Anela's Club

by D K Yamashiro

Overview

"Let's learn from yesterday and live for today. It's the only way to move forward." -Anela Lee

When Anela Lee's brother, Jake, dies on the football field, her family is shattered. Her parents never wanted her, and without her biggest cheerleader, she withdraws into her pain and insecurities. Even school, once a refuge, means nothing anymore. Only one teacher refuses to give up on her, pushing her to enter an essay contest that gives her a shot at Harvard. Still, self-doubt holds Anela back.

Then a senator teaches her about the many world leaders who have used their childhood trauma to do great things. The hope that Anela can turn her pain into something beautiful gives her back her spark and encourages her to enter the contest. But does she have the confidence to share her essay in front of an audience?

Anela's Club is a coming-of-age story about rising above tragedy and learning to view life through a lens of hope and love.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798888242223
Publisher:	Koehler Books
Publication date:	01/30/2024
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.48(d)
Age Range:	13 - 18 Years

About the Author

As a teen, D. K. Yamashiro survived falling four hundred feet from a ridge in Hawaii, suffering severe brain injuries. Years of recovery involved a camel ride at the Pyramids of Giza, swimming in the Mediterranean Sea, hiking up Masada, sledding down the Great Wall of China, exploring underground caves in the Black Hills, and speaking to crowds in East Africa and Brazilian favelas. A master's at Harvard and summer studies at Oxford preceded a PhD with research on childhood traumas of American presidents. Yamashiro resides in Brookline, Massachusetts, and is an affiliate at MIT.

Editorial Reviews

"Anela's journey is a testimony to how we all can rise from traumatic darkness to brilliant change and growth."

-Joanne P. McCallie, 6x NCAA Women's Basketball Coach of the Year, Duke University

Author, Secret Warrior

"Touching, moving, human - and profoundly intelligent."

-J. Mark Ramseyer, Mitsubishi Professor of Japanese Legal Studies, Harvard University

"Anela's Club reads like you're playing checkers, but this is nothing but a chess game."

-Dino Babers, ACC Football Coach of the Year, Syracuse University

"The final scenes are emotional, and I admit it, tear-worthy."

-David Patneaude, Award-winning YA fiction author including Thin Wood Walls

"I loved every part of Anela's Club, as I read it in one sitting . . ."

-Bill Sheehan, Author, A Tail Among Tales

"D. K. Yamashiro is arguably the world's leading expert on the childhood trauma experienced by U.S. presidents. Anela's Club is a masterful story that can help people through trauma."

-Gary Scott Smith, PhD, Author, Faith and the Presidency and Religion in the Oval Office

"Anela's Club is a triumph! It lifts the heart . . ."

-Eleanor M. Cooper, EdD, Author of Benjamin Franklin Award winning Dragonfly Dreams

"I most appreciated the clear message of being true to oneself in the face of peer pressure . . ."

-Anne E. C. McCants, PhD, Ann F. Friedlaender Professor of History at MIT

"Yamashiro guides us through Anela's dreams and challenges, and gives us, too, her great blessing: hope."

-William R. Cross, Author, Winslow Homer: American Passage

"Anela's Club is . . . for youth navigating tragedy, abandonment, and self-doubt."

-Hugh H. Dunn, PhD, Director of the Pacific Literacy Consortium, University of Hawaii

"As a former teacher, I think high school kids really need to read Anela's Club . . ."

-Maia Evrigenis, Author, Neon Jane

"I couldn't put Anela's Club down. D.K. Yamashiro has created and polished a tour de force!"

-Doug Bond, PhD, Lecturer in Extension, Harvard University

"Anela connects us with the human side of politics . . . in this wonderful page turner."

-Kathleen Reid, Award winning author of Secrets in the Palazzo

"A powerful story of resilience and grit."

-Emily Burdett, DPhil, Assistant Professor, School of Psychology, University of Nottingham

"A poignant story featuring a powerful refrain of despair, resilience, and hope."

-Mia Chung, Concert pianist, music professor, executive director, Octet Collaborative at MIT

From the Publisher

2024-06-18
After her brother’s sudden death, a teen girl struggles to find a future for herself beyond her loss and trauma in Yamashiro’s debut YA novel.

“Two months ago, my brother, Jake, died,” confides Anela Lee, a 15-year-old of Italian and Polynesian descent whose already difficult and impoverished family life all but disintegrates in the wake of the tragedy. Before Jake’s death, Anela’s parents ignored her, putting their focus solely on her brother’s high school football career. Previously an exceptional student, Anela now isolates herself from friends and lets her grades swiftly decline. But Miss DeGracia, her social studies teacher, refuses to give up on her, and during a school trip to the State House she introduces Anela to the firebrand senator Nastasia Yen Strasberg. Strasberg offers the girl a job and a mentor, sharing stories of youthful hardship not unlike Anela’s own suffered by men who would become American presidents. These hard-luck tales of historical figures (in combination with the lessons in self-confidence that Jake instilled in her) guide Anela toward reforging relationships with lost friends and her contrite mother—and, ultimately, to an essay contest that offers a pathway to Harvard College. Yamashiro has long studied the childhood traumas of American presidents and relates many of these stories here through the character of Senator Strasberg in a seamless, organic manner, offering informative parallels to Anela’s journey. Equally impressive is the Boston-based community the book depicts, as many of Anela’s neighbors, peers, and mentors are revealed to also be silently carrying their own burdens. (These problems are presented as being equally relevant, even if some characters are more socially or financially privileged than the protagonist.) The story never portrays poverty in an exploitative way or as a moral failing. Instead, adversity is presented as something that, if not surrendered to, can shape an individual—an important lesson for readers of any age.

An inspiring story of teenage resilience and how trauma need not be an insurmountable obstacle.

Kirkus Reviews