Los Angeles, 1968: Happy Ranch to Watts (The American Teachers Series)

Winetsky, T. Lloyd

ISBN 10: 1940222273 / ISBN 13: 9781940222271

Published by Pen-L Publishing, 2014

About this Item

Seller Inventory # 021405

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Los Angeles, 1968: Happy Ranch to Watts (The American Teachers Series)
• Publisher: Pen-L Publishing
• Publication Date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1940222273
• ISBN 13: 9781940222271
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

Weeks before the assassination of Martin Luther King,

Allen Greene, a directionless young white man who never intended to be a teacher, finds himself in a Watts classroom, standing before thirty black seventh-grade girls. After a trial-by-fire first day that includes run-ins with violent students and ominous warnings from faculty members, Allen doubts his ability to follow through on the whole venture. He finds some encouragement from unexpected places: a teen mother who is unjustly accused of striking a teacher, a low-achieving gang member with an unexpected gift for poetry, and an elderly teacher with a commitment to social justice who takes Allen under her wing.As he builds a rapport with students as a tough-but-fair teacher, Allen's outside-the-box approach evokes antagonism from some faculty members, especially his department chairman, whose has a vile secret that adds a mini-mystery to the plot. As pressure builds both inside and out of school, Allen joins some students and teachers in peaceful protests while gangs and vandals run wild. After Dr. King is assassinated, the increased tension leads to dramatic showdowns for Allen, who finds both an unlikely savior and an unexpected calling.Not another oversimplified feel-good story of "white teacher saves the ghetto," Los Angeles, 1968: Happy Ranch to Watts is a novel based on first-hand experience and real events in a volatile urban setting, a slice-of-life account of a young man's gradual maturation toward personal commitment.

Review

Write what you know is lesson one for creative writing. Yakima educator and author T. Lloyd Winetsky does it in spades with his new book, Los Angeles, 1968: Happy Ranch to Watts.
A fictional story based on personal experiences, Winetsky’s third novel is set in an urban Los Angeles middle school enflamed with racial unrest, gangs and vandals run amok.
The year is 1968 and the story unfolds over a period of about six weeks leading up to and including the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Winetsky’s first teaching post was actually a seventh-grade classroom in South Central Los Angeles. Those experiences shape Los Angeles, 1968 through the prism of Allen, a heavy-set ne’er-do-well enlisted as a mid-year emergency substitute teacher at a middle school in the LA ghetto named for Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American to serve on the Supreme Court.
It’s Allen’s first real full-time job after failed tries that included a short-lived stint with the Peace Corps.
Winetsky sets the table nicely and immerses us in Allen’s daily struggles with school politics, friendships and successes in coaxing poetry out of students facing hardships and dangers unimaginable.
There are switchblades, guns, fights and injuries involving students and Allen has to watch his back more than once.
Beyond the day-to-day question of whether Allen and his students survive this urban warfare, there is the question of whether Allen will stick with his new-found teaching profession.
That answer arrives at the end of this 272-page quick read.
~ John Fannin, The Daily Sun News