Weekend Pick for April 19, 2024

Weekend Pick for April 19, 2024

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Jen Nails

​To remind our readers, our April contributor of the Weekend Picks is Jen Nails,  a teacher, librarian, and an author in Las Vegas, NV. Jen has chosen Jazz Owls by Margarita Engle as her Weekend Pick.

Jazz Owls by Margarita Engle

​This historical novel in verse, told through multiple perspectives (as is the best-case scenario for teaching history), expresses the true events of the LA Zoot Suit Riots of the 1940s. The mysterious murder of a young, Mexican American man by the hands of United States Naval soldiers instigates a tirade of violence. Young soldiers, with whom Mexican American women are jitterbugging into the early mornings before heading to work in the canneries, are responsible for the beatings of hundreds of Mexican American men. Named the "Zoot Suit Riots," as the naval soldiers claim that they are attacking the Mexican men because of their baggy clothing, however, the violence is clearly racial.
 

Examples of racism are pervasive throughout the novel, from the references to the public pools allowing Mexican children to swim only at the end of the week when the water is already "dirty" and in need of replenishment, to the unfair treatment of Mexican and Cuban workers in the factories and canneries. ​

Margarita Engle

Through the perspectives of Ray and his family, we experience these true events as perhaps those who may have lived them did. Ray is 12 and works part time in a factory. Despite his problems staying in school and his intense anger toward the soldiers, he perseveres on his path toward attending high school. As a result of the riots, Ray's sister Lorena, who is 14 and has quit school to work full-time in the cannery, finds her voice as an activist and begins fighting for safe working conditions and equal pay. As part of the war effort, his 16-year-old sister, Marisela begins to work for an airplane manufacturer and then quits in order to begin studying to become a lawyer. The characters grapple with the ways in which the war brings about opportunities and at the same time, how it has been peripherally responsible for bringing about the violence to their communities. ​

Gender roles, politics, pop culture and fashion of the time, and racism are inherent themes within this important story. 
 
The novel is appropriate for all ages. History buffs, jazz fans, and poetry lovers will appreciate this text. Margarita Engle is a Cuban-American memoirist, poet and novelist, and a former Young People's Poet Laureate of the United States. ​

There is more coming.
Till next Friday, friends!