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May 2025
Home and Away: Stories, Poetry and Art is a reminder to all of its readers that high school students can produce works as evocative and powerful as many an adult. It features all kinds of art, from photographs to drawing, that are as expressive and hard-hitting as the prose and poetry that accompany them. What results is an extraordinary synthesis of art and raw life experience that will appeal to a wide audience. The first thing to note about Home and Away is its diversity.
What at first seems a structural diversity of topics and artistic examinations expands to represent a multiplicity of emotions and experiences. The central feature of The PATHfinder and POPS Clubs is to cultivate a safe, creative space where students can explore their individuality and creativity without judgment or condemnation. Home and Away is proof positive of their success in achieving this mandate. The volume’s focus is on places of home and safety in the world. Writings identify the features and flavors of these spaces for teens whose lives are in flux. In such a safe place, teens were able to explore their sense of alienation, distance, and differences from home and society, creating powerful works that mesmerize with evocative phrasing and connections.
One example is Kimberly Romero’s “Sol y Luna,” a prose reflection on addiction and discovery which charts the process of losing oneself and finding a way back to a central core of identity. Her candid reflection on her life and her mother’s achievements in raising her were written during her mother’s struggle with cancer: I crave your forgiveness, for this was never my intention. I’ve never been an addict, you protected me, like the greatest of all eclipses. Thank you for bearing me, birthing me, for I don’t know where I would be otherwise. No one understands addiction better than the addict, but I find that hard to believe. A moment of silence is requested for absorbing this piece, at the end.
Then there’s “Gleaming Reflection” by Deangelo Gonzalez, which considers pros and cons of transitioning, transgender identity, and the social backlash of prejudice which impacts transgender individuals. The hope and struggle immersed in Deangelo’s art and prose is strikingly thought-provoking: For me, it’s not only a struggle to be transgender in this world but also a learning process about how life throws you so many challenges that push you back into life. Ultimately, these are accounts of transformation and survival that embrace the highest of highs and lowest of lows in a teen’s life. Libraries choosing Home and Away for collections seeking literary representations of teen art, experience, and survival tactics will want to recommend it to high schoolers, students of literary achievement, and any reading group interested in diversity, survival, and raw, hard-hitting reflections of savvy young people. Readers will find Home and Away explosively compelling, filled with succinct, hard-hitting passages that linger in the mind long after reading.
D D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Review
April 22, 2025
Amy Friedman was a guest on the Donna Seebo Show with host Donna Seebo. The show will be available soon at www.delphiinternational.com.
January 2025
"An anthology of poems, essays, and illustrations by young people (and some adults) explores themes of growing up, family, and dreaming of brighter futures.
"Divided into 12 thematic chapters, the work’s varied contents—from photographs to acrostic poems—showcase the nearly 100 different creators’ emotional and intimate deep dives into their motivations, hopes, and goals. A common theme running through their work is the experience of being affected by the U.S. carceral system; all the contributors participated in clubs run by a nonprofit dedicated to supporting teens whose lives have been touched by “incarceration, detention, and deportation.” . . . It’s gratifying to see multiple pieces by the same creators appear, highlighting their introspection and providing a roundness to their contributions that would not be present if readers had only one opportunity to interact with their works. The poetry of Genalyn Guerrero, from Venice High School in Los Angeles, is particularly strong and threads throughout the text in a way that allows readers to feel they are following the writer's journey."
—Kirkus Reviews