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Nancy Keane's | Booktalks -- Quick and Simple | |
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Engle, Margarita. JAZZ OWLS : A NOVEL OF THE ZOOT SUIT RIOTS New York : Atheneum Books, 2018 IL YA ISBN978-1-53440-943-9
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It's the 1940s in LA and the United States is at war. But that doesn't stop some teens from wanting to have fun. There is a dance club that they love to go to. Two Mexican American sisters work at a peach cannery during the day and go to the dance club at night. They are escorted by their brother who loves the club also. He loves getting dressed up in his zoot suit and dancing the night away. Jazz music plays and salsa rhythms entice the teens to dance. They welcome the sailors from the local port and the Jazz Owl girls are always happy to dance with the sailors. But as the summer goes on, things get tense. The young white sailors start beating the Mexican Americans. They begin targeting anyone wearing a zoot suit as do the police. It has become know as the zoot suit riots and Engle tells the story of racial riots in 1943. |
| SUBJECTS: Dancing -- Fiction. Los Angeles (Calif.) -- History -- 20th century -- Fiction. Mexican Americans -- Fiction. Novels in verse. Race relations -- Fiction. Sailors -- Fiction. World War, 1939-1945 -- Fiction. Zoot Suit Riots, Los Angeles, Calif., 1943 -- Fiction. |
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