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Rita Williams-Garcia

Rita Williams-Garcia Books

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P.S. Be Eleven

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One Crazy Summer

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“Big Ma never made quick-fast-in-a-hurry food. She made food that needed washing before it touched a knife, pot, or pan. Or she made beans that soaked overnight and simmered with neck bones for a good part of the next day. And stewed meat in heavy enamel pots, with bay leaves and carrots and potatoes that soaked up gravy. Big Ma cooked food meant to stick to your insides and keep your belly full. She cooked food that took time.”

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Book:P.S. Be Eleven
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“I got into an argument in class with Danny McClaren.” “You’re in class to learn from the teacher,” Big Ma said. “Not to be arguing with some know-nothing boy.” I heard myself while I retold the whole thing. It sounded silly. Big Ma never looked up once from her sewing. ... “My teacher might call.” Might as well let the other shoe drop. “Let him call. I’ll straighten him out.” Big Ma was funny, as in hard to figure out.”

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“We danced until Big Ma told us to stop that noise-making “like a herd of stampeding hippos.” That we should use that energy for praising the Lord. And that was enough to start the other two praising Jesus for helping us to save and I fell in with them, praising and stomping. Then Big Ma said, “That’s not the meaning of ‘Jesus saves.’” But it was too late. “Jesus saves for the Jackson Five” was the only praising going on in our room. Even Big Ma had to laugh.”

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Book:P.S. Be Eleven
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“While the two below tested their weightlessness, picked up samples of whatever moonie-eyed lovers looked up to, and marked up the moon’s surface with moon boot tracks, the third astronaut was left behind holding everything together. The other thing that sprang to mind was that the moon was beautiful at night from a distance, but it surely was a lonely place up close.”

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Book:Gone Crazy in Alabama
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“One of the great things about being a grandparent is you get to redo what you didn't or couldn't do as a parent. Oftentimes we forget that even while the parent is parenting, they're still a growing person. They're still trying to fix themselves. They're still out there not doing everything a hundred percent correctly. I had the best parents I could ever have, but the kinds of things that they were capable of doing, the things that they said and did, were very destructive to my sister, brother, and me. But they're so much more than those things.”

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Author:Rita Williams-Garcia
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“I'm very objective about what I want to have happen to my protagonists and where that has to come from. On one hand, it does help me that I had a mother who might have taken the last dollar and bought a pack of cigarettes or something, but I also had a mother who exposed me to art, music, other religions, different foods. My mother was very adventurous in her own way, so she fed the part of me that was going to grow up to be a writer. But there's always, too, the opposite response that helps me to create.”

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Author:Rita Williams-Garcia
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“A name is important. It isn't something you drop in the litter basket or on the ground. Your name is now people know you. The very mention of your name makes a picture spring to mind, whether it's a picture of clashing fists or a mighty mountain that can't be knocked down. Your name is who you are and how you're known even when you do something great or something dumb.”

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Author:Rita Williams-Garcia
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