Books by Judy Juanita

Four pieces in this text by writer Judy Juanita - a poem, drama, short story and essay - bring themes of adolescence self-determination & ethnic pride grief and regret, and the gun as romantic symbol or literal destruction,to college and high school students and to general readers. Questions for classroom or group use follow each piece. Each explores the black experience in different eras. The play is suitable for amateur theater productions or as a film script. The poem can be a monologue suitable for drama, speech, civics class or an audition.The play takes place in the 1950s: a rebellious teen wins an essay contest on Americanism but is angered that her best friend's more militant essay didn't win. Her conservative mother wants her to accept it proudly. The play takes about an hour to stage or read in class, with six main characters and three minor characters.The poem spans the black experience from slavery to the present in 344 words.The short story, 1,764 words, involves a modern independent woman picturing the child she never had. Abortion, memory, motherhood, and the power of the unknown haunt her.The essay debates the impact of the 1960s black militant infatuation with the gun and ensuing post -Trayvon Martin disenchantment.

Written in first-person point of view, Virgin Soul is the semi-autobiographical tale of a young womans struggle for identity and purpose during one of the most politically and racially charged eras of American history. Virgin Soul focuses on the college years of Geniece Hightower, ';Niecy' to the aunts and uncles who raised her. At first meet, Geniece sounds like a typical young woman off to college, meeting her first boyfriend, losing her virginity, building new friendships, questioning her ideals, and juggling her busy schedule with a parttime job. A smart young African American on the cusp of revolution at Oakland City College in 1964, Geniece meets many activists and intellectuals. She begins as a reporter for the school newspaper and narrates her story with a trained journalist's ear for dialogue and gritty details. As she reports for the college newspaper on the black power movement, her own activism is sparked and eventually leads her to make a life-changing decision.The novel has four sections: Freshman, Sophomore, Junior, Senior. As Geniece pursues her education diligently, she receives a different sort of education. The soundtrack of the sixties, the funky lingo of the sixties, protests, guns and the call for armed struggle against oppression, black friends, black lovers, black writings - all form part of a brave new world once she crosses the bridge from high school to college, from junior college to SF State, from Oakland and Berkeley to San Francisco. She describes it: ';Dissidents. The streets of Berkeley were the pull for people bucking the system. Nonconformists. [SF]State was pulling people like me. I was not an in-between. I was a junior facing a cast of thousands wanting to be right where I was, a part of something big, essential, swimming in the big ocean.By her junior year she has placed herself at the center of the social maelstrom taking place across the country and in the San Francisco Bay Area, by becoming a militant, and a member of the Black Panthers. When Huey Newton is jailed in October 1967 and the Panthers explode nationwide, Geniece follows her ideals and enters the organization's world of protests, community programs, fundraising, FBI agents, police repression and fatal shootouts all the while struggling to complete her formal education.Virgin Soul details the many ways in which her life is forever changed by this whirlwind of activism, drugs, romantic alliances, and friendship/comradeship. Geniece finds her identity as a woman, as an African American, and as an adult while the world around her, everything she holds dear, is in a state of flux. Through her eyes, Genieces narrative registers the impact of the Vietnam War, Haight Ashbury hippies, the Black Panthers, and a nation at war internally and externally. With the intimacy of a memoir, this tale follows a young woman as she grows from a sexually and politically naive student into an independent woman.