Our Best of the Small Presses Award this year goes to Blue Heron Publishing of Oregon. To encourage the growth of small print presses, and to bring their works to a wider audience, STANDARDS annually reviews selections previously appearing on paper. In our Blue Heron Publications feature, we present reviews and excerpts from the following works:

Blue Heron's Left Bank Series

Secrets, edited by Linny Stovall

"Secrets: Who Doesn't Know," by Marvin Bell

Writing Across Cultures, by Edna Kovacs

Homeground: a joint project of Blue Heron and the Before Columbus Foundation

Classroom Publishing:
A Practical Guide to Enhancing Student Literacy,
by Laurie King and Dennis Stovall

 

AND THESE BLUE HERON JUVENILE NOVELS:

Ricochet River, by Robin Cody

Run Far, Run Fast, by Walt Morey

A Word from Blue Heron Publishing Editor Dennis Stovall, about Homeground, edited by Kathryn Trueblood & Linda Stovall:

HOMEGROUND celebrates ethnic diversity in the United States, the struggle to keep cultural identity intact, and the expanded visions that are formed when different lifestyles and customs intersect. It is the first book produced by Blue Heron Publishing and Before Columbus Foundation in their new American Literatures Series. The Foundation, which coined the term "multiculturalism," is the sponsor of the American Book Awards and celebrates its 20th anniversary this year.

The editors solicited work from not only award-winning authors but also up-and-coming contemporary writers for this collection of mainly new fiction and memoirs. "Home" is a common denominator. No matter how little we know about each other's tribe, we can all agree on the instinct for home -- in all its brave and bizarre forms. HOMEGROUND draws from many American ethnic and class backgrounds. Serving up a cultural gumbo are writers Nash Candelaria, Frank Chin, Victor Hernandez Cruz, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Lawrence DiStasi, Joseph Geha, Robin Hemley, Lawson Inada, Pico Iyer, Laura Kalpakian, Thomas King, Russell Leong, Shirley Geok-lin Lim, Colleen McElroy, Naomi Shihab Nye, Ishmael Reed, and Sandra Scofield. A few of their takes on the theme are:

· Home is turned on its head when Asian-American youth become more powerful than their parents, and gang identity replaces cultural identity;

· A war-injured Beirut immigrant learns a humorous smattering of English and customs from TV and his Americanized cousins;

· When a Blackfoot mother refuses to recognize the concept of nationality, she is trapped between the U.S. and Canadian borders, until the newspeople and their cameras arrive;

· A girl spends 8th grade in a Catholic academy after her family moves away, a year when home becomes the supportive environment of nuns and academic challenges, but with restricted visits from a grandmother she loves.