Carolyn Wilhelm reviews Carnival Lights

Title: Carnival Lights
By: Chris Stark
Publisher: Modern History Press
Author Website: https://www.christinestark.com/
ISBN-10: 1615995781
ISBN-13: 978-1615995783
Price: Hardcover $37.95, Paperback $24.95, Kindle $6.95
Page Count: 268
Formats (HC, PB, Kindle)
 
With good reason, two teens run away from a reservation and get jobs at the Minnesota State Fair. Although the book has a linear story within the pages, it also has a spiraling story going back generations explaining how families pass down their problems. Society also hands down its ills, of course.

“The grief of her people lived within her and was a way of knowing, with or without her conscious understanding.”
Stark, Chris. Carnival Lights (p. 221). Modern History Press. Kindle Edition.

What a read! Oh, my. This book hit me especially hard being a resident of northern Minnesota as well as Minneapolis. I walked exactly where the girls walked, went to the fair, and understand 1969 – the setting of the book. I was about their age in 1969. Of course, I was aware of the poverty in the Native American reservations. However, we attended Pow Wows and visited some people, so that I was unaware of the danger to women and children. I have been to Duluth dozens of times and cannot again pass through there looking at the ships with ignorance. We lived in Grand Marais on Lake Superior and I knew there was trafficking, but thought it was all at the border for some reason. 

10 Discussion Questions for Carnival Lights

 
1. How does Stark set up the first chapters so we are convinced Sher and Kris had no choice but to run away? What are several of the convincing reasons provided? 
 
2. Did you expect the girls would get to the fair rather quickly and experience problems there? What surprised you about the book with generational stories interwoven with the experience of the girls’ bus trip and arrival in Minneapolis?
 
3. Why did the girls spend several days in downtown Minneapolis? Who did Sher call, thinking they might find help? How did they get food? The Vietnam war protest added drama as well as helped explain the times. How was Kris always going ahead and doing things while Sher wanted to hold back?
 
4. How do they meet Tricia? Why does she say the following:

“Get this,” the woman said, “a couple of farm girls showing me the city.”
Stark, Chris. Carnival Lights (p. 118). Modern History Press. Kindle Edition.

5. Why do they decide or were told to leave several of the places they briefly stayed? What was the one place they wanted to stay? Why?

6. When in Minneapolis, Stark again sets up the reasons why the girls do not try to find help. Why would they not reach out to a social worker? Why do you think the church where they sat on the steps asked them to leave, probably knowing they were in trouble? 

7. How does the author explain most of Sher’s family acceptance and knowledge of her as contrasted with what her mother thought:

“Sher’s mother had admonished Sher for her broad shoulders, her narrow hips, and wearing her brother’s hand-me-downs, as if these oddities sprang from Sher alone, and did not come from the loins of her parents, from her family, from the Creator.”
Stark, Chris. Carnival Lights (p. 195). Modern History Press. Kindle Edition.

8. Were you expecting Sher and Kris would meet different people and find different problems than they did? How were the things that happened to them in Minneapolis worse or better than what you thought? 

9. Why do you think they didn’t go home but remembered the good people and things that happened? Their memories helped them cope. Could they have gone home? 

10. The foreshadowing of the ending strongly suggested something terrible would happen. Did you expect what happened or not? How did close calls to people who seemed to think about helping them add to the plot’s tension? How was the ending both happy and sad? 

Why do you think Stark wrote this book? What was the overall message? 

Carolyn Wilhelm, Reviewer
BS Elementary Education, MS Gifted Education, MA K-12 Curriculum and Instruction
Wise Owl Factory LLC

U.P. Colony

978-1-61599-606-3
$12.95
The Story of Resource Exploitation in Upper Michigan -- Focus on Sault Sainte Marie Industries
In stock
1
Product Details
UPC: 978-1-61599-606-3
Brand: Modern History Press
Binding: Paperback
Audiobook: Audible, ITunes
Edition: 1st
Author: Phil Bellfy
Pages: 80
Publication Date: 09/01/2020

In the 1980s, Phil Bellfy pondered the question: Why does Sault,Ontario, appear to be so prosperous, while the "Sault" on the American side has fallen into such a deplorable state? Could the answer be that the "American side" was little more than a "resource colony"-or to use the academic jargon of "Conflict and Change" Sociology-an "Internal Colony." In UP Colony, Bellfy revisits his graduate research to update us the state of the Sault.

The ultimate question: why has the U.P.'s vast wealth, nearly unrivaled in the whole of the United States, left the area with poverty nearly unrivaled in the whole of the United States? None of the conventional explanations from "distance to markets," to "too many people," to "disadvantageous production costs," have any credibility. Simply put: "Where did the $1.5 billion earned from copper mining, $1 billion from logging, and nearly $4 billion in iron ore go?"

To get to the bottom of these thorny questions, Bellfy looks at the possible economic pressures imposed by "external colonial powers." The pressure-points examined in this book include presence of a complimentary economy, lopsided investment in one sector, monopoly style management, disparity of living standards, a repressive conflict-resolution system, and the progressive growth of inequality over time.

In UP Colony, Dr. Bellfy has revisited his MA Thesis and brought this analysis up-to-date in conjunction with the Sault's Semisepticentennial-the 350th anniversary of its French founding in 1668.

From Ziibi press www.ZiibiPress.com

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