I was recently asked to blurb The Chalk Circle: Intercultural
Prizewinning Essays, a new anthology that's already racking up awards
and sales records. One of my previous VONA students is in it, and the Introduction
is by VONA faculty member David Mura. A great teaching tool!
The launch party is this Friday (May 4) in San Francisco at
Books Inc. in Opera Plaza, 601 Van Ness Avenue, at 7 PM. The book’s
release arrives just in time for the annual World Day for Cultural Diversity
Dialogue and Development on May 21st, as proclaimed by the United Nations’
Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Editor Tara L. Masih will open
the program, and authors will sign books after the reading. Refreshments
will be served.
The Chalk Circle has already
garnered several accolades:
Featured title, NewPages’ “New & Noteworthy Books” list
Winner, 2012 Skipping Stones Honor Award in the
Multicultural/International category
Featured title, Amazon’s “Hot New Releases” list
Tara
L. Masih has assembled a stunning collection. Disregard the textbook-sounding
title and gaze upon the mosaic-like cover. The range of cultural diversity and
personal complexity packed into this slim, beautiful volume is staggering and far
outstrips any other collection out there. These now-American writers and
travelers experience the intercultural encounter at home, overseas, within their
own communities, families, and selves. The voices range from adult journalists
and Peace Corps volunteers to the children of Nazis and refugees. For some,
like Third Culture Kids and the children of survivors, their histories and true
identities are hidden, and it is through engaging with food and spirituality,
photographs and music, family stories and private letters, global and personal
history, that they are able to recover and share the nuances of life on our globalizing planet. Each story is a polished,
multi-faceted gem of unprecedented color and clarity, which together form a
glittering necklace that redefines what it is to be intercultural—that is,
human—in the world today. This is a book I will be teaching and recommending to
friends and strangers again and again.
--Faith
Adiele, Coming of Age Around the World: A
Multicultural Anthology; Meeting
Faith: The Thai Forest Journals of a Black Buddhist Nun
