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Photo
© Scarlett K. Anderson |
M. Sindy Felin
Touching Snow
Atheneum Books for
Young Readers About
the Book and Author
M. Sindy Felin’s inspiration
for her debut novel, Touching Snow, came
from her own experiences growing up in an immigrant
household in suburban New York and from her early
love of mysteries. In writing the story of Karina,
a young girl navigating the waters of two cultures,
Sindy relied on many real-life social issues facing
fellow Haitian immigrant families in the community
where she was raised and was inspired by their resiliency
and ingenuity. Sindy, the first person in her family
born in the United States, was also the first girl
to attend college; she graduated from Wesleyan University
in 1994. She currently resides outside Washington,
D.C.
Suggested Links
Publisher's website
http://www.simonsays.com/
An Excerpt from Touching
Snow
http://www.simonsays.com
Excerpt from Touching Snow
Copyright © 2007
by M. Sindy Felin
The best way to avoid being
picked on by high school bullies is to kill someone.
Anyone will do. Accidental killings have the same
effect as on- purpose murder. Of course, this is just
my own theory. My sister Delta would say that my sample
size isn't big enough to draw such a conclusion. But
I bet I'm right.
Because now no one jerks
my braids so my neck snaps back and I bite my tongue;
no one pulls my backpack off and scatters my textbooks
in one hallway, my notebooks in another, and leaves
the bag in the boys' bathroom toilet; no one spits
at me from the school bus; and Gorilla Arms Manning
doesn't pretend to point with his right hand while
grabbing my crotch with his left. Not since eighth
grade. Not since I killed Daddy.
He wasn't my real daddy.
My sisters and I had to call him that when our little
brothers were born so they would know what to call
him. Before that I just called him Umm. Like "Umm...remember
you said you would let us watch TV this weekend?"
Or "Umm...do you want any more rice and plantains?"
That's because Ma never told us what our name for
him was.
A couple days after
my fifth birthday Ma returned to the apartment we
shared with Uncle Andre and Aunt Jacqueline and three
of my cousins, and made my sisters and me put on matching
pink-and-white girly dress-up dresses -- the kind
with the frilly decorations that scratch your neck
and the giant bows in back that never tie to quite
the same size, so you end up looking like a crippled-winged
angel. Then we went to a church and there was a wedding
and we moved out of Brooklyn to a red and yellow house
in a place full of white folks called Chestnut Valley
and never went back to Uncle Andre's apartment. Ma
called her new husband Gaston. But my sister Enid
got slapped when she tried that.
Copyright ©
2007 by M. Sindy Felin
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