Download Free American Orphan Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online American Orphan and write the review.

This picaresque novel by acclaimed writer Jimmy Santiago Baca follows Orlando Lucero after he is released from a lifetime of imprisonment, first in an orphanage and then in prison, and learns to live on the outside, ultimately finding his way as a writer and artist.
in a confrontation with his past, the author reveals this heart-wrenching depiction of childhood in a New York City multicultural orphanage during the nineteen fifties.Funds were scarce and discipline severe.He describes the relationships between the orphans, the counselors, the nuns, and the priests, with an emphasis on how it shaped his life.As he grows and moves through various houses into his teenage years, the orphanage is faced with a surge of gang members.He befriends a Puerto Rican his own age, which ultimately leads them both to follow his friend’s brother, a heroin pusher and addict, into Spanish Harlem just at the beginning of the civil rights movement. His account entails descriptions of ghetto life there and in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg district as well, underlining the devastating effects from the separation of his Irish-American family and siblings.While awaiting his next group of students in an empty classroom in South Korea, Walter James attempted to remember his past in an orphanage. The experiences that surfaced put him in a rage.He knew then that he had to confront his past and exorcize his demons.his book, which began as a psychological self-study, became the emotional account of his story, and took him to places he never thought he would visit again.
An unforgettable true story of an orphan caught in the midst of war Over a million South Vietnamese children were orphaned by the Vietnam War. This affecting true account tells the story of Long, who, like more than 40,000 other orphans, is Amerasian -- a mixed-race child -- with little future in Vietnam. Escape from Saigon allows readers to experience Long's struggle to survive in war-torn Vietnam, his dramatic escape to America as part of "Operation Babylift" during the last chaotic days before the fall of Saigon, and his life in the United States as "Matt," part of a loving Ohio family. Finally, as a young doctor, he journeys back to Vietnam, ready to reconcile his Vietnamese past with his American present. As the thirtieth anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War approaches, this compelling account provides a fascinating introduction to the war and the plight of children caught in the middle of it.
Bringing back to the twenty-first century an epic novel of substance and style, Orphan in America is a compelling fiction that follows three generations across vast distances and the impact of a dark and unfamiliar episode of America's past; the Orphan Train. Set in the 1800s, Orphan in America extends far beyond the genre of historical fiction. This odyssey begins with Alex, an innocent young boy, living in the slums of New York. Like thousands of other children who were transported from overcrowded cities on the Eastern Seaboard during the mid-1800s, Alex is removed from a life of poverty, put on the Orphan Train, and sent to start a new life in America's heartland. But despite the best intentions of a project meant to improve children's lives, Alex's world is forever changed as he is snatched away from his loving yet impoverished parents. Alex is quick to see the advantages of adapting to the ways of the rugged pioneers of Missouri-at least on the outside. As the reader soon learns, his life is intertwined with the tale of Will and Libby Piccard's flight from rural England and their relationship with the powerful Cambridge family of Baltimore. Murder, intrigue, and misfortune collide, unraveling the relentless efforts by Alex's father to reunite his family and the young boy caught up in a scheme of deception. Avery's expressive language and fully realized staging enrich this literary work with an authenticity that brings the saga to life. Unforgettable characters engage readers in a quest to discover more details about the mysterious threads of this fictional tapestry.
From the almshouses of the 1800s to the foster home programs of the present, find out about our country's evolving attitudes toward its neediest children.
"From 1850 to 1930 America witnessed a unique emigration and resettlement of at least 200,000 children and several thousand adults, primarily from the East Coast to the West. This 'placing out,' an attempt to find homes for the urban poor, was best known by the 'orphan trains' that carried the children. Holt carefully analyzes the system, initially instituted by the New York Children's Aid Society in 1853, tracking its imitators as well as the reasons for its creation and demise. She captures the children's perspective with the judicious use of oral histories, institutional records, and newspaper accounts. This well-written volume sheds new light on the multifaceted experience of children's immigration, changing concepts of welfare, and Western expansion. It is good, scholarly social history."—Library Journal
An examination of the placing out of orphaned, poor, and abandoned children from eastern cities such as New York and Boston to homes in the West, begin by the children's Aid Society.
The first public orphanage in America, the Charleston Orphan House saw to the welfare and education of thousands of children from poor white families in the urban South. From wealthy benefactors to the families who sought its assistance to the artisans and merchants who relied on its charges as apprentices, the Orphan House was a critical component of the city’s social fabric. By bringing together white citizens from all levels of society, it also played a powerful political role in maintaining the prevailing social order. John E. Murray tells the story of the Charleston Orphan House for the first time through the words of those who lived there or had family members who did. Through their letters and petitions, the book follows the families from the events and decisions that led them to the Charleston Orphan House through the children’s time spent there to, in a few cases, their later adult lives. What these accounts reveal are families struggling to maintain ties after catastrophic loss and to preserve bonds with children who no longer lived under their roofs. An intimate glimpse into the lives of the white poor in early American history, The Charleston Orphan House is moreover an illuminating look at social welfare provision in the antebellum South.
These are my stories of my abuse, years that I suffered while living in a Jacksonville, Florida orphanage. The pain, suffering and mental anguish is not easy to read. These stories tell of my feelings. How I took that suffering boldly and how I tried, as best I could, to ease the pain of others. The abuse, hurt and pain I suffered as a child has never left my mind and I feel it as strongly today as I did when I was a child. Forever these memories live with me as a reminder of where I came from and who I am. If the quote above is indeed true, then why I did not turn out to be an abuser. Many who read my stories of my abusive childhood marvel at how I could become a contributing member of society. How I can become a published author with only a 6th grade education, how I can focus on the horrible abuse, and how I earnestly strive, through my books and my media coverage, to seek public and government reform. How can I help others when so much in me goes unhealed? So, why did I not turn out to be an abuser myself ? It is because I could no longer stand to see the pain abuse causes in the hearts and mind of my fellow man. I know the desperation very well. I was there and it happened to me. I cannot recall even one instance where I physically abused my children. I suppose this is because the abuse, the hurt and the pain that I suffered as a child has left such a devastating effect on me I promised myself I would never do this to my children. I find I make that conscious decision everyday. My children are grown and have children of their own. Now, I reaffirm my decision for my grandchildren's sake. I choose not to abuse. It is a decision that I make every day of my life. I help others because I have no choice. When I see the pain of others, my own past reappears and it hurts me so badly. I see myself in their faces, I understand their mental torture, and I know their hopelessness. I need to let them know that I am here and I am a friend. I understand because I have been where they are. Nobody was there for me but I am determined I will be there for them. I must do what I can to save them in order to save myself. Roger Dean Kiser's Bio Published author and internet writer Roger Dean Kiser's stories take you into the heart of a child abandoned by his family and abused by the system responsible for his care. Through his stories he relives the sadness and cruelty of growing up an orphan in the early 1950s. Today Kiser lives in Brunswick, Georgia with his wife Judy, where he continues to write, publishing most of his work on his internet web site: www.rogerdeankiser.com and short story index at: www.geocities.com/trampolineone/survive/noframe.htm. Since it's beginning "AMERICAN ORPHAN" has become one of the most read child abuse web sites in the world. At last count it had a readership of about 4.6 million since November of 1999. It is through his writing that Kiser has begun healing the pain, suffering and sadness of the orphan within him. Unknowingly at first and by the power of the internet Kiser's stories have touched millions. In the vain of Mark Twain Roger Dean Kiser's collection of almost 400 stories have captured the drama and emotion of not only his childhood but of his current day tales. Kiser's short stories carry with them strong images and feelings that search out and find that common thread which connects each of us to our own emotions. Roger will never forget how he and about 300 other children were treated as though they were less than human while living in a Jacksonville, Florida orphanage in the 1950s and 1960s. Roger's has taken those feelings and has done his very best to help those less fortunate than himself. Roger's short stories have also been published in books and magazines around the world. Publications such as: Chicken Soup for the Grandparent's Soul, Chicken Soup for the Horse Lover's Soul, Chicken Soup for the Caregiver's Soul, Chicken Soup for the Friend's Soul (USA), Heartwarmers (USA), Heartwarmers of Love (USA), A Cool Collection I and A Cool Collection II (Israel), Faith & True Stories of Friendship (USA), Teen Miracles (USA), Man's Best Friend (Australia), The Next Voice You Hear (USA), Soul Disclosures (USA), Dog Buddies (Australia), Skyline Magazine IV (USA), Venice, Gulf Coast Living, Petwarmers CD Collection (USA), Kiwanis Magazine, as well as his own CD titled "The Life and Times of Roger Dean Kiser". Roger's short story "The Bully" was made into a short film by Nicholas Delfino and Edward Asner (Mary Tyler Moore Show) and has been entered into several major film festivals in the United States. Between Edward Asner's bustling, award winning career and a busy political agenda the actor has still made himself available to lend his support and voice to Roger Dean Kiser. Asner is credited as a factor in the publishing of Kiser's first book Orphan in 2001 and was the Executive Producer on the short film The Bully, written and directed by Nicholas Delfino and adapted from the Kiser short story by the same name. More recently he recorded two of Kiser's works Butterflies and Elvis Died in a Florida Barber College as audio stories for Bear-Buca Entertainment. Asner has also been very supportive in the development of a possible feature film or television series based on Kiser's stories.
Images of orphanhood have pervaded American fiction since the colonial period. Common in British literature, the orphan figure in American texts serves a unique cultural purpose, representing marginalized racial, ethnic, and religious groups that have been scapegoated by the dominant culture. Among these groups are the Native Americans, the African Americans, immigrants, and Catholics. In keeping with their ideological function, images of orphanhood occur within the context of family metaphors in which children represent those who belong to the family, or the dominant culture, and orphans represent those who are excluded from it. In short, the family as an institution provides the symbolic stage on which the drama of American identity formation is played out. Applying aspects of psychoanalytic theory that pertain to identity formation, specifically René Girard's theory of the scapegoat, Cultural Orphans in America examines the orphan trope in early American texts and the antebellum nineteenth-century American novel as a reaction to the social upheaval and internal tensions generated by three major episodes in American history: the Great Migration, the American Revolution, and the rise of the republic. In Puritan religious texts and Anne Bradstreet's poetry, orphan imagery expresses the doubt and uncertainty that shrouded the mission to the New World. During the Revolutionary and post-Revolutionary periods, the separation of the colony from England inspired an identification with orphanhood in Thomas Paine's writings, and novels by Charles Brockden Brown and James Fenimore Cooper encode in orphan imagery the distinction between Native Americans and the new Americans who have usurped their position as children of the land. In women's sentimental fiction of the 1850s, images of orphanhood mirror class and ethnic conflict, and Uncle Tom's Cabin, like Frederick Douglass's autobiographies, employs orphan imagery to suggest the slave's orphanhood from the human as well as the national family.