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    Jazz Owls: A Novel of the Zoot Suit Riots
    Jazz Owls: A Novel of the Zoot Suit Riots
    Jazz Owls: A Novel of the Zoot Suit Riots
    Ebook179 pages1 hour

    Jazz Owls: A Novel of the Zoot Suit Riots

    By Margarita Engle and Rudy Gutierrez

    ()

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    About this ebook

    “Perfect for history buffs, dance enthusiasts, poets, and just about anyone looking for a great story.” —School Library Journal (starred review)

    From the Young People’s Poet Laureate Margarita Engle comes a searing novel in verse about the Zoot Suit Riots of 1943.

    Thousands of young Navy sailors are pouring into Los Angeles on their way to the front lines of World War II. They are teenagers, scared, longing to feel alive before they have to face the horrors of battle. Hot jazz music spiced with cool salsa rhythms beckons them to dance with the local Mexican American girls, who jitterbug all night before working all day in the canneries. Proud to do their part for the war effort, these Jazz Owl girls are happy to dance with the sailors—until the blazing summer night when racial violence leads to murder.

    Suddenly the young white sailors are attacking the girls’ brothers and boyfriends. The cool, loose zoot suits they wear are supposedly the reason for the violence—when in reality the boys are viciously beaten and arrested simply because of the color of their skin.

    In soaring images and searing poems, this is the breathtaking story of what became known as the Zoot Suit Riots.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAtheneum Books for Young Readers
    Release dateMay 8, 2018
    ISBN9781534409453
    Jazz Owls: A Novel of the Zoot Suit Riots
    Author

    Margarita Engle

    Margarita Engle is a Cuban American poet and novelist whose work has been published in many countries. Her many acclaimed books include Silver People, The Lightning Dreamer, The Wild Book, and The Surrender Tree, a Newbery Honor Book. She is a several-time winner of the Pura Belpré and Américas Awards as well as other prestigious honors. She lives with her husband in Northern California. For more information, visit margaritaengle.com.

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      Book preview

      Jazz Owls - Margarita Engle

      CONTENTS

      Epigraph

      The River of Music

      Swimming Season

      Barefoot

      Peeled

      Ghostly?

      Victory Familia

      Americanos All!

      Author’s Note

      References

      Acknowledgments

      About the Author

      Para Sandra Ríos Balderrama, héroe de las bibliotecas

      and for dancers, dreamers, and heroes of peace, in honor of all the nonviolent Chicano protesters of later decades, whose courage triumphed despite vicious attacks against their communities in the 1940s.

      Pero una nueva pulsación, un nuevo latido

      arroja al río de la calle nuevos sedientes seres.

      Se cruzan, se entrecruzan y suben.

      Vuelan a ras de tierra.

      But a new pulse, a new throb

      hurls thirsty new beings into the river of the street.

      They cross, crisscross, and rise.

      They fly close to earth.

      —Xavier Villaurrutia,

      from Nocturno de Los Angeles

      (Los Angeles Nocturne)

      Manolito from Cuba

      Age 16

      We flow into the city of ángeles

      following a flood of young sailors—

      thousands at first, then millions

      from all over the U.S., scared teens

      who long to dance, need to leap,

      craving that feeling of being so alive

      as they pass through L.A.

      on their swift way

      to the horrors

      of war.

      I’m just one of hundreds of musicians

      who arrive from New York, Memphis, Chicago,

      Kansas City, Saint Louis, and from the steamy islands

      of música too, Cuba and Puerto Rico, drummers,

      trumpeters, and saxophonists, wizards of rhythm,

      wearing our loose suits, the zoot shape

      that drapes us to keep dance leaps smooth

      and COOL in this HOT summer river

      of JAZZ!

      Jazz Craze!

      Marisela

      Age 16

      The musicians call us owls

      because we’re patriotic girls

      who stay up LATE after working all day,

      so we can DANCE with young sailors

      who are on their way

      to triumph

      or death

      on distant

      ocean waves.

      I love feeling jazz-winged,

      so this owl life is easy for me,

      until early morning, when my shift

      at the cannery begins, right after a LONG journey

      of clanging streetcar bells and SLEEPY smiles, all

      those memories of dancing the jitterbug, Lindy Hop,

      and jump blues, while adding my own swaying bit

      of Latin-style swing rhythm!

      ¡RITMO!

      Sweaty

      Lorena

      Age 14

      Everyone says I’m still the calm, sensible one,

      even though I quit school two years ago,

      right after a teacher washed my mouth out

      with foamy

      foul-tasting

      soap.

      My crime? Speaking words the teacher

      called dog language—español,

      my family’s natural música,

      the songlike rhythm and melody

      of lovely syllables from Mazatlán in México,

      where Mami and Papá once danced

      beside warm, sparkling, tropical

      ocean waves.

      I don’t like staying up all night with Marisela,

      because our day shift at the cannery means sleep

      is needed, to keep fingers alert so they don’t

      get crushed by machinery

      or sliced

      by knives.

      High heels, wide skirt, jitterbug

      and all that jazz, the sailors call us owls

      because we obey the U.S. government’s wish

      for a sizzling, sweaty summer of pre-death

      entertainment, to cheer navy recruits while they wait

      for their warships, our battles, this shared war

      of worldwide violence.

      Chaperoned by our brother—that’s the only way

      any mexicana mother will allow her daughters

      to dance, joining las señoritas de la USO

      —la Organización de Service United—

      a club where navy boys swing and hop before gliding

      out toward the oceanic unknown.

      Our older brother, Nicolás, is already over there

      somewhere in Europe, Asia, or maybe the South Pacific.

      We’re not even allowed to know the name of the land

      where he’s fighting against fascism and racial hatred.

      So Marisela and I have to depend on little Ray

      to escort us safely from our exhausting cannery jobs

      to an evening of dutiful, patriotic dancing.

      Everyone says I’m sensible, but secretly I feel

      really angry.

      ¡Mira!

      Ray

      Age 12

      Swing dance, swing shift, swing a bat,

      swings at the park, swing from a tree—

      isn’t it funny how many meanings

      one little five-letra word can hold?

      That’s why I wear my clothes BIG.

      HUGE suit, ZOOT suit, baggy pants

      for a leaping dance, COOL hat, WIDE shoulders,

      watcha—mira—LOOK at me, not old enough

      to DIE in

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