"Another day finished, gracias a Dios." Seventeen-year-old Marisa's mother has been saying this for as long as Marisa can remember. Her parents came to Houston from Mexico. They work hard, and they expect Marisa to help her familia. An ordinary life--marrying a neighborhood guy, working, having babies--ought to be good enough for her. Marisa hears something else from her calc teacher. She should study harder, ace the AP test, and get into engineering school in Austin. Some days, it all seems possible. On others, she's not even sure what she wants. When her life at home becomes unbearable, Marisa seeks comfort elsewhere--and suddenly neither her best friend nor boyfriend can get through to her. Caught between the expectations of two different worlds, Marisa isn't sure what she wants--other than a life where she doesn't end each day thanking God it's over. But some things just can't wait...

What Can't Wait (Carolrhoda YA)

Literature & Fiction

Pérez, Ashley Hope

Contemporary

CarolRhoda Books

The Knife and the Butterfly

After a marijuana-addled brawl with a rival gang, 16-year-old Azael wakes up to find himself surrounded by a familiar set of concrete walls and a locked door. Juvie again, he thinks. But he can't really remember what happened or how he got picked up. He knows his MS13 boys faced off with some punks from Crazy Crew. There were bats, bricks, chains. A knife. But he can't remember anything between that moment and when he woke behind bars. Azael knows prison, and something isn't right about this lockup. No phone call. No lawyer. No news about his brother or his homies. The only thing they make him do is watch some white girl in some cell. Watch her and try to remember. Lexi Allen would love to forget the brawl, would love for it to disappear back into the Xanax fog it came from. And her mother and her lawyer hope she chooses not to remember too much about the brawl―at least when it's time to testify. Lexi knows there's more at stake in her trial than her life alone, though. She's connected to him, and he needs the truth. The knife cut, but somehow it also connected.

Teen & Young Adult

Carolrhoda Lab ®

“Another day finished,gracias a Dios.” Seventeen-year-old Marisa’s mother has been saying this for as long as Marisa can remember. Her parents came to Houston from Mexico. They work hard, and they expect Marisa to help her familia. An ordinary life―marrying a neighborhood guy, working, having babies―ought to be good enough for her. Marisa hears something else from her calc teacher. She should study harder, ace the AP test, and get into engineering school in Austin. Some days, it all seems possible. On others, she’s not even sure what she wants. When her life at home becomes unbearable, Marisa seeks comfort elsewhere―and suddenly neither her best friend nor boyfriend can get through to her. Caught between the expectations of two different worlds, Marisa isn’t sure what she wants―other than a life where she doesn’t end each day thanking God it’s over. But some things just can’t wait…

What Can't Wait

Deformative Fictions: Cruelty and Narrative Ethics in Twentieth-Century Latin American Literature (THEORY INTERPRETATION NARRATIV)

History & Criticism

Ohio State University Press

Tapping a rich vein of Latin American literature, Deformative Fictions by Ashley Hope Pérez excavates works that unsettle, defamiliarize, and disrupt access to the conventional pleasures of reading and interpretation. Close readings highlight the nuances of texts that have been misread, underread, or fetishized because they depart from literary norms, including fiction by Roberto Bolaño and Silvina Ocampo. Interweaving rhetorical and narratological analysis with reflections on the ethical stakes of writing, reading, and interpreting deformative fictions and fictional cruelty, Pérez issues a resounding entreaty for us to expand our understandings of the value of narrative beyond the logics of utility and comfort. Doing so, she contends, allows readers to embrace the full possibilities of the relationships among authors, readers, and the worlds we inhabit on and off the page. In defamiliarizing the act of reading, deformative fictions reacquaint us with its ethical weight.&nbsp;

A dangerous forbidden romance rocks a Texan oil town in 1937, when segregation was a matter of life and death. A Printz Honor Book "This is East Texas, and there's lines. Lines you cross, lines you don't cross. That clear?" New London, TX. 1937. Naomi Vargas is Mexican American. Wash Fuller is Black. These teens know the town's divisive racism better than anyone. But sometimes the attraction between two people is so powerful it breaks through even the most entrenched color lines. And the consequences can be explosive. Naomi and Wash dare to defy the rules, and the New London school explosion serves as a ticking time bomb in the background. Can their love survive both prejudice and tragedy? Race, romance, and family converge in this riveting novel that transplants Romeo and Juliet to a bitterly segregated Texas town. Includes a fascinating author's note detailing the process of research and writing about voices that have largely been excluded from historical accounts. A Printz Honor Book A Booklist 50 Best YA Books of All Time Selection A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year A School Library Journal Best Book Winner of the Tomás Rivera Mexican American Children's Book Award

Out of Darkness

Holiday House

A 2016 Michael L. Printz Honoree "This is East Texas, and there's lines. Lines you cross, lines you don't cross. That clear?" New London, Texas. 1937. Naomi Vargas and Wash Fuller know about the lines in East Texas as well as anyone. They know the signs that mark them. They know the people who enforce them. But sometimes the attraction between two people is so powerful it breaks through even the most entrenched color lines. And the consequences can be explosive. Ashley Hope Pérez takes the facts of the 1937 New London school explosion―the worst school disaster in American history―as a backdrop for a riveting novel about segregation, love, family, and the forces that destroy people.

Historical Fiction

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Pérez, Ashley Hope. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Pérez, Ashley Hope

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Pérez, Ashley Hope. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

What Can't Wait (Carolrhoda YA)

The Knife and the Butterfly

What Can't Wait

Deformative Fictions: Cruelty and Narrative Ethics in Twentieth-Century Latin American Literature (THEORY INTERPRETATION NARRATIV)

Deformative Fictions: Cruelty and Narrative Ethics in Twentieth-Century Latin American Literature (THEORY INTERPRETATION NARRATIV)

Out of Darkness

The Knife and the Butterfly

Out of Darkness