Shannon Gibney – författare

"An emotion-filled collection." —Kirkus ReviewsA CCBC 2024 Choices for the Fiction for Young Adult category!Two teens take the stage and find their voice . . .A girl learns about her heritage and begins to find her community . . .A sister is haunted by the ghosts of loved ones lost . . .There is no universal adoption experience, and no two adoptees have the same story. This anthology for teens edited by Shannon Gibney and Nicole Chung contains a wide range of powerful, poignant, and evocative stories in a variety of genres.These tales from fifteen bestselling, acclaimed, and emerging adoptee authors genuinely and authentically reflect the complexity, breadth, and depth of adoptee experiences.This groundbreaking collection centers what it’s like growing up as an adoptee. These are stories by adoptees, for adoptees, reclaiming their own narratives. With stories by:Kelley BakerNicole ChungShannon GibneyMark OshiroMeMe CollierSusan Harness      Meredith IrelandMariama J. LockingtonLisa NopachaiStefany ValentineMatthew SalessesLisa Wool-Rim SjöblomEric SmithJenny Heijun WillsSun Yung ShinForeword by Rebecca CarrollAfterword by JaeRan Kim, MSW, PhD

Two teens take the stage and find their voice. . .A girl learns about her heritage and begins to find her community. . .A sister is haunted by the ghosts of loved ones lost. . .There is no universal adoption experience, and no two adoptees have the same story. This anthology for teens edited by Shannon Gibney and Nicole Chung contains a wide range of powerful, poignant, and evocative stories in a variety of genres.These tales from fourteen bestselling, acclaimed, and emerging adoptee authors genuinely and authentically reflect the complexity, breadth, and depth of adoptee experiences.This groundbreaking collection centers what its like growing up as an adoptee. These are stories by adoptees, for adoptees, reclaiming their own narratives.With stories by:Kelley BakerNicole ChungShannon GibneyMark OshiroMeMe CollierSusan HarnessMeredith IrelandMariama J. LockingtonLisa NopachaiStefany Valentine RamirezMatthew SalessesLisa Wool-Rim SjblomEric SmithJenny Heijun WillsSun Yung ShinForeword by Rebecca CarrollAfterword by JaeRan Kim, MSW, PhD

This book presents the authors’ attempts to interrogate the ways that white institutional, pedagogical, and curricular heteronormativity affects equity in writing instruction at Two Year Colleges. Written from a wide range of subject and identity positions, this volume explores issues that arise among students inside historically white-dominant classrooms, among faculty as curriculum and hiring decisions are made, and among colleagues when they attempt to engage the wider institution in equity work. Aiming to significantly change how urban Community College writing instruction is delivered in this country, the book operates on the principle that equity is essential to successful writing pedagogy, curricular development, and student success.

Dream Country author Shannon Gibney returns with The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be, a book woven from her true story of growing up as a mixed-Black transracial adoptee and fictional story of Erin Powers, the name Shannon was given at birth, a child raised by a white, closeted lesbian. At its core, the novel is a tale of two girls on two different timelines occasionally bridged by a mysterious portal and their shared search for a complete picture of their origins. Gibney surrounds that story with reproductions of her own adoption documents, letters, family photographs, interviews, medical records, and brief essays on the surreal absurdities of the adoptee experience.The end result is a remarkable portrait of an American experience rarely depicted in any form.

The heartbreaking story of five generations of young people from a single African-and-American family pursuing an elusive dream of freedom.The novel begins in suburban Minneapolis at the moment when seventeen-year-old Kollie Flomo begins to crack under the strain of his life as a Liberian refugee. He''s exhausted by being at once too black and not black enough for his African American peers and worn down by the expectations of his own Liberian family and community. When his frustration finally spills into violence and his parents send him back to Monrovia to reform school, the story shifts. Like Kollie, readers travel back to Liberia, but also back in time, to the early twentieth-century and the point of view of Togar Somah, an eighteen-year-old indigenous Liberian on the run from government militias that would force him to work the plantations of the Congo people, descendants of the African-American slaves who colonized Liberia almost a century earlier. When Togar''s section draws to a shocking close, the novel jumps again, back to America in 1836, to the children of Yasmine Wright, who leave a Virginia plantation with their mother for Liberia, where they''re promised freedom and a chance at self-determination by the American Colonization Society. The Wrights begin their section by fleeing the whip and by its close, they are then ones who wield it. With each new section, the novel uncovers fresh hope and resonating heartbreak, all based on historical fact. In Dream Country, Shannon Gibney spins a riveting tale of the nightmarish spiral of death and exile connecting America and Africa, and of how one determined young dreamer tries to break free and gain control of her destiny.

This book presents the authors’ attempts to interrogate the ways that white institutional, pedagogical, and curricular heteronormativity affects equity in writing instruction at Two Year Colleges. Written from a wide range of subject and identity positions, this volume explores issues that arise among students inside historically white-dominant classrooms, among faculty as curriculum and hiring decisions are made, and among colleagues when they attempt to engage the wider institution in equity work. Aiming to significantly change how urban Community College writing instruction is delivered in this country, the book operates on the principle that equity is essential to successful writing pedagogy, curricular development, and student success.

"Transracial adoption is never oversimplified, airbrushed, or sentimentalized, but instead, it''s portrayed with bracing honesty as the messy institution it is: rearranging families, blending cultural and biological DNA, loss and joy. An exceptionally accomplished debut." — Kirkus, starred reviewFor as long as she can remember, sixteen-year-old Alex Kirtridge has known two things about herself: She''s a stellar baseball player. She''s adopted. Alex has had a comfortable childhood in Madison, Wisconsin. Despite some teasing, being a biracial girl in a wealthy white family hasn''t been that big a deal. What mattered was that she was a star on the diamond, where her father, a former Major Leaguer, coached her hard and counted on her to make him proud. But now, things are changing: she meets Reggie, the first black guy who''s wanted to get to know her; she discovers the letters from her biological father that her adoptive parents have kept from her; and her changing body starts to affect her game. Suddenly, Alex begins to question who she really is. She''s always dreamed of playing pro baseball just like her father, but can she really do it? Does she truly fit in with her white family? Who were her biological parents? What does it mean to be black? If she''s going to find answers, Alex has to come to terms with her adoption, her race, and the dreams she thought would always guide her.• Winner of the Minnesota Book Award• A Kirkus Reviews Best Teen book of the Year • A Bank Street College Best Children''s Book of the Year

"Transracial adoption is never oversimplified, airbrushed, or sentimentalized, but instead, it''s portrayed with bracing honesty as the messy institution it is: rearranging families, blending cultural and biological DNA, loss and joy. An exceptionally accomplished debut."—Kirkus, starred reviewFor as long as she can remember, sixteen-year-old Alex Kirtridge has known two things about herself: She''s a stellar baseball player. She''s adopted.Alex has had a comfortable childhood in Madison, Wisconsin. Despite some teasing, being a biracial girl in a wealthy white family hasn''t been that big a deal. What mattered was that she was a star on the diamond, where her father, a former Major Leaguer, coached her hard and counted on her to make him proud. But now, things are changing: she meets Reggie, the first black guy who''s wanted to get to know her; she discovers the letters from her biological father that her adoptive parents have kept from her; and her changing body starts to affect her game. Suddenly, Alex begins to question who she really is. She''s always dreamed of playing pro baseball just like her father, but can she really do it? Does she truly fit in with her white family? Who were her biological parents? What does it mean to be black? If she''s going to find answers, Alex has to come to terms with her adoption, her race, and the dreams she thought would always guide her.• Winner of the Minnesota Book Award• A Kirkus Reviews Best Teen book of the Year• A Bank Street College Best Children''s Book of the Year

Native women and women of color poignantly share their pain, revelations, and hope after experiencing the traumas of miscarriage and infant lossWhat God Is Honored Here? is the first book of its kind-and urgently necessary. This is a literary collection of voices of Indigenous women and women of color who have undergone miscarriage and infant loss, experiences that disproportionately affect women who have often been cast toward the margins in the United States of America. From the story of dashed cultural expectations in an interracial marriage to poems that speak of loss across generations, from harrowing accounts of misdiagnoses, ectopic pregnancies, and late-term stillbirths to the poignant chronicles of miscarriages and mysterious infant deaths, What God Is Honored Here? brings women together to speak to one another about the traumas and tragedies of womanhood. In its heartbreaking beauty, this book offers an integral perspective on how culture and religion, spirit and body, unite in the reproductive lives of women of color and Indigenous women as they bear witness to loss, search for what is not there, and claim for themselves and others their fundamental humanity. Powerfully and with brutal honesty, they write about what it means to reclaim life in the face of death.Editors Shannon Gibney and Kao Kalia Yang acknowledge “who we had been could not have prepared us for who we would become in the wake of these words,” yet the writings collected here offer insight, comfort, and, finally, hope for all those who, like the women gathered here, have found grief a lonely place.Contributors: Jennifer Baker, Michelle Borok, Lucille Clifton, Sidney Clifton, Taiyon J. Coleman, Arfah Daud, Rona Fernandez, Sarah Agaton Howes, HonorÉe Fanonne Jeffers, Soniah Kamal, Diana Le-Cabrera, Janet Lee-Ortiz, Maria Elena Mahler, Chue Moua, Jami Nakamura Lin, Jen Palmares Meadows, Dania Rajendra, Marcie Rendon, Seema Reza, 신 선 영 Sun Yung Shin, Kari Smalkoski, Catherine R. Squires, Elsa Valmidiano.

Six-year-old Sam, with his Liberian dad and African American mom, finds a way to bring everyone in his cross-cultural family together at the dinner tableRice and okra soup: Sam’s auntie from Liberia made it, and it’s Dad’s favorite. Mom, homegrown in Minnesota, made spaghetti and meatballs. And Sam? He’s just hungry, but no matter what he chooses to eat, someone will be disappointed. Caught in the middle of his family’s African and American food fight, Sam gets a little help from his grumbling stomach-and readers of this seriously funny book by Shannon Gibney get a peek at cultures colliding in a family kitchen that work out in a very delicious way. Charly Palmer’s vibrant and captivating illustrations make this gentle lesson in getting along a bright and colorful visual feast as well.Cassava leaf torbogee or homemade sausage pizza? Sam’s family recipes bring Sam and the Incredible African and American Food Fight to an apt and happy ending-and readers can decide which dinner is best. But, really, why not both?

A poignant resource for helping children and families through the loss of a siblingSalome was going to be a big sister. Her brother, Gerald, told her so. They watched Mama's tummy grow rounder and rounder, and their excitement grew, too. But then Mama went to the hospital, and she came home without a baby. The smiles stopped, and the house grew quiet except for Mama's tears."Where is my sister?" Salome asks. Mama gathers her and Gerald onto her lap and tells them that baby Toni is in the cemetery, but she'll always be their sister. Gerald says that she's in the spirit world. Salome looks for her all over. Is Toni's spirit in Mama's tears? Is she in the family's stories about her? Is she between Salome and her brother at the dinner table, or beside Salome's favorite tree in the backyard? As her family begins to find peace, Salome understands something important: "My sister is everywhere."In Where Is My Sister? Shannon Gibney's poetic voice captures the heartbreak of losing an infant and the love that joins family members together. Huy Voun Lee's tender illustrations guide readers with quiet grace, honoring all those who passed from this world too soon. A resource for children and the parents, teachers, and community members who care for them, this book offers a powerful reflection for those who often feel alone during the painful and transformative experience of infant and sibling loss.

A young Black girl in Minneapolis grapples with the death of George Floyd    In this candid and powerful book, a young girl hears about an unfolding tragedy in her neighborhood. It’s on the news, on the radio, and talked about in her community, and she learns of the murder of George Floyd-and about who he was. As she tries to reckon with the senseless violence of his killing, she finds solace at George Floyd Square. The space is filled with the art of protest and resistance, and she is moved to create her own signs and drawings, lifting her voice to harmonize with the outpouring: “We miss you, George Floyd.”   For children working through George Floyd’s murder and the police violence plaguing our country, and for the grown-ups trying to help them, this book is an invitation to open up difficult conversations. With striking illustrations reflecting Floyd’s world and a child’s perspective, Shannon Gibney’s clear-eyed account offers healing and inspiration for the strength and solidarity we need to build a more peaceful and just future.

"Outstanding in all ways, this title deserves a place in most collections and adds a wonderful opportunity for upper elementary students (and higher!) to unpack our complicated histories."—starred, School Library JournalWe come from stardustour bodies made of ancient elements.We come from single cellsevolving over billions of years.We come from place, language, and spirit.And each of us comes from story.We all come from something. In this unique collaboration, four authors lyrically explore where they each come from—literally and metaphorically—as well as what unites all of us as humans. Weaving together their individual stories, they explore place, ancestors, movement, struggle, determination, and hope.Powerful poetic text and richly layered illustrations bring together past and present, creating an accessible and visually striking look at family, history, and identity.