Southside Girl

Angelica Anderson is from the Southside of Chicago and is a writer for young adult and middle school audiences. Storytelling has always been her claim to fame. As a young girl, whenever her family would get together for the holidays, her cousins would be called upon to showoff the latest dances while she was always asked to entertain everyone with a good story. She holds a BA in English Literature from Alcorn State University, and completed Creative Writing programs with The University of Oxford and The Hurtson/Wright Foundation at Howard University. She presently resides in Northern Virginia with her family. Her debut Dystopian Novel, White City is on sale now.

Inside the world of White City

Imagine a world where the two-party system of government has collapsed because of massive revolts, and states and municipalities govern themselves. There is constant surveillance with 24-hour newsfeeds being the only link to the outside world. This is White City. A place where David Xavier is the son of the Leadership Regime, hunting the Marcher protestors, and Susa Tribes is the face of that revolution. They are enemies. However, she has to get him to fall in love with her in order to save her people from slaughter.

"Death has a body language."

— Susa Tribes, White City

The Remix of the Book of Esther

As part of my 7th grade curriculum, I teach The Outsiders, by S.E. Hinton. In the novel, there is a Robert Frost poem, Nothing Gold Can Stay, that references The Garden of Eden. Every year, this is a stopping point in my teaching because shockingly, 95% of my students have never heard of The Garden, Adam and Eve, or the forbidden fruit. These lost stories have foundational themes that stretch beyond religion. Every forbidden love story, every tale of sibling rivalry, and every parable about the evils of greed stem from these testament narratives. So, I want to bring context to everyday themes by reintroducing the seeds from which they sprouted. White City is a modern day retelling of the Book of Esther.