A Gathering of Flowers - 9848

A young Chicano family places all its dreams for the future on a golden cockroach. Children on a Chippewa reservation carve a tribal trickster from a block of ice in the middle of July. A young black woman with a gift for preaching decides she'll fly on Sunday at the Perfect Peace Baptist Church. Written by such distinguished authors as Maxine Hong Kingston, Lois Lowry, Gary Soto, and Joyce Carol Thomas, the short stories in this collection are a celebration of diversity--a tribute to the races and cultures that make up America. Here are exquisitely crafted fables and fantasies, surprising turns of plots, intricate patterns, and powerful rhythms that take the reader from rural Oklahoma to a Chicago Latino barrio, from an East Coast neighborhood to urban San Francisco, and beyond. Here are stories that illuminate the glory, the splendor, the achings and failings of young people growing up across the country--and that address what it is truly like to be ethnic and American. "Readers are