Over the past year, our Washington chapter has been collaborating with South End Stories to produce a zine featuring the work of teen artists of color. The project is finally complete, and we are very excited to share the final product with all of you!
Because we wanted to recognize that teens of color are more than their racial identity, this zine is centered around the theme of "you." We hoped this open-ended word would allow youth to showcase their full identity, regardless of whether their artwork relates directly to the color of their skin. We also asked participating artists to provide artist statements or short bios, and we encourage you to take the time to learn more about these teens and the influences behind their artwork.
If you would like to purchase physical copies of the zine, you can do so here. (All artists who participated in the zine will receive one free physical copy.) All proceeds will help keep our programs 100% free for participants. You can also view a digital version of the zine below.
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 Set during the 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers, "Behold the Dreamers" shows that money isn't everything. Photo credit: lo lo on Unsplash. By Anya Shukla I loved this book so much I read the nearly 800-page (according to my e-reader) novel in one sitting. (And my optometrist wonders why my prescription is increasing…) Mbue sure knows how to turn a trope on its head. Scratch that. Mbue sure knows how to write. Not much I can say in this intro other than READ THIS BOOK READ IT RIGHT NOW. And then email me so we can have a discussion about America. Please and thank you :)
 Who would suspect that behind this smiling face lies the mind of a horror writer? (Photo credit: Mariama Diallo.) By Anya Shukla “When I woke up, the first thing I noticed was that I wasn’t in my house. I was in a cold and dark forest. I did not know how or when I got here.” With this eerie first paragraph, Mariama Diallo begins a short piece for class. Her descriptions of her character’s surroundings—old trees, with wood colored “dark, almost like black”; “leaves that crunched with every movement I made”—draw me into the story. Although only 13 (on the younger side of our teen features), she has a talent for the craft.
 According to "Cyclopedia Exotica," cyclopes were originally pastoral herders from Greece. Photo credit: Tanner Yould on Unsplash. By Anya Shukla I’ve realized that I have been frontloading these reviews with books I want to read—fiction, romance, comic books—and saving the denser, 800-page behemoths on my list for the end. What can I say, I have no willpower. Guess that will be a problem for Future Anya, though, because right now, it’s “Cyclopedia Exotica” time! Yippee!! I have wanted to read this book for just under a year, so I am very excited. Mostly because I have never stopped loving comics, and never will stop loving comics.
 Because bullets were too expensive, the Khmer Rouge used commonplace weapons, like hammers, for their mass executions. Photo credit: iMattSmart on Unsplash. By Anya Shukla I knew of the Cambodian genocide before I began reading “First They Killed My Father,” but this book gave me a new, devastating lens through which to see the war. Even four days after its ending, I can still feel this book in my body. I didn’t expect the memoir to have such an impact. It’s especially interesting to note how America and China contributed to this war. America’s bombings of the Cambodian countryside during the Vietnam war helped grow Khmer Rouge ranks, while Chinese policies and advice influenced Pol Pot (the Khmer Rouge leader) and his dreams of a self-sustaining, agrarian Cambodian society.
 Although these bits and bytes may seem impartial, they can perpetuate inequities. Photo credit: Markus Spiske on Unsplash. By Anya Shukla So here’s the thing. I know that “Algorithms of Oppression” was a New York Times best-seller and the book was selected as NYU Press’ Book of the Decade and its author is a 2021 MacArthur Fellow. But I did not like it. (I’M SO SORRY.) I did not have a fun time reading it. I did not enjoy girding my mental loins and plodding into this oh-so academic text. I really hate going against popular opinion but here goes…
 After arriving in America, the Riveras live in a small, predominantly-Latinx community in Delaware. Photo credit: Josefina Lacroze on Unsplash. By Anya Shukla Numerical ratings are back by popular demand! And by “popular,” I mean that my mom nagged me until I put my ratings back in; apparently, they help her determine whether she should read my articles or not. Such is life. I mean, it’s not like I have hordes of readers panting to determine a book’s worth based on my reviews… so I guess it’s fine to rate them. As a compromise, I’ll add a “my” before the “rating” header to emphasize that these ratings stem from my personal opinion.
 N. Scott Momaday details harsh, sacred New Mexican landscapes in "House Made of Dawn." Photo credit: Joonyeop Baek on Unsplash. By Anya Shukla Full disclosure… I understand maybe 50% of what happened in “House Made of Dawn.” Actually, more like 40%. The book consists of so many layers. It’s one of those novels with in-depth metaphors that can only be unraveled when you read two sentences in just the right way. A brain-teaser of a book that—although small—could kill someone with its sheer intellectual power. The novel is confusing, but in the way that good literature is confusing: you have a certainty that everything will figure itself out, that there will be no loose ends, that you can unlock all the similes and allegories after days of close reading. Did I desperately want to SparkNotes everything? Yes. Did I? Well…
 After a fateful safety drill, Dani and Zaf's world is about to change forever... Photo credit: David Moruzzi on Unsplash. By Anya Shukla One of the cutest scenes in "Take A Hint, Dani Brown" comes when the two main characters do a press event at a radio station. No spoilers, but… they just know each other so well, and it is adorable. Review: At the beginning of Talia Hibbert’s “Take A Hint, Dani Brown,” the romantic leads’ friendly relationship is fueled by five-minute conversations. Zafir, a security guard, monitors the building that Dani teaches in, and the two see each other as (for the most part) platonic acquaintances. But after a photo of Zaf firefighter-carrying Dani out of an elevator post-safety drill goes viral, and Zaf’s mental health organization starts receiving media attention, the two decide to fake-date to keep the publicity going. Naturally, their relationship begins to heat up.
 In "Midnight Robber," Tan-Tan navigates New Half-Way World, a wilderness where her home world sends criminals and exiles. Photo credit: Justin Clark on Unsplash. By Anya Shukla Going forward, I’ve decided to stop rating the books I review. This is not a ploy to get out of doing more work, dear reader; I’ve put some thought into this decision. 1. My ratings are super subjective. I have no set rubric, meaning that I maintain no consistency between ratings: one book may get 1 point taken off for poor character development, while another may only lose .5 points. Plus, my idea of a “good book” has changed over the course of this challenge, meaning that my earlier ratings may not be accurately scaled.
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