Excerpt from Good Kings Bad Kings by Susan Nussbaum, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

So I read it off for Mia and she asked Bernard to push her over to sit next to me. She took up my hand and held it real tight.

A guy in a car stopped and asked were we selling lemonade. Can you believe that shit? They see a group of teenage people standing together any- where else they'd be arrested for being gangbangers. They see a bunch of disable people and think we're selling lemonade. Where is the respect?

I yelled, "Can't you read?" and he drove away.

Pretty soon more people from ILLC came back from the funeral and Dominique and Chris and Jose all said they was gonna stand there with us but they had to first go to the bathroom. That was the last we seen of them.

When Ricky came back from Joanne's office, he had Joanne, and she almost fell out her chair when she saw my sign and she hugged everybody in our line and then she started calling all over the place on her cell phone. She called the place where Teddy's lawyer is, and she called some other places, and Ricky went to pick up the kids getting out from school at Hoover and to get us some food. I told Joanne to call Jimmie, and Joanne said Jimmie knows we're out here but she can't come be with us because she might get fired. I says, "Ain't you worried about you getting fired?" And she kinda shrugs and just shakes her head no. I says, "And after you done calling Jimmie can you take my picture on your cell phone? I want a picture of me wearing this top all chained to my tree."

Excerpted from Good Kings Bad Kings by Susan Nussbaum. Copyright © 2013 by Susan Nussbaum. Excerpted by permission of Algonquin Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.