About this item
Jaya, Maria, and Lola are just like the other eighth-grade girls in the wealthy suburb of Meadowbrook, New Jersey. They want to go to the spring dance, they love spending time with their best friends after school, sharing frappés and complaining about the other kids. But there’s one big difference: all three are daughters of maids and nannies. And they go to school with the very same kids whose families their mothers work for. That difference grows even bigger—and more painful—when Jaya’s mother is accused of theft and Jaya’s small, fragile world collapses. When tensions about immigrants start to erupt, fracturing this perfect, serene suburb, all three girls are tested, as outsiders—and as friends. Each of them must learn to find a place for themselves in a town that barely notices they exist.
About the Author
Marina Budhos is an author of award-winning fiction and nonfiction; her latest novel is The Long Ride, due out in September, 2019. She has published the novels Watched, which was a Walter Dean Myers Award Honor and Asian Pacific American Literature Honor; Tell Us We're Home, and Essex County YA Big Read; Ask Me No Questions, winner of the James Cook Teen Book Award and New York Public Library Notable and Best Book; The Professor of Light, House of Waiting; and Remix: Conversations with Immigrant Teenagers. With her husband Marc Aronson, she has published Eyes of the World: Robert Capa, Gerda Taro & The Invention of Modern Photography and Sugar Changed the World: A Story of Magic, Spice, Slavery, Freedom and Science, which was an LA Times Book Finalist. Her short stories, articles, essays, and book reviews have appeared in publications such as The Kenyon Review, The Nation, the Daily Beast, the Awl, Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere. Budhos has given talks at universities in the U.S. and abroad, has been a Fulbright Scholar to India, and was awarded a Rona Jaffe Award for Women Writers and twice received a Fellowship from the New Jersey State Arts Council. Budhos is currently a professor of English at William Paterson University. Her website is www.marinabudhos.com.Did you know:*That The Long Ride takes place in the 1970s against the backdrop of desegregation in the schools--so relevant to today!* Watched was performed live with Theatre 167? For more info check out www.theatre167.org.* That Marina has published a number of short essays on everything from Donald Trump's assistant cheating in her writing seminar to memoir excerpts about growing up in Parkway Village, where Betty Friedan was inspired for "The Feminine Mystique? " Check it out: http://www.marinabudhos.com/books/short-works-2* That she and her husband Marc wrote a book out about photography and the Spanish Civil War and you can see many of the photos at a special link: https://www.icp.org/browse/archive/collections/eyes-of-the-world
