Panel: The New Colossus: YA Writers on America’s Difficult History

Grades 9 – 12

Moderated by Brittany King, Dream Defenders.

From Traci Chee comes We Are Not Free, the collective account of a tight-knit group of young Nisei, second-generation Japanese American citizens, whose lives are irrevocably changed by the mass U.S. incarcerations of World War II. In Daniel Nayeri’s Everything Sad is Untrue: (a true story), an Iranian kid, Khosrou (whom everyone calls “Daniel”), tries to tell a fantastic story full of both magical and scary places, to his classmates in a middle school classroom in Oklahoma. No one believes him, but it’s true. It’s his story. Through the lives of three teens, Pulga, Chico, and Pequeña, making their perilous way from Guatemala through Mexico, We Are Not from Here by Jenny Torres Sanchez offers a gripping view of the plight of migrants at the U.S. southern border.