NEW YORK – Award-winning author Marina Budhos again captures our attention with two books that depict Caribbean experience.
Her thought-provoking young adult novel, Tell Us We’re Home (Simon and Schuster/ISBN 978-1-4169-0352-9), portrays three immigrant girls–Jaya, Maria, and Lola—who have one thing in common: they are the daughters of maids and nannies in the prosperous suburban town of Meadowbrook. Jaya, the main character, is from Trinidad and has come to Meadowbrook with her widowed mother, who has had to defer her own dreams of becoming a nurse, to find a better life for her daughter.
When Jaya’s mother is accused of stealing a valuable heirloom, the suddenly the once idyllic, seemingly liberal town of Meadowbrook becomes a place of ugly tensions and racism, and the girls’ friendship is put to the test. Once again, Marina Budhos has written a thoughtful and ambitious novel about class and cultural differences while emphasizing the importance of friendship in difficult times.
Ms. Budhos has also recently published, with her husband, award winning author Marc Aronson, Sugar Changed the World: A Story of Magic, Spice, Freedom and Science (Houghton Mifflin/ISBN 978-0-618-57492-6).
The authors were inspired to write this book when they discovered that they each have sugar in their family backgrounds. Those intriguing tales inspired this husband and wife team to trace the globe-spanning history of the essence of sweetness, and to seek out the voices of those who led bitter sugar lives in the Caribbean. As they discovered, the trail of sugar runs like a bright band through world events, making unexpected and fascinating connections.
With Sugar Changed the World, Aronson and Budhos reveal how the quest for one sweet substance enslaved, and freed, millions around the world.
Praised for its rich, evocative narrative, along with eighty archival illustrations drawn from sources as widespread as Iran, Russia, Hawaii, and the Caribbean, historical songs, poems, and maps, the authors have put a human face on this vast pageant of history. The authors have also created for the book a website, www.sugarchangedtheworld.com, which features the music and dance of the sugar lands, along with many other links, to illuminate this fascinating story.
Marina Budhos has published two adult novels, The Professor of Light, House of Waiting and nonfiction book, Remix: Conversations With Immigrant Teenagers. Her first book for children was the well-received Ask Me No Questions, winner of a James Cook Teen Book award, and will soon be made into a feature film. Additionally, she has received an EMMA (Exceptional Merit Media Award) and a Rona Jaffe Award for Women Writers. Ms. Budhos has been a Fulbright Scholar to India and is currently an associate professor of English and Asian Studies at William Paterson University. You can visit Marina Budhos online at www.marinabudhos.com.
Marc Aronson has won many awards and prizes for his books, including the first Sibert Medal and the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Sir Walter Ralegh and the Quest for El Dorado. He has a doctorate in American History from NYU and runs the Nonfiction Matters blog at SLJ.com. This fall he joined the graduate faculty in the School of Information Science at Rutgers University. The couple lives with their two sons in Maplewood, New Jersey. You can visit Marc Aronson online at www.marcaronson.com.
