ROCKY DAWUNI

Stand Out or Sit Down offers time-tested techniques that have helped thousands of young jobseekers overcome their unique obstacles: balancing school-work-home commitments, overcoming a perceived lack of work experience, managing various levels of parental involvement, and using and misusing technology, just to name a few. Succeeding in a job begins by finding the right job for them—not just any job. Self-assessment, networking, researching job opportunities, using technology to their advantage, properly completing job applications, resume writing, and interviewing are all taught with the young job seeker in mind. Stand Out or Sit Down also gives a voice to the thousands of employers whose businesses depend on the youth labor force. Most are happy to employ and mentor the young but have serious concerns about young workers’ lack of preparation for the working world. Their stories about young job applicants are also told to convey their concerns, expectations, and insider advice.

Q&A –TENAZ PURDY

Q. What inspired you to write this book? A. As a career and technology educator for over 20 years, I have witnessed the diminishing value that society has placed on skills-based education. The focus in high school increasingly became all about taking the most rigorous academic schedule filled with honors and Advanced Placement courses. Little by little, time for part-time jobs got squeezed out. Young people need work experience earlier in life, so that they are prepared to meet basic workplace norms and expectations. It’s my hope that Stand Out or Sit Down will help them get a successful start.

Q. What is the most important thing for young people to know right now? A. The Covid-19 pandemic has left a lot of our children feeling isolated and disconnected from the outside world. But what I want my readers to know right now is this: the pandemic will end. Jobs will become available. And life will return to a new normal. And when it does, those who have coupled their marketable skills with solid job-searching preparation will be more successful in finding a job they love than those who have not. These are the young people that will stand out not just because they achieved their goals, but they did so during what is sure to be the worst global crisis in their lifetime.

A Bend in the River by Libby Fischer Hellmann

In 1968 two young Vietnamese sisters flee to Saigon after their village on the Mekong River is attacked by American forces and burned to the ground. The only survivors of the brutal massacre that killed their family, the sisters struggle to survive but become estranged, separated by sharply different choices and ideologies. Mai ekes out a living as a GI bar girl, but Tam’s anger festers, and she heads into jungle terrain to fight with the Viet Cong. For nearly ten years, neither sister knows if the other is alive. Do they both survive the war? And if they do, can they mend their fractured relationship? Or are the wounds from their journeys too deep to heal? In a stunning departure from her crime thrillers, Libby Fischer Hellmann delves into a universal story about survival, family, and the consequences of war.

Q&A – LIBBY FISCHER HELLMANN

Q: Where did the idea for this book come from? A: I visited Vietnam because I wanted to see the country that had taken more than 50,000 American lives during the War. We were in an art gallery in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) when I saw the painting of the two girls that’s now on the cover. As soon as I saw it, I knew I was going to write a book about two Vietnamese sisters and how they coped with the war. Q: Your scenes set in Saigon were so vividly done, such as creating the feel of the bar with the soldiers and the mansion. How did you go about the research for what Saigon in those days was like? A: I found interviews with bargirls that had been written in the late Sixties. Reading them surprised me—some of the girls loved their jobs because they had choices that weren’t available in “traditional” Vietnamese society. I also found articles explaining what went on in Viet Cong training camps. And, of course, I walked the streets where the “Stardust” nightclub would have been.

Q: What do you hope readers will take away from this book? A: That the Vietnam War was a civil war that began before we got involved and continued after we left. The U.S. justified our involvement as a fight against the “Domino Theory” of Communism. But that wasn’t the motivation from the Vietnamese side. They simply wanted their country to be unified.