Home
Not A Chance by Michelle Mulder (Orca $9.95)
Not A Chance by Michelle Mulder (Orca $9.95)
Every summer dian's parents, who are both doctors, set up a clinic in the Dominican Republic, and every year thirteen-year-old Dian is forced to tag along with them, bringing the dreaded suitcases of donated, outdated clothing that they'll leave behind for the villagers when they return to Canada. New clothing, she has learned, "exploits poor workers and impacts the environment.";
At the outset of Not A Chance, it's the end of June and Dian is once again decked out in lame secondhand clothes - this time it's polka dots and tie-dye - and there's no one but her Dominican friend Aracely to get her through the endless days far from home.
But this year Dian won't be able to count on Aracely. As the girls head down to the river - not to swim (Aracely hasn't done that for two years, not since she became a woman) but to have some privacy - Aracely whispers a secret. She's getting married.
Vincente - she speaks his name in the same hushed tone Dian's best friend back in Canada uses when she talks about her boyfriend - has left to find work in a Santo Domingo mine. When he returns he'll have money to buy a house and land. By then, Aracely will be fifteen and of legal age to marry.
This is hardly what Dian - or her parents - had planned for the gifted Aracely! After seeing her drawings of medicinal plants, Dian's father envisioned Aracely would come to Canada, augmenting her grandmother's teaching of traditional healing with an academic education, then return to the Dominican Republic to make a difference in her village.
Dian also had imagined Aracely thriving in Canada, discovering girls could do anything boys could, that women weren't weak, or subject to the subservient role envisioned for them by the village church.
Dian wants Aracely to have choices. She wanted her Caribbean friend to have the freedom to choose her own path. So shouldn't Dian and her parents respect Aracely's dreams of having a husband who loves her, despite the childhood scars on her face. Shouldn't the well-meaning Canadians also respect Aracely's hopes for children, a house, some land? in her own little village?
Author Michelle Mulder is married to the Argentine pen pal she'd written to since she was fourteen. As a 19-year-old, she volunteered in the Dominican Republic digging a water pipeline. The cultural shock of witnessing the struggle there for basics such as water, education, food and clothing have now given rise to Not A Chance, in keeping with Mulder's previous young adult novels about the challenges and benefits of cross-culturalism, including Out of the Box and After Peaches.
Her next book, Pedal It! How Bicycles are Changing the World (Orca $19.95), is a history of a mode of transportation that can power computers, reduce pollution, promote health and is perhaps still the quickest way to get a package to its destination across a busy city.
Chance 978-1-4598-0216-2;
Pedal 978-1-4598-0219-3
Every summer dian's parents, who are both doctors, set up a clinic in the Dominican Republic, and every year thirteen-year-old Dian is forced to tag along with them, bringing the dreaded suitcases of donated, outdated clothing that they'll leave behind for the villagers when they return to Canada. New clothing, she has learned, "exploits poor workers and impacts the environment.";
At the outset of Not A Chance, it's the end of June and Dian is once again decked out in lame secondhand clothes - this time it's polka dots and tie-dye - and there's no one but her Dominican friend Aracely to get her through the endless days far from home.
But this year Dian won't be able to count on Aracely. As the girls head down to the river - not to swim (Aracely hasn't done that for two years, not since she became a woman) but to have some privacy - Aracely whispers a secret. She's getting married.
Vincente - she speaks his name in the same hushed tone Dian's best friend back in Canada uses when she talks about her boyfriend - has left to find work in a Santo Domingo mine. When he returns he'll have money to buy a house and land. By then, Aracely will be fifteen and of legal age to marry.
This is hardly what Dian - or her parents - had planned for the gifted Aracely! After seeing her drawings of medicinal plants, Dian's father envisioned Aracely would come to Canada, augmenting her grandmother's teaching of traditional healing with an academic education, then return to the Dominican Republic to make a difference in her village.
Dian also had imagined Aracely thriving in Canada, discovering girls could do anything boys could, that women weren't weak, or subject to the subservient role envisioned for them by the village church.
Dian wants Aracely to have choices. She wanted her Caribbean friend to have the freedom to choose her own path. So shouldn't Dian and her parents respect Aracely's dreams of having a husband who loves her, despite the childhood scars on her face. Shouldn't the well-meaning Canadians also respect Aracely's hopes for children, a house, some land? in her own little village?
Author Michelle Mulder is married to the Argentine pen pal she'd written to since she was fourteen. As a 19-year-old, she volunteered in the Dominican Republic digging a water pipeline. The cultural shock of witnessing the struggle there for basics such as water, education, food and clothing have now given rise to Not A Chance, in keeping with Mulder's previous young adult novels about the challenges and benefits of cross-culturalism, including Out of the Box and After Peaches.
Her next book, Pedal It! How Bicycles are Changing the World (Orca $19.95), is a history of a mode of transportation that can power computers, reduce pollution, promote health and is perhaps still the quickest way to get a package to its destination across a busy city.
Chance 978-1-4598-0216-2;
Pedal 978-1-4598-0219-3
Submitted on March 8, 2013 in By David.
