Growing Up Poor: A Literary Anthology

Stories, poems, essays and even a mock IQ test are included in Growing Up Poor, a worthwhile and varied anthology edited by Robert Coles, Randy Testa and Michael Coles. Its wide range of contributors includes icons of the past and present from Zora Neale Hurston and Ralph Ellison to Dorothy Allison and Richard Ford as well as a New York City high school student, the first female Navajo surgeon in the U.S. and three teens incarcerated in California detention facilities. It aims ""to bring readers closer to understanding... a group so readily turned into a `they' in a world of shrill materialism,"" and hits its mark. ( Mar. 1)