Poverty and wealth, the two opposing worlds have fascinated me since I was nine. I was born to a 1970’s motorcycle gang pimp and a fifteen-year-old girl he had raped. I know poverty well. And then when I was nine, my mother was a maid for an upper-class family who owned an oil services company and she ended up marrying their son and suddenly I was introduced to a whole new world where people didn't lack life choices due to limited resources. The rich were like aliens to me. So ever since my childhood, I have been captivated by the two worlds and it tends to bleed into my stories.
Sometimes we think of a rebel as an out-of-control, crazy hooligan when most of the time it is a normal, humble person who has been pushed to their limits due to unfair circumstances. Katniss, the main character, was very relatable to me. I’m protective of my little sisters, and I know what it’s like to live in harsh conditions. What I loved about Katness though is that she went from protecting her sister to fighting for all the districts, later in the series. She was selfless and had a true service to humanity mentality which is rare.
Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen regards it as a death sentence when she is forced to represent her district in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV. But Katniss has been close to death before - and survival, for her, is second nature. The Hunger Games is a searing novel set in a future with unsettling parallels to our present. Welcome to the deadliest reality TV show ever...
Coming from poverty, I mean, we were so poor I watched my mother shoplift a package of meat and a can of green beans one time so that we could eat that night, I really appreciated the struggles. I am a sucker for ‘big family’ dramas too and add that I lived in Oklahoma and most of my books were set in Oklahoma, this story had a huge impact on me and my novel. What I didn’t like though was the family’s inability to fight the system. I love a good David and Goliath story!
'I've done my damndest to rip a reader's nerves to rags, I don't want him satisfied.'
Shocking and controversial when it was first published, The Grapes of Wrath is Steinbeck's Pultizer Prize-winning epic of the Joad family, forced to travel west from Dust Bowl era Oklahoma in search of the promised land of California. Their story is one of false hopes, thwarted desires and powerlessness, yet out of their struggle Steinbeck created a drama that is both intensely human and majestic in its scale and moral vision.
No, this story wasn’t so much about poor vs. rich, other than Lisbeth Salander being poor and the bad guy being an elitist prick. I love a good hacker story and what better rebel to throw into the hacking world than Lisbeth Salander? Closed off, tough, and wickedly smart. I love that the author gave her skills to hold her own. Lisbeth, is the kind of rebel who we all desperately hope will 1. find the bad guy and 2. get some serious therapy.
Forty years ago, Harriet Vanger disappeared from a family gathering on the island owned and inhabited by the powerful Vanger clan. Her body was never found, yet her uncle is convinced it was murder - and that the killer is a member of his own tightly-knit but dysfunctional family.
He employs disgraced financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist and the tattooed, truculent computer hacker Lisbeth Salander to investigate. When the pair link Harriet's disappearance to a number of grotesque murders from forty years ago, they begin to unravel a dark and appalling family history.
If you grow up in Oklahoma The Outsiders is required reading in school. It was one of the few required novels I didn’t hate reading. I could relate to their struggles and feeling like second-class citizens compared to the Socs. It’s still one of my top ten favorite books to this day. I wish that the author gave them some ammo to fight the system and rise above their circumstances.
50 years of an iconic classic! This international bestseller and inspiration for a beloved movie is a heroic story of friendship and belonging.
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No one ever said life was easy. But Ponyboy is pretty sure that he's got things figured out. He knows that he can count on his brothers, Darry and Sodapop. And he knows that he can count on his friends-true friends who would do anything for him, like Johnny and Two-Bit. But not on much else besides trouble with the Socs, a vicious gang of rich kids whose idea of a good time is…
I loved the dynamics of the two families and how the mothers are kind of thrown together and forced into a relationship neither wants. Both families have their secrets, dysfunctions, and hurdles to overcome. And that’s the exact dynamic I had in mind when I wrote my book; the Wilsons, being broke, surviving off the land, and dealing with their goodhearted, kind father who pushes them all to take up his fight and hack his former employer (Colossal Oil) and the Carters, the rich family that owns the oil company and yet are deeply tied to the Wilsons. Give me a good messy relationship and then make them from two different social classes, like in Little Fires Everywhere, and it's reading time! Pop some popcorn, give me a blanket and lock me in a room.
"Witty, wise, and tender. It's a marvel." -Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl on the Train and A Slow Fire Burning
"To say I love this book is an understatement. It's a deep psychological mystery about the power of motherhood, the intensity of teenage love, and the danger of perfection. It moved me to tears." -Reese Witherspoon
From the bestselling author of Everything I Never Told You and Our Missing Hearts comes a riveting novel that traces the intertwined fates of the picture-perfect Richardson family and the enigmatic mother and daughter who upend their…
They were supposed to be the next Kennedys, each adopted Wilson teen prepared for a specific political office, but when their father, CTO of Colossal Oil is falsely accused of stealing from the company after he publicly voices his concerns about the recent return of the dustbowl and fracking chemicals leaking into the drinking water and its correlation to the current outbreak of Frackheads (people who drink tainted water and become psychopaths and roam the roads with one mission, to kill for fun) the family’s focus goes from the future to a hacking revenge operation. After their night off in OKC, and a series of unfortunate events, the once unified Wilson clan struggle to keep themselves alive and their beautiful, unique family together.
I once saw a play at the renowned Oregon Shakespeare Theatre. A play about Sor Juana. It was a good play, but it felt like something was missing like jalapenos left out of enchiladas. The play kept nudging me to look further to find Sor Juana, and so for the next five years, I did so. I read and read more. I listened for her voice, and that is where I heard her life come alive. This isn’t the only possibility for Sor Juana’s life; it is just the one I heard.
Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, this brilliant 17th century nun flew through Mexico City on the breeze of poetry and philosophy. She met with princes of the Church, and with the royalty of Spain and Mexico. Then she met a stunning, powerful woman with lavender eyes, la Vicereine Maria Louisa, and her life changed forever. As her fame grew, she dared to challenge the diabolical Archbishop once too often, and he threw her in front of the Inquisition, where she stood, alone.
Sor Juana's work is studied still today, and justifiably so. Scholars study her months on end; mystics…
This astonishingly brilliant 17th century poet and dramatist, this nun, flew through Mexico City on wings of inspiration. Having no dowry, she chose the life of a nun so that she might learn, so that she might write, so that she might meet the most fascinating people of the western world. She accomplished all of that, and more.
One day a woman with violet eyes, eyes the color of passion flowers, entered her life. It was the new Vicereine, Maria Luisa. As the two most powerful women in Mexico City, the bond between them crossed politics and wound them in…
