Rgz Salon: Life, After by Sarah Darer Littman, Reviewed by Lyn Miller-Lachmann

Rgz SALON member Lyn Miller-Lachmann has been the Editor-in-Chief of MultiCultural Review; the author of the award-winning multicultural bibliography Our Family, Our Friends, Our World; the editor of Once Upon a Cuento, a collection of short stories by Latino authors; and most recently, the author of Gringolandia, a young adult novel about a refugee family living with the aftermath of the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile. The book is now in it's second print run and available for order (if you have trouble finding it, don't worry--the second run is on its way)! And don't forget to read the fascinating Cover Story for Gringolandia.

We're honored to have Lyn here as part of the rgz SALON, a feature where four of the top kidlit experts clue us in to the best YA novels they've read recently. Today, she reviews Life, After by Sarah Darer Littman (Scholastic, 2010). Incidentally, Life, After also has a great Cover Story.

Here's Lyn:

"When I went to Ground Zero several weeks after the attacks of September 11, 2001, and saw the tributes sent to New York City from all over the world, I thought of how this terrible event brought the United States into a global community that had suffered similar devastation. Here in our large, prosperous country, set apart from much of the world by two oceans, we are accustomed to feeling safe, above the turmoil that is a fact of life for most of the world’s populations, past and present. We never experienced in our homeland the devastation of two world wars, the dropping of the atomic bomb on a civilian population, the state terror visited upon the people of Chile following the 'other September 11' of 1973, and the regular terrorist bombings of buses, fast food restaurants, theaters, and nightclubs in places as disparate as Israel, India, Russia, and the Philippines.

"Through complex, realistic characters, Sarah Darer Littman makes that global connection in Life, After. Sixteen-year-old Daniela (Dani) Bensimon and her family have endured much in their native Argentina. When Dani was seven, her pregnant Aunt Sara died in the terrorist bombing of the Argentina-Israeli Mutual Aid Association (AMIA) in Buenos Aires on July 18, 1994. Then, in the financial crisis of 2001-02, her family’s clothing store went out of business. Now Dani’s father sits on the living room sofa in the throes of chronic depression, her mother endures a perilous journey to her low-wage job amid violent food riots, the electricity in their apartment has been cut off, and instead of being charity donors, the family is now charity recipients. The family’s only hope is to move to the United States, but that requires adjusting to a new language and culture and continued poverty. A classmate humiliates Dani for wearing her hand-me-down clothes, and her only lunch companion is a boy with Asperger’s Syndrome who is fascinated by world geography. Dani learns that the boy is the twin of the girl who humiliated her, and behind her anger and his secret journal that Dani rescues from a pack of bullies lies the death of their father in the 9/11 attacks the previous year.

"Littman probes the aftermath of two senseless events with depth and sensitivity, creating three memorable characters and compelling relationships between Dani and Jess and Jon Nathanson. Also effective, though at times static and repetitive, is her portrayal of Dani’s efforts to help her depressed father, who had not recovered from the death of his sister in the AMIA bombing when the failure of his business dealt a second blow. Readers learn of a little-known terrorist attack, and through Littman’s nuanced storytelling come to realize the common hurt and humanity of those who have survived the inhumanity of terrorism, whether they come from faraway lands or our hometown." -Lyn Miller-Lachmann

Here's the trailer for the book as well:

Cover Stories: Life, After by Sarah Darer Littman

Sarah Darer Littman's latest novel, Life, After, came out this month. I've been looking at this gorgeous cover for six months, and I can finally share the story behind it. Here's Sarah:

"Because one of the underlying themes of the book was that on 9/11, our country finally began to understand the kinds of terrorist threats that the rest of the world had been dealing with for decades, I wondered if they might incorporate the Twin Towers on the cover. The initial cover design did.

"I wasn't sure I was that crazy about that first cover. It was very subdued and to be honest, a little depressing, which is more the mood of the first part of the book when Daniela, the main character, and her family are living in extremely difficult circumstances during the economic crisis in Argentina. But to me, it didn't capture the hope and the optimism at the core of the story -- that a terrorist act shatters lives, but we cannot let it conquer our spirit; that with courage, faith and love, we will prevail.

"I was a bit uneasy about using the images of the Towers..."

Read the rest of Sarah's Cover Story, and see the amazing trailer for the book, at melissacwalker.com.

June: Sarah Darer Littman

I can't tell you how thrilled I was when I heard that the postergirlz recommended my most recent novel, Purge, to accompany Sara Zarr's Sweethearts. I'm a huge fan of Sara Zarr, both as a writer and as a person. As someone who is passionate about the subject of body image, her blog post on being unwillingly Photoshopped by a photographer is a must read.

Like Jenna in Sweethearts, Janie [the protagonist in Purge] has a complicated relationship with food, and there is a strong emotional component to her eating - when she is bingeing she is eating without enjoyment, but rather to fill what she calls "the black hole" inside.

My mom was taking her old pictures out of albums and scanning them onto the computer and she sent me this picture of myself on a Caribbean holiday when I was 14.



Looking at it as a woman with two kids in my mid-forties, my first thought was: "Wow, I had a nice figure!" But it only took a second for the voice of the girl in the picture to start up in my head - the one that told me she was fat and ugly. I started thinking about how throughout my life how much time and energy has been wasted obsessing about food and body image and feeling bad about myself - and, ultimately, being bulimic for six years as an adult - and I wanted to write a story that might help others avoid making that same mistake.

I'm so excited and grateful to be in such great company. I know E. Lockhart from our NYC Teen Author Drinks Nights and adored The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks and now have a great list of other books on my always growing "must read" list.

Thank you, readergirlz and postergirlz!

~ Sarah Darer Littman



Purge is one of the additional titles recommended in the June issue of readergirlz. Here's the summary from the jacket flap of Purge:

Janie Ryman hates throwing up. So why does she binge eat and then stick her fingers down her throat several times a day? That's what the doctors and psychiatrists at Golden Slopes hope to help her discover. But first Janie must survive everyday conflicts between the Barfers and the Starvers, attempts by the head psychiatrist to fish painful memories out of her emotional waters, and shifting friendships and alliances among the kids in the ward.