Here is Boswell Book Company’s website notice about former Milwaukee resident and CWW board member Jennifer Morales’s talk this coming Friday (April 17) about her new book, Meet Me Halfway: Milwaukee Stories, published by the University of Wisconsin Press:
Wisconsinite Jennifer Morales, author of Meet Me Halfway: Milwaukee Stories
Friday April 17, at 7:00 pm
Boswell is proud to welcome Wisconsin author Jennifer Morales, who lived in Milwaukee for nearly 25 years where she served on the Milwaukee school board and the board for the Milwaukee LGBT Community Center, among others. Morales will be reading from and signing copies of her debut collection of short stories focused diverse characters from Milwaukee, Meet Me Halfway: Milwaukee Stories.
When Johnquell, an African American teen, suffers a serious accident in the home of his white neighbor, Mrs. Czernicki, his community must find ways to bridge divisions between black and white, gay and straight, old and young. Set in one of the nation’s most highly segregated cities—Milwaukee, Wisconsin—Meet Me Halfway tells stories of connections in a community with a tumultuous and divided past. In nine stories told from diverse perspectives, Jennifer Morales captures a Rust Belt city’s struggle to establish a common ground and a collective vision of the future. Morales gives life to multifaceted characters—white schoolteachers and senior citizens, Latino landlords, black and Puerto Rican teens, political activists, and Vietnam vets. As their lives unfold in these stories, we learn about Johnquell’s family—his grandparents’ involvement in the local Black Panther Party, his sister’s on-again, off-again friendship with a white classmate, and his aunt’s identity crisis as she finds herself falling in love with a woman. We also meet Johnquell’s mother, Gloria, and his school friend Taquan, who is struggling to chart his own future.
“Written with a sharp eye and a warm heart, Meet Me Halfway brings us into a multicultural community where people are trying to do the right thing, even when the wrong thing happens and a child dies. Richly textured, funny, and wise.” —Kelly Cherry, author of A Kind of Dream
About the Author: Jennifer Morales is a Wisconsin writer who lived in Milwaukee for nearly 25 years. She served on the Milwaukee school board from 2001 to 2009, the first Latino/a person to be elected to that office. She has served as on the editorial, research, and grantwriting staff of organizations such as 9to5 National Association of Working Women, Rethinking Schools, and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee School of Education. She was a Sunday School teacher at Plymouth UCC on Milwaukee’s east side, and served on the boards of the Milwaukee LGBT Community Center and the Institute for Wisconsin’s Future, and on the Wisconsin Judicial Commission. She received her BA in Modern Languages and Literatures from Beloit College in 1991 and her MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University-Los Angeles.
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More information about Jennifer and the Council for Wisconsin Writers is at http://www.wiswriters.org/morales.htm