Cassandra Rockwood Ghanem
Author & Illustrator
"It will never be time to turn my bones |
"It will never be time to turn my bones |
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The 17th-century Japanese poet Matsuo Basho practically invented the haiku. He's most famous for his travel journals. But how did he come to be such a traveler in the first place? This delightful volume--written entirely in haiku and illustrated with vibrant hand-painted scenes taken directly from the poet's written travelogues--tells the true story of Basho’s decision to abandon his comfortable city life and of the five great journeys he then took through the length and breadth of Japan.
Recommendation from Deborah Dent Samake, 2021
"Each lesson was carefully crafted down to the finest detail. Cassandra used the Socratic Method
and Accountable Talk to guide the class through rich and relevant discussions. For example, after the
students had viewed a video on Bryan Stevenson’s Equal Justice Initiative, Cassandra framed the
discussion by providing a debatable sentence to start the conversation. Each student had to summarize the
previous student’s argument before presenting an alternate view, asking clarifying questions, and
expressing agreement or partial agreement with that of a previous student’s views. The students were
deeply engaged, and they both learned the subject matter and how to listen and communicate better with
each other. All of Cassandra’s lessons included project-based activities, critical thinking, and an
assessment."
-Deborah Dent Samake, History and Service Learning Teacher Urban School of San Francisco
Commentary from Lori Desrosiers on selecting "Table of Contents" for the 2020 1st Prize Common Ground Review Poetry Award:
“Table of Contents” is a poem about survival and bearing witness. It is also about what it means to write about abuse and struggle. The voice in the poem speaks to the rebuilding of a life through writing about trauma, and also about how in the life of a survivor there are frequent replays of that trauma through micro-aggressions perpetrated by those who have not had the same experience. It raises some great questions through the use of anaphora/ the repetition of words down the lines, in this case “how.” The lines are crafted to cascade down the page and bring the reader both a visceral and metacognitive experience, coming back around in a circle to the table: the table of childhood, the table of memory. The table of contents questions itself, how to make this book make sense, and brings the reader back around through rejection to the final table of reckoning in “the light of day.”
Review from writer, Alexandra Naughton, 2019
“I needed help finishing my book, "a place a feeling something he said to you" and Cassandra Rockwood Ghanem's workshop on writing poetic trauma narratives was an invaluable experience. Not only did the workshop give me the tools I needed to make the book work the way I wanted it to work, it also gave me courage to share my story as a way to help others to heal and feel less alone.”
-Alexandra Naughton, (published by Spooky Girlfriend Press in January of 2020)