Showing results by author "Elizabeth McKenzie" in All Categories

From the start of Elizabeth McKenzie’s beguiling fiction debut, we are drawn into the offbeat worldview of sharp-eyed, intrepid Ann Ransom. Stop That Girl chronicles Ann’s colorful coming-of-age travails, from her childhood in a disjointed family through her tender adolescence and beyond. Along the way, she discovers the absurdities that lurk around every corner of a young woman’s life, by way of oafish neighbors, overzealous boyfriends, prurient vegetable salesmen, sour landlords, and an iconoclast grandmother, known even to her family as Dr. Frost.

Despite her name, Taína Perez doesn’t know anything about her Taíno heritage, nor has she ever tried to learn. After all, how would ancient Puerto Rican history help with everything going on? There’s constant trouble at school and in her neighborhood, her older brother was kicked out of the house, and with her mom at work, she’s left alone to care for her little brother and aging grandmother. It’s a lot for a fourteen-year-old to manage. But life takes a wild turn when her abuela tells her she is a direct descendant of Anacaona, the beloved Taíno leader, warrior, and poet.

A pesar de su nombre, Taína Pérez no sabe nada de su herencia taína, ni ha intentado nunca aprender. Al fin y al cabo, ¿cómo podría ayudar la historia antigua de Puerto Rico con todo lo que está pasando? Hay constantes problemas en la escuela y en su barrio, han echado a su hermano mayor de casa y como su madre está trabajando, le toca a ella sola cuidar de su hermano pequeño y de su abuela anciana. Es mucho para una niña de catorce años.