Marina Budhos “The Long Ride” Book Event

In spring 2017, Budhos also published Eyes of the World: Robert Capa, Gerda Taro & The Invention of Modern Photojournalism, co-authored with her husband Marc Aronson. Their previous book, Sugar Changed the World: A Story of Magic, Spice, Slavery, Freedom & Science, was a 2010 Los Angeles Times Book Award Finalist. Budhos’s other books include The Professor of Light, House of Waiting, and a nonfiction book, Remix: Conversations with Immigrant Teenagers. Her short work has appeared in publications such as The Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, The Awl, The Nation, The Daily Beast, Marie Claire, Redbook, and in numerous anthologies. Ms. Budhos has received an EMMA (Exceptional Merit Media Award), a Rona Jaffe Award for Women Writers, and has twice received a Fellowship from the New Jersey Council on the Arts. She has been a Fulbright Scholar to India, given talks throughout the country and abroad, and is currently a professor of English at William Paterson University.

About the Book:

In the tumult of 1970s New York City, seventh graders are bussed from their neighborhood in Queens to integrate a new school in South Jamaica.

Jamila Clarke. Josie Rivera. Francesca George. Three mixed-race girls, close friends whose immigrant parents worked hard to settle their families in a neighborhood with the best schools. The three girls are outsiders there, but they have each other.

Now, at the start seventh grade, they are told they will be part of an experiment, taking a long bus ride to a brand-new school built to “mix up the black and white kids”. Their parents don’t want them to be experiments. Francesca’s send her to a private school, leaving Jamila and Josie to take the bus ride without her.

While Francesca is testing her limits, Josie and Jamila find themselves outsiders again at the new school. As the year goes on, the Spanish girls welcome Josie, while Jamila develops a tender friendship with a bo – -but it’s a relationship that can exist only at school.