 Sarah Fleming | Welcome to our final February Weekend Picks! Professor Sarah Fleming completes her month of Weekend Picks with another amazing review for our readers. Sarah is an assistant professor in the Curriculum & Instruction department at SUNY Oswego in upstate New York. A former high school English teacher for twenty-one years, she now teaches courses in English methods, literacy, and young adult literature. Sarah particularly enjoys reading and teaching about texts that can be used to forward antiracist and antibias teaching, and she engages in research that looks to support teachers in their redesign of ELA curriculum for such efforts. |
They Thought They Buried Us by Nonieqa Ramos
 | Yuiza tells their story like it’s the screenplay for a film. INTERIOR. DAY. THE BOOGIE-DOWN BRONX. Describes the scene, introduces characters, and pans the camera to see what they and their friends are doing: filming a scene for Yuiza’s horror movie. At least, that’s what they’re trying to do, anyway, in the time there is left. Yuiza’s film aspirations are being dashed by Mami’s plans - to send them away from the city and upstate to an elite prep school for girls, Our Lady of Perpetual Mercy. Yuiza’s been accepted on a scholarship, and will have a work study position to assist in paying the tuition. Yuiza doesn’t want to go, but does so out of duty to the tías and their wishes for them to have a better future. Once there, however, Yuiza’s certain there is something unusual, unnatural about Our Lady of Perpetual Mercy. The horror aficionado in them might be working overtime, but Yuiza knows that something is definitely off about the people in charge. |
| Yuiza meets the new principal Ms. Owens, is forced to give up their cell phone, and begrudgingly resigns themself to an isolated existence at this new school. Even worse, Yuiza is actually microchipped, so their every move can be monitored. They won’t speak to family or friends until Family Phone Call Day, two weeks from then. When given the tour, Yuiza tries to question some of the other students of color who work there, but they are eerily silent, and they just repeat the same mantra: that they’re so lucky to be there. Mami must leave, and Yuiza tries to settle in. But the more they try to find some semblance of normalcy in the new surroundings, the more suspicious they become… there’s a mystery here, Yuiza knows it. Their dreams are haunting, and they know there’s a connection to the school’s dark past. The other student workers’ zombie-like demeanor also suggests that something’s not right here, at all. And Yuiza needs to figure out what it is before they too get swept up in the darkness… |  Nonieqa Ramos |
They Thought They Buried Us is a suspenseful, eerie tale about a young person trying to find their way in a space that won’t make room for others. Reading like a Jordan Peele movie, it is full of opportunity to question how some are kept down while others rise to the top, and it demands that readers expect more from our world, how to stay resilient and take up space when others try to silence them.
To learn more about author Nonieqa Ramos, please visit: https://www.nonieqaramos.com/
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