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WORK TITLE: American Street
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://ibizoboi.net/
CITY: Brooklyn
STATE: NY
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
http://ibizoboi.net/about *
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti; immigrated to the United States; married Joseph Zoboi (an art teacher); children: three.
EDUCATION:Vermont College of Fine Arts, M.F.A.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Sadie Nash Leadership Project, writing instructor; Daughters of Anacaona Writing Project, founder.
AWARDS:Women Writers of Haitian Descent Award for short story; Tricky Talker of the Year award, Afrikan Folk Heritage Circle; Brooklyn Arts Council grant; Gulliver Travel Grant.
WRITINGS
Contributor to anthologies, including Dark Matter: Reading the Bones. Contributor to periodicals and websites including the New York Times Book Review, Horn Book magazine, and the Rumpus.
SIDELIGHTS
Ibi Zoboi was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and she immigrated to the United States with her family when she was a child. In her young adult novel, American Street, Zoboi features Fabiola, a young girl with a similar background. Fabiola’s migration is immediately fraught; her mother is detained by U.S. Immigration. Fabiola must continue on alone, but thankfully her aunt and cousins are waiting for her in Detroit. Unfortunately, Fabiola’s cousins Chantal, Primadonna, and Princess, are thoroughly American, and Fabiola struggles to understand them. Fabiola had believed that the United States would be a better place than Haiti, but now she’s not so sure. Still, she does her best to adjust and make friends, and she finds refuge by practicing her Vodou faith. Along the way, the protagonist begins to fall for Kasim, whose best friend, Dray, is a drug dealer. When she encounters an undercover cop investigating Dray, Fabiola makes a deal: Incriminate Dray in exchange for her mother’s freedom.
Reviews of American Street were largely positive, and critics stated that the book is poignant and masterful. As Alice Cary noted in her BookPage interview and review, “for immigrants like Ibi Zoboi, the unnerving process of uprooting and arriving in the United States ‘feels as though you’ve been transported to a different planet.’ With her powerful debut novel for teens, Zoboi’s mission was to write not only about changing cultures, but also about the experience of moving ‘from one broken place to another.’” Carey then went on to praise the novel, asserting: “Filled with precise, hard-edged descriptions, American Street weaves together elements of faith, family, loyalty, race, violence, trauma, American dreams and failures–all bound together in a riveting, tragic tale.” As Kirkus Reviews critic offered additional applause, announcing: “Filling her pages with magic, humanity, tragedy, and hope, Zoboi builds up, takes apart, and then rebuilds an unforgettable story.” In the words of an online Booksmugglers correspondent: “This book is as complex as it is touching. It’s a book that contrasts the immigrant experience with the life left behind, without making one or the other the superior one.” The correspondent then went on to conclude: “This is a story with many threads, told in a beautiful voice, with the type of rich, sprouting storytelling that is deeply affecting. It’s not exactly a happy story but it’s a hopeful one, a beautiful one, a great one.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
BookPage, February, 2017, Alice Cary, author interview and review of American Street.
Horn Book magazine, March-April, 2017, Eboni Njoku, review of American Street.
Kirkus Reviews, November 15, 2016, review of American Street.
Publishers Weekly, November 21, 2016, review of American Street.
ONLINE
Booksmugglers, http://thebooksmugglers.com/ (August 28, 2017), review of American Street.
Ibi Zoboi Website, http://ibizoboi.net/ (August 28, 2017).*
ABOUT
IbiZ
FUN BIO:
Ibi Zoboi was born in Haiti and immigrated to New York with her mother when she was four years-old. Everything about her new home was both strange and magical. This is why she loves reading and writing science-fiction, fantasy, and mythology. And she loves love stories, too! Ibi wears lots of bright colors and is a huge fan of mangos, avocados, dry humor, long-winded storytellers, and modest skirts. She also smiles, laughs, and cries often—sometimes all at once. She lives in Brooklyn with her three children, her husband the art teacher, and three pet turtles named Lucky, Jade, and Leo. It’s a messy house.
SHORT OFFICIAL BIO:
Ibi Zoboi holds an MFA in Writing for Children & Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her writing has been published in The New York Times Book Review, the Horn Book Magazine, and The Rumpus, among others. Her debut novel, AMERICAN STREET, was published by Balzer + Bray, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers and has received five starred reviews. Her next YA novel, PRIDE, is due out in the Fall of 2018. Her middle grade debut, MY LIFE AS AN ICE-CREAM SANDWICH is forthcoming from Dutton/Penguin Books. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, and their three young children. You can find her online at www.ibizoboi.net.
LONG BIO:
Ibi Aanu Zoboi was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti and is a graduate of the Clarion West Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Workshop. Her short story, “Old Flesh Song”, is published in the award-winning Dark Matter: Reading the Bones, a collection of African American speculative fiction. Ibi received an award from theWomen Writers of Haitian Descent for her short story “At the Shores of Dawn”, which was published in One?Respe! literary journal. She won a “Tricky Talker of the Year” an annual tall-tale contest presented by the Afrikan Folk Heritage Circle.
Her children’s fable, “Mama Kwanzaa & Her Seven Children”, was published in African Voices Magazine. She designed and taught a course on female archetypes in world mythology to the young women of the Sadie Nash Leadership Project where she also taught creative writing and leadership classes and she’s been a volunteer mentor with Girls Write Now, Inc. Ibi presented a paper entitled, “Oya’s Brood: Mythology and the African American Woman” for a symposium on Octavia Butler at the Center for Black Literature at Medgar Evers College.
She is a recipient of a grant from the Brooklyn Arts Council for her original program, the Daughters of Anacaona Writing Project, partnering with local organizations Dwa Fanm, Inc. andHaiti Cultural Exchange in Brooklyn, and Fondasyon Felicite in Haiti to conduct a 3-day workshop with teen girls in Port-au-Prince. Ibi has completed a teen fantasy novel based on Haitian myth and folklore. Her short story “The Harem” is recently published in Haiti Noir, edited by Edwidge Danticat.
She’s a recent winner of the Gulliver Travel Grant given annually by the Speculative Literature Foundation and holds an MFA in Writng for Children & Young Adults at Vermont College of Fine Arts.
Her debut novel, AMERICAN STREET, was published by Balzer + Bray, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers and has received five starred reviews. Her next YA novel, PRIDE, is due out in the Fall of 2018. Her middle grade debut, MY LIFE AS AN ICE-CREAM SANDWICH is forthcoming from Dutton/Penguin Books.
Ibi lives in Brooklyn with her husband, visual artist and educator Joseph Zoboi, and their three young children.
American Street
Eboni Njoku
The Horn Book Magazine. 93.2 (March-April 2017): p101.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 The Horn Book, Inc.. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Sources, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.hbook.com/magazine/default.asp
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American Street
by Ibi Zoboi
High School Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins 330 pp.
2/17 978-0-06-247304-2 $17.99
e-book ed. 978-0-06-247306-6 $9.99
Immediately after landing in New York from Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Fabiola's mother is detained by U.S. Immigration. Fabiola must continue the journey alone to her aunt and cousins in Detroit, specifically to the intersection of American Street and Joy Road. Quickly discovering her location to be a cruel misnomer, Fabiola receives a crash course in cultural differences from her three cousins Chantal, Primadonna, and Princess, known as "The Three Bees." In the midst of a new friendship and romance, Fabiola learns her family is involved in the drug trade. An undercover cop offers Fabiola her mother's release if Fabiola provides information regarding the drug sales. Throughout the story, Fabiola turns to her Vodou faith, praying to her Iwas, or spirit guides, to reunite her mother with the family. It would appear the guides answer, making themselves known in a series of remarkable events, and leading Fabiola to a decision that will alter the lives of all those she loves. Through her first-person narrative, Fabiola makes plain to readers the range of emotions found in the immigrant experience, particularly the heartache of separation from a loved one. Interspersed are the stories of Fabiola's cousins, her aunt, and other characters, as they negotiate both their "joyous moments" and their sadness. Zoboi's young adult debut is equal parts gritty and transcendent.
At the intersection of broke and broken
Alice Cary
BookPage. (Feb. 2017): p29.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 BookPage
http://bookpage.com/
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AMERICAN STREET
By Ibi Zoboi
Balzer + Bray, $17.99, 336 pages
ISBN 9780062473042, audio, eBook available
Ages 14 and up
FICTION
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
For immigrants like Ibi Zoboi, the unnerving process of uprooting and arriving in the United States "feels as though you've been transported to a different planet." With her powerful debut novel for teens, Zoboi's mission was to write not only about changing cultures, but also about the experience of moving "from one broken place to another."
American Street starts with a heartbreaking scene: While on her way from Haiti to live with relatives in Detroit, narrator Fabiola Toussaint is separated from her mother while going through Customs at Kennedy Airport in New York. Fabiola, an American citizen by birth, is forced to fly alone to Detroit, while her mother is detained in New Jersey by U.S. Immigration.
As a child, Zoboi lived through a similar experience. Born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, she and her mother moved to the Bushwick area of Brooklyn when Zoboi was 4. She recalls the move as a "tragic shift" marked by the shock of leaving a place full of family for an apartment defined by loneliness. "It was winter," Zoboi says, speaking by phone from her home in Brooklyn, "and my mother [was] gone for long hours to this place called a job. I had TV as my sitter. It defined me as a writer and as a person, that shift."
Four years later, when she and her mother returned to Haiti for a visit, Zoboi was not allowed to return to America.
"I didn't know anything about Haitian culture, and I wasn't allowed to go back home," Zoboi says. "I was separated for three months and stayed with relatives. My mother worked tirelessly to get me back."
As the novel unfolds, Fabiola is thrust into the Detroit household of her aunt and three teenage cousins, while the fate of her mother remains unknown. Fabiola experiences her first snowfall and begins classes in a Catholic school that resembles a haunted castle, and it isn't long before she realizes that she felt safer in Haiti than she does in America.
Since the dangerous, desolate Bushwick neighborhood she knew as a child has been revitalized, Zoboi wanted to place her characters in a modern-day neighborhood that resembles the one she grew up in. She settled on Detroit, and was delighted to discover a road called American Street. Then, in a case of literary serendipity, she located the ideal spot for Fabiola's relatives to live.
"I'm kind of--not literally --driving down American Street on Google maps and I come across a Joy Road....Where Joy Road and American Street intersect, I see that there are these little shotgun houses very close together, and it hit me right then and there. It's real: There is an American Street intersection. It was just perfect."
Zoboi hopes to travel to Detroit to see the intersection in person. "I'm going to take a picture of me standing at the crossroads," she says.
Such a photo would be spot-on for a novelist who digs deep into what happens when cultures, nationalities, races and religions collide. Fabiola, who believes in Haitian Vodou and spirit guides, soon has a boyfriend named Kasim, who has grown up Muslim.
Zoboi hopes her portrayal of Fabiola's religion might help dispel the negative stereotypes many Americans have of the Haitian faith.
"I'm really passionate about faith in young adult literature, whatever the faith is," Zoboi says. "That's who I was as a teenager, looking for some sort of faith, or some otherness. I think a lot of teenagers grapple with that, and I don't see enough in YA."
Fabiola is drawn to Kasim's sweet, gentle ways, but worries about his close ties to her cousin's boyfriend, a reported drug dealer with a violent temper. Eventually, she's forced to make an impossible and life-changing choice between her loyalty to Kasim and to her family.
Fabiola and Kasim's relationship was loosely inspired by real-life headlines: When 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was fatally shot in 2012, he had been on the phone with a Haitian girl.
Whether speaking of Trayvon Martin's girlfriend or Fabiola and her American cousins, Zoboi notes, "A reader who doesn't understand the differences between cultures will see these girls as just black girls. But there is a huge cultural difference."
Zoboi grew up living this cultural divide. Her fifth-grade teachers looked at her bright Haitian clothes and wrongly assumed she couldn't speak English. They placed her in an English as a Second Language course, where she felt "invisible." After studying investigative journalism in college and working at a weekly paper, Zoboi finally felt "seen" when she took to the stage at poetry slams in New York City, becoming part of the spoken word movement. She quit her newspaper job to work in a bookstore, and began taking creative writing courses, eventually earning an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts.
Zoboi's transformation from fearful immigrant girl to adult writer with a vivid, resonating voice extends even to her name.
As a girl, she was called Pascale Philantrope, but as an adult, she changed her name. She chose "Ibi," Yoruba for "rebirth," which she felt was a close translation of Pascale, a name tied to Easter. Her new last name comes from husband Joseph Zoboi, a visual artist and educator with whom she has three children, ages 9, 12 and 14.
Filled with precise, hard-edged descriptions, American Street weaves together elements of faith, family, loyalty, race, violence, trauma, American dreams and failures--all bound together in a riveting, tragic tale.
American Street
Publishers Weekly. 263.47 (Nov. 21, 2016): p110.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
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* American Street
Ibi Zoboi. HarperCollins/Balzer + Bray, $17.99 (336p) ISBN 978-0-06-247304-2
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Zoboi's powerful debut, set in current-day Detroit (but based on the author's experience as a Haitian immigrant in 1980s Bushwick, Brooklyn), unflinchingly tackles contemporary issues of immigration, assimilation, violence, and drug dealing. Although born in America, teenage Fabiola has grown up with her mother in Port au Prince, dreaming of a better life with her aunt and cousins in Detroit. Upon arriving in New York City, Fabiola's mother, lacking proper documents, is sent to a detention center while Fabiola must go on alone to Detroit. Shocked by the rough urban environment, her pugnacious cousins, her aunt's lethargy, and her cousin Donna's physically abusive, drug-dealing boyfriend, Dray, Fabiola turns to her Haitian spirits (lwas)--as well as a mysterious street man--for guidance, while embarking on a tentative romance with Dray's friend Kasim. When she strikes a deal with a police detective to set up Dray for arrest in exchange for her mother's release, it results in a dangerous situation with devastating results. Mixing gritty street life with the tenderness of first love, Haitian Vodou, and family bonds, the book is at once chilling, evocative, and reaffirming. Ages 14-up. Agent: Ammi-Joan Paquette, Erin Murphy Literary. (Feb.)
Zoboi, Ibi: AMERICAN STREET
Kirkus Reviews. (Nov. 15, 2016):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
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Zoboi, Ibi AMERICAN STREET Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins (Children's Fiction) $17.99 2, 14 ISBN: 978-0-06-247304-2
Fabiola Toussaint is a black immigrant girl whose life is flipped upside down when she moves to Detroit, Michigan, from her homeland of Haiti and her mother is detained by the INS, leaving her to go on alone. Though Fabiola was born in the U.S., she has lived in Haiti since she was an infant, and that has now left her unprepared for life in America. In Detroit, she lives with her aunt Marjorie and her three thoroughly Americanized cousins, Chantal, Primadonna, and Princess. It's not easy holding on to her heritage and identity in Detroit; Matant Jo fines Fabiola for speaking Creole (though even still "a bit of Haiti is peppered in her English words"), and the gritty streets of Detroit are very different from those of Port-au-Prince. Fabiola has her faith to help keep her grounded, which grows ever more important as she navigates her new school, American society, and a surprising romance--but especially when she is faced with a dangerous proposition that brings home to her the fact that freedom comes with a price. Fabiola's perceptive, sensitive narration gives readers a keen, well-executed look into how the American dream can be a nightmare for so many. Filling her pages with magic, humanity, tragedy, and hope, Zoboi builds up, takes apart, and then rebuilds an unforgettable story. This book will take root in readers' hearts. (Fiction. 14 & up)