Arilla Sun Down

by Viginia Hamilton

Book Description

According to Arilla Adams, being twelve years old is “like dangling at the end of a rope and not being able to let go.” And it’s even worse when you come from a family that doesn’t quite fit anywhere. Arilla should know; she is twelve and interracial. Arilla Sun Down is the story of her awakening to who she is and where she fits within her interracial family.

Arilla tells her own story partially in half remembered, almost dreamlike snatches from her early formative years, but mainly in the voice of a typical seventh-grader living in a small midwestern town today. In many ways she is typical: she fights with her brother, Jack Sun Run Adams; complains about homework; has fears she knows are unreasonable; and sometimes disobeys her mother (most flagrantly with the off limits indulgence of her secret passion for roller rink figure skating). But with a mother who is black, a father who is part black, part Indian American, and a radical sixteen-year-old brother who rejects being part of an interracial tribe, (he will be the Indian his ancestors never were), Arilla is not typical.

How Arilla “earns” an identity all her own and the members of her family begin coming to grips with their collective past is dramatized with sensitivity and sensibility. With Arilla Sun Down, this distinguished Newbery Medal-winning author has once again created a totally original and unforgettable family, a fascinating chronicle, a bellwether novel.

From virginiahamilton.com

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