea pouring." The Women's Review of Books, vol. 25, no. 2, Mar.-Apr. 2008, pp. 14+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A186950611/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=92c07446. Accessed 17 Nov. 2024.
Kickboxing Geishas: How Japanese Women Are Changing Their Nation VERONICA CHAMBERS. Free Press, $27 (288p) ISBN 978-0-7432-7156-1
In her fifth book, Chambers (Mama's Girl) reports on dramatic changes in women's lives in postbust Japan, where, she notes, men are no longer the "financial titans" and where women--international travelers and avid consumers--are now driving the economy. Yet, Chambers says, rampant consumerism masks the true complexity of these women's lives as they negotiate the divide between Japan's traditions and their own more career-centered outlook. With compassion and warm wit, the author talks to successful Japanese women--from hip-hop superstars to senior corporate executives and entrepreneurs--about their education, careers, personal lives and aspirations, and about the social norms they face as they carve out a bold new existence in a country wedded to tradition. Chambers portrays her subjects as social pioneers operating in a cultural vacuum, without the support of a widespread women's movement. Chambers captures a gender clash, in which young Japanese women despair of Japanese men's cultural insularity and inability to lose face. (She also interviews men who seek to break with stereotypic Japanese masculinity.) Writing in a hip, visually vivid and entertaining style, Chambers fluently places the courage and isolation of these women in a briefly sketched social and economic context, noting that "today's young career women--entrepreneurial, independent--have more [in common] with their hard-working grandmothers than they do with their Bubble Economy housewife mothers." (Jan. 9)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2006 PWxyz, LLC
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"Kickboxing Geishas: How Japanese Women Are Changing Their Nation." Publishers Weekly, vol. 253, no. 46, 20 Nov. 2006, p. 55. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A155240739/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=3df4164e. Accessed 17 Nov. 2024.
Chambers, Veronica. The Joy of Doing Things Badly: A Girl's Guide to Love, Life, and Foolish Bravery. Apr. 2006. 240p. Broadway, $17.95 (0-385-51212-0). 646.
"Throughout my life," write Chambers, "my willingness to fall flat on my face has been my most marked characteristic." Joke she might, but Chambers is no slouch. In this collection of essays, many first appearing in O, Oprah's magazine, she documents various successes and shortcomings. She ditches ballet for a free-spirited African dance class, tries kick-boxing despite her fear of being hit, signs on as a philanthropist and is able to donate a study room in her alma mater's library, and travels to exotic locales. A well-bylined magazine writer, Chambers writes in a breezy, punchy style, although she does address serious matters, including a breast-cancer scare. Through humor, Chambers learns to develop "self-care tools" that prompt her to try new things no matter how foreign or difficult they may seem. Women of all ages will find inspiration in her approach to life and her call for "foolish bravery" in the face of challenges both big and small. Bursting with strong-willed, fiery spirit, Chambers is at the top of her game.
YA: Young adults will embrace Chambers as a solid role model. EC.
Cook, Emily
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2006 American Library Association
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Cook, Emily. "Chambers, Veronica. The Joy of Doing Things Badly: A Girl's Guide to Love, Life, and Foolish Bravery." Booklist, vol. 102, no. 14, 15 Mar. 2006, p. 12. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A144104589/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=a5114550. Accessed 17 Nov. 2024.
Chambers, Veronica. When Did You Stop Loving Me. June 2004. 224p. Doubleday, $21.95 (0-385-50900-6)
In Chambers' highly acclaimed memoir, Mama's Girl (1996), her dad took off to try to make it as a ventriloquist, leaving her to live first with her angry mother and then with him. This exquisite first novel, also set in Brooklyn in the late 1970s, reads like a memoir, only this time it's mother who leaves and is never heard from again. Eleven-year-old Angela speaks with lyrical simplicity about her grief ("I came home from school and Mommy wasn't there"); her bewildered attempts to fit into her magician dad's world; and her anger that he wants her to be his assistant, "part doll, part circus monkey." Her mother left behind only her straightening comb and a toothbrush, "pink with splayed bristles." Best of all is the unsentimental picture of the loving, messed-up single-parent dad. His rants about racism the Angela, until a white spectator asks him why he doesn't make himself white. Chambers doesn't overdo the magician metaphors, but she makes real the disappearing acts in a world of mirrors and knives.
YA/M: Teens will want this for the heartfelt coming-of-age story, simply told; includes one paragraph of violent obscenity. HR.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2004 American Library Association
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Rochman, Hazel. "Chambers, Veronica. When Did You Stop Loving Me." Booklist, vol. 100, no. 16, 15 Apr. 2004, p. 1422. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A116288293/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=1a07e3f6. Accessed 17 Nov. 2024.
Chambers, Veronica WHEN DID YOU STOP LOVING ME? Doubleday (224 pp.) $21.95 Jun. 2004 ISBN: 0-385-50900-6
A lugubrious coming-of-ager by critic and journalist Chambers (Having It All, 2003, etc.) about a young black girl's lonely life with her father.
It's 1979 and black women seem to be breaking out of jails all over New York. Eleven-year-old Angela Davis Brown has been following the case of Assata Shakur, a soldier from the Black Liberation Army who managed to escape from the upstate penitentiary where she had been sent for murdering a New Jersey State Trooper. But liberation (of a sort) strikes even closer to home when Angela wakes up one morning in Brooklyn to find that her mother Melanie has run off in the middle of the night, leaving Angela in her father Teddo's care. A magician and small-time activist, Teddo has always doted on Angela, but he also has a casual attitude toward money that drove Melanie to despair (especially since it forced her to support the family). Now left with nothing but a picture of her mother and a comb from her hair, Angela makes the best of things with Teddo as the two move from apartment to apartment and Teddo drifts from gig to gig. A dreamer with big ideas who drives a used Mercedes and studies foreign languages in his spare time, Teddo is something of a cross between Mr. Micawber and Horatio Alger, and he's able to inspire Angela to think of herself as a great deal more than a poor girl from the inner city. Eventually, and largely thanks to her father's impracticalities, Angela manages to succeed in a world that she was never allowed to look upon as alien or beyond her reach.
Too sketchy for a portrait, too intricate for a sketch: Chambers gives us a good glimpse of the inner life of a talented girl making her way in the world, but she shows us too little of the world itself to make us feel the true drama of the rise. (Agent: Sandra Dijkstra/Sandra Dijkstra Agency)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2004 Kirkus Media LLC
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"Chambers, Veronica When Did You Stop Loving Me?" Kirkus Reviews, vol. 72, no. 6, 15 Mar. 2004, pp. 237+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A114486905/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=fdfe3b17. Accessed 17 Nov. 2024.
HAVING IT ALL? Black Women and Success by Veronica Chambers Doubleday, $23.95
WHEN IT COMES TO THE NATIONAL discourse, to be a black woman is to be that kid who moves to town the first week of February; you're going to get a fair number of Valentines, but your name will be misspelled and dutifully rendered in the handwriting of your new Classmates' moms. Black women, when not scapegoats--think: single parent homes, juvenile crime, and welfare--are after-thoughts. Black men's problems, we are to believe, are black people's problems.
Yet, without much public notice, black women have been taking care of business, and not primarily via lawsuit and bullhorn. As Woody Allen noted, 99 percent of success is just showing up--for application deadlines, for class, for birth-control pill refills, for each day on the job--and that is simply what black women have done. No magic. No treachery against black men. The continuing existence of racism, they deduced, is simply no reason not to try. According to Veronica Chambers in her new book, Having it All? Black Women and Succesi, "In a single generation, black women's lives have improved vastly on key fronts: professionally, academically, and financially." In recent decades, she reports, the number of African-American women earning bachelor's degrees has increased by three-quarters; the numbers attending law or graduate school have more than doubled. Between 1988 and 1998, the number of black families earning $100,000 or more almost doubled, driven largely by black women's increased earning power. While white women still outearn black women in management positions, according to a 1998 survey, black women are beginning to inch ahead in such fields as sales and administrative support roles.
Thankfully, as this not-so-new reality begins to seep into America's consciousness, works on black women that sidestep both the incomprehensible ghetto of women's studies and the "Girlfriend" aisle at Barnes & Noble are finally beginning to surface. In March 2002, The Washington Monthly published Paul Offner's analysis of the diverging fortunes of black men and women. Last month, Newsweek published a cover package on the black professional gender gap and its consequences. Eventually, all of America will have to notice that the American business district teems with black women in professional dress, however absent black men might be.
Having it All? operates as a social and cultural history of black women's portrayals in the business world (there is much more to Aunt Jemima than you think), entertainment, and the news media. Unbeknownst to me, Claire Huxtable almost single-handedly inspired the studious segment of the hip-hop generation to believe they, too, could have--sans nanny--a husband, five kids, a lavish Brooklyn brownstone, and a law career, while always looking fabulous. Primarily, however, the work is interview-driven, which is both a strength and a weakness. Anecdotes, however telling, are neither reliable nor replicable. Sometimes, the parade of stalwart black women--from attorney to museum grande dame to White House operative to actress--is feel-goody and somewhat superficial, like a public service announcement for Black History Month. On the other hand, the individual women's approaches to succeeding in highly competitive, "Oh great, I'm the only black person again" environments are both a revelation to the uninitiated and a cosmic props for those who pulled it off. Their anecdotes live and breathe our complicated racial and gender realities as no pile of statistics ever could. There's a gospel song to encapsulate every moment in a black person's life; the correct one here is Aretha Franklin's "(My Soul Looks Back and Wonders) How I Got Over." It makes you proud, it makes America shut up and take notice. Just like a feel-goody, superficial Black History Month PSA.
One of the few things America does tend to know about black women, successful or struggling, is that they're often alone, a reality which permeates Having It All? Professional, academic, and financial gains are wonderful things, but they don't give you a foot rub after a hard day in the operating room. A significant other does. That's one reason why the title, Having It All? is a question and not a declaration of victory. Chambers perhaps takes too lightly high-achieving black women's lack of husbands and children in her focus on exploring the daylight between black and white women's workplace realities. She writes that "many of the 30-something and even 40-something women interviewed in this book are childless. Unlike the panicked portraits of professional women depicted in the media, the women I spoke to routinely expressed no sense of regret, no Lichtenstein-like cartoon horror of `Damn, I forgot to have a baby.' Leaving aside the soupcon of contempt for white women's stereotypical neuroses, it is possible that these women were putting their best feminist feet forward to fortify both themselves and the women who will follow them--in their spinsterhood as well as their achievements. Speaking as a high-achieving black woman who married, to intergalactic surprise, at 40, solitude was the price I was willing to pay to achieve my dreams. It was not my preference. It was not easy. I was lonely. Married, to a good man, is better. Even if he can't figure out how to get dishes into the dishwasher. (In Chambers's defense, there is an entire chapter on black professional stay-at-home moms.)
It is crucial to divine whether black women "lack" families or "opt against" them--a choice that, to be sane, some number of women consciously make. More power to them. Having my son 22 months ago put my career into a tailspin from which it has yet to recover. For me, taking my roles as wife and mother seriously means I will never achieve all of which I am capable. But to ignore this important distinction between choosing and accepting solitude is to do black women, and the very institution of family, a disservice. Two of three black marriages end in divorce, far more than other groups; less than one-third of black women are married. The black-white marriage rate is composed primarily of black men marrying out. And, as has been widely reported, six of 10 black children are raised by their mothers alone, a situation which, barring major parental dysfunction, is a tragedy for mother, father, and children alike. When it comes to domestic arrangements, blacks are America's perennial loss leaders. As scholar Orlando Patterson put it, African Americans are the most unpartnered and alienated people in the world; we ought to be trying to remedy that, not make ourselves feel good about it. Certainly, as Chambers notes, blacks live in a tradition of extended and created families--but not because we prefer it. That was what was required to survive in a hostile environment; our whole existence in America has been improvisational. Isn't it time yet to write it down and figure a few key things out? Like why black men and black women can't cooperate? Many black women are lonely and overburdened, many black men are deprived of their children's love, and there's nothing to be lost by saying so. Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Dole, and Margaret Thatcher all have husbands. Why don't Condi and Oprah? Preordained lovelessness should not be the price anyone pays for success. Chambers, however, makes a point in this regard that I had not before encountered but which rang immediately true; some of these "can't find a good man" claimants may well be gay. Homosexuality is still considered an unforgiveable perversion among many blacks, often more so for women than men. In the Southern Baptist church I grew up in, it was often stated that a daughter who was a murderer was preferable to one who was a "bull dagger."
Disagreements aside, Chambers's book does much to make visible the invisible lives of those black women who are not on crack or trying to move from welfare to work, the only kind of black women most of America seems to think there are. What is perhaps most bracing about Having It All? is the unapologetic voices of young, post-Movement women, the ones that all the marching was for. Take Crystal Ashby, an antitrust lawyer for a major Chicago oil company. "Her education also heightened her sense of entitlement," writes Chambers. "From an early age Crystal remembers thinking, `Why not me?' `I always believed that someday I could live in a house like the ones I went to school around, that I could live that lifestyle.' But it's also true that Ashby's early years of attending white prep schools has given her a lifetime of training in keeping the peace, `The reality is a lot of my friends are white, and a lot of my friends are black,' she says. `I work in an environment where my exposure is primarily white. You can either be a loner or assimilate. These are the people I spend my days with, and I like my days to be pleasant.'"
The women profiled here tend not to believe that racism, while still real, defines or limits them in any practical sense They are free. As free of Al Sharpton and the NAACP as of whites. The marching worked. If you want to know what success looks like on a black woman, read this book.
DEBRA J. DICKERSON is author of An American Story. She can be reached at www.debradickerson.com.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2003 Washington Monthly Company
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/
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Dickerson, Debra J. "Post-Ghetto fabulous: coming to grips with black women's success." Washington Monthly, vol. 35, no. 4, Apr. 2003, pp. 50+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A99988631/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=b1292567. Accessed 17 Nov. 2024.
by Veronica Chambers Doubleday, January 2003 $23.95, ISBN 0-385-50638-4
Ever since the mid-1800s--when the women's suffrage movement pitted white women's and black men's voting interests against one another--black women have known they are the heirs of a dual inheritance: racism and sexism. It's a taxing inheritance that has been the subject of much scrutiny and critique. In Having It All: Black Women and Success, writer Veronica Chambers adds class to the race-gender mix and revisits the well-traveled turf of black female experience to explore how professional women navigate their tony lifestyles, despite lingering racism and sexism in society.
The book begins engagingly enough. "For a long time" Chambers notes, "the media portrayed [successful Black women] as glorious exceptions to the welfare mother rule. But ... the news is this--in a single generation, Black women's lives have improved vastly on key fronts: professionally, academically and financially." She then cites a prominent 2000 study, which found that the number of black women who earned college degrees had increased by a whopping 73 percent over the previous decade--compared with a 47 percent increase for African-American men.
Through interviews with upper middle-class, well-educated professionals, Chambers examines how black women have "changed our perception of ourselves [and] we're changing America's perception of us, too" Oddly, perceptions have changed so much that many of the women's stories are rather unremarkable.
We meet attorney and jet-setter Crystal Ashby, who admits that she has "more money than my mother ever dreamed of earning." Computer software developer Donna Auguste says as long as you can "deliver the results," race and gender have little bearing on professional achievement. Journalist Angela Kyles notes that while interviewing for jobs abroad, she wasn't regarded as a "Black woman" And so on. Sure, finding black male companionship can be a challenge. There's the guilt that comes with having too few African-American friends. And it's lonely being the only black face at the tennis club. But haven't many of us heard this before?
If you read Leanita McClain's A Foot in Each World, Brent Staples' Parallel Time, dozens of post-Civil Rights memoirs, or anything Lawrence Otis Graham has ever committed to paper, you've essentially read Having It All. If you're not familiar with books about the lives of the black elite, and you're an isolated prep school grad/Ivy League coed who thinks you're the only black girl who speaks Russian and has an interest in studying Japanese architecture, and who still doesn't know that your foremothers have already paid the price of your ticket, well, then Having It All may just be the permission you need to soar.
--E. Assata Wright is a freelance writer living in Jersey City, N.J.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2003 Cox, Matthews & Associates
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Wright, E. Assata. "Having It All: Black Women and Success." Black Issues Book Review, vol. 5, no. 2, Mar.-Apr. 2003, pp. 56+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A99375215/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=af0f7be9. Accessed 17 Nov. 2024.
Black Women and Success.
By Veronica Chambers.
Doubleday, $23.95:
The number of black white-collar women in the United States tripled between 1960 and 1990. The number of black women earning bachelor's degrees increased 73 percent in the past decade. The number of black women entering law school and graduate, school increased more than 120 percent in the past 20 years. In "Having It All?," Veronica Chambers interviews middleclass black women professionals and learns that achieving success can be costly. Most are in the first or second generation to have graduated from college, and their education often puts barriers between them and less educated family members. They find themselves resented by their extended families, who are often less successful. Theirs are often the only black faces in the exclusive white neighborhoods in which they live. Their children usually attend private, predominantly white schools and are uncomfortable around other black children. Their occupational success is often attributed to being favored by a white boss, or they receive racially stereotyped assignments. When such problems cause anxiety, they do not seek professional help, believing psychotherapists to be "a white girl thing." Instead, Chambers writes, some kill themselves with alcohol and compulsive overeating; many black women carry "life-threatening, heart-stopping fat." As Thelma Golden, the first black curator of the Whitney Museum of American Art, puts it, even successful black women cannot get all they want so long as they live in a country obsessed with race. Chambers, herself a former magazine editor, exemplifies the black professional woman she profiles, and writes engagingly and persuasively.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2003 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com
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Scharper, Diane. "Having IT All? (Nonfiction)." The New York Times Book Review, vol. 108, no. 13, 30 Mar. 2003, p. 16. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A99206907/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=118f965a. Accessed 17 Nov. 2024.
Chambers, Veronica
Doubleday (23.95 pp.)
$23.95
Jan. 21, 2003
ISBN: 0-385-50638-4
An absorbing look at the Clair Huxtables of the world.
These African-American women have benefited from both the civil rights and feminist movements, going in one generation "from the kitchen to the boardroom." They summer on the Vineyard and in Sag Harbor, shop in Paris, frequent Broadway plays, and attend gallery openings. Among those profiled are Thelma Golden, deputy director of the Studio Museum in Harlem; Lynette Hall, director of on-air promotions for ABC turned stay-at-home-mom; and Crystal Ashby, antitrust lawyer for a major oil company. As journalist Chambers (Mama's Girl, 1996, etc.) ponders the extraordinary gains made by black women, she also underscores the issues unique to this group. While many of her subjects experience both gender and cultural isolation within the workplace, they are also isolated within their own families, often being the first to go to college, the first to attend graduate school, the first to own a second home. It may be difficult for them to find a partner equal in income and class, yet unlike their white counterparts, they are urged to look toward blue-collar men as potential mates. But as one woman put it, "How will we meet [the construction worker]? If we're in a certain demographic then shouldn't we be meeting men who are in that demographic?" All in all, though, these women aren't waiting for Prince Charming. If single, they are involved in their careers, volunteer work, and hobbies. In one section revealing the legacy of both political movements, the author interviews two women who came of age during the Black Power movement and their adult daughters, who were children during the feminist movement. The mothers identify themselves first as blacks and second as women; for their daughters, the reverse is true.
A fine appraisal of the women in the growing African-American middle and upper classes.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2002 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
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"Having it All?: Black Women and Success. (Nonfiction)." Kirkus Reviews, vol. 70, no. 23, 1 Dec. 2002, p. 1745. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A95551732/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=b6a02e0b. Accessed 17 Nov. 2024.
Chambers, Veronica. Marisol and Magdalena: The Sound of Our Sisterhood. 1998.128p. Hyperion; dist. by Little, Brown, $14.95 (0-7868-0437-8); lib. ed., $14.89 (0-7868-2385-8).
Gr. 6-9. Their mothers grew up together in Panama, but longtime best friends Marisol and Magdalena, both 13, were born and still live in Brooklyn and know very little Spanish. Their relatives and others in the expatriate Panamanian community in Brooklyn are constantly trying to make the two girls understand and appreciate their heritage. But the girls plan to "rule Roberto Clemente Junior High" when they enter eighth grade in the fall; then Marisol's single, working mother, who also attends nursing school, decides to send Marisol to Panama to spend a year with her grandmother. An apprehensive Marisol prepares for the trip, unhappy as she sees Magdalena pulling away from her but consoled by the thought that she might find the father she's never known. In Panama, Marisol is immediately comfortable with her grandmother, makes a new friend in Ana, is welcomed at her new school, and finds her first boyfriend in Ruben, who tutors her in Spanish. As Marisol's shyness fades, she begins to feel, in some ways, more comfortable in Panama than in New York, even adjusting to the fact that her father may never surface in her life. Marisol's vibrant first-person narrative flows smoothly, incorporating Spanish words and phrases in a way that non-Spanish speakers can easily comprehend, and conveying a well-realized sense of the Latino-black experience. YAs of any background will readily be able to identify with Marisol and the test placed on her friendship with Magdalena.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 1998 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
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Estes, Sally. "Marisol and Magdalena: The Sound of Our Sisterhood." Booklist, vol. 95, no. 3, 1 Oct. 1998, p. 324. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A55053099/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=e431feae. Accessed 17 Nov. 2024.
Veronica Chambers, illus. by Paul Lee. Harcourt, $16 (40p) ISBN 0-15-201803-4
Chambers's (Mama's Girl) opening lines gracefully draw readers into a tale recounting a trenchant historical episode: "Stand here with me on the shores of New London, Connecticut. Feel the cool breeze of the Atlantic Ocean on your face." She bids youngsters to ask the ocean (an ocean so wide because "it holds so much history") about the legend of Joseph Cinque. Chambers continues the lyrical writing as she describes Cinque's, capture and infamous journey on the Spanish schooner Amistad (ironically, its translation means "friendship"), with 52 other Africans. There, Cinque leads a successful mutiny against his captors and, thinking the Spaniards were sailing the ship back to Africa, ultimately lands in"stead at New London, Conn. At this point, Chambers dispenses with poetics and turns to the cold, hard facts concerning a court trial's appeal, argued by John Quincy Adams, which sets Cinque and his colleagues free. During the recounting of this ordeal, readers gain no further insight into Cinque's thoughts or emotions. Fortunately, first-time children's book illustrator Lee fills in much of the emotional details. His grand acrylic paintings dramatically contrast light and darkness and reveal a deep psychological portrait of this extraordinary leader. His expressive, close-up images of Cinque intensify the pathos, and eventual triumph, of this here's remarkable story. Ages 8-up. (Mar.)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 1998 PWxyz, LLC
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"Amistad Rising: A Story of Freedom." Publishers Weekly, vol. 245, no. 11, 16 Mar. 1998, p. 64. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A20399112/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=c27f1c03. Accessed 17 Nov. 2024.
Veronica Chambers. Riverhead, $22.95 (208p) ISBN 1-57322-030-2
While billed as a memoir from the "post-civil rights generation," Chambers's remarkable story--told with admirable if sometimes frustrating control--is very much her own. If anything, it echoes the American stories of early European immigrants' children, though here the immigrants are blacks from the West Indies. Chambers grew up in Brooklyn in the 1970s, her mother enduring, her father violent and philandering. The marriage broke up. Cecilia Chambers downplayed her daughter's scholastic achievements, more worried about her struggling son, and never discussed sex. So the author absorbed the world on her own, in school, in the hair salon, ambitious to reap the opportunities black trailblazers had sown. A fight with her mother sent her to her father; there she survived a stepmother of fairy-tale cruelty and her dad's rage. She escaped, at 16, to Simon's Rock College in the Berkshires, where she learned to claim her black identity and was launched on a path of academic and professional success (including a stint as an editor of the New York Times Magazine). Chambers writes of a tender, belated rapprochement with her mother, and a daughter's gift--in money and support--that allows Cecilia to be finally "more than just coping." Some threads of Chambers's story, particularly the path of her imprisoned brother, are underdeveloped, but this remains an impressive debut, all the more so since the author is just 25. First serial to Glamour; BOMC alternate; author tour. (June)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 1996 PWxyz, LLC
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"Mama's Girl." Publishers Weekly, vol. 243, no. 19, 6 May 1996, p. 63. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A18253332/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=bdfd3826. Accessed 17 Nov. 2024.