Book Reviews

What a moving and timely story! Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter lives in the black ghetto of Garden Heights and
goes to a white private Williamson in “The Hate U Give” (2017 Balzer & Bray) by Angie Thomas.

At her white school Starr says, “I’m cool by default because I’m one of the only black kids there. I have to earn coolness in Garden Heights.” At Williamson, “It’s dope to be black until it’s hard to be black.”

Starr attends a party in the hood where she knows she doesn’t belong. She meets up with Khalil, her best friend until he recently started selling drugs. A fight breaks out. Khalil grabs Starr’s hand and they drive off.

A white cop stops them for a broken taillight and orders Khalil out of the car. Starr hopes Khalil knows what her Daddy has drilled into her—“Keep your hands visible. No sudden moves. Only speak when spoken to.” Khalil bends his head to ask Starr if she’s okay and the cop shoots him. He dies in Starr’s arms on the street.

Starr is devastated, of course, and says, “ . . . people like us in situations like this become hashtags, but they rarely get justice . . .we all wait for that one time, though . . . when it ends right.”

We experience Starr’s loving complicated family. Daddy is an ex-con who got out of the neighborhood gang by serving time for the gang leader. Momma is a nurse working in the clinic. Starr’s parents work hard to protect their kids. Seven is her older half-brother whose other family is fathered by the abusive gang leader, King.

Seven, Starr, and younger Sekani all study at Williamson where Starr has a white boyfriend, Chris. Starr says, “ . . . am I betraying who I am by dating him?” Her Black Panther Daddy would think so, and it doesn’t go over easy when he discovers the relationship in the midst of the hood riots.

If Starr comes forward as the witness, her family will suffer repercussions in the hood. She’s reluctant, but circumstances move her to act. On the news, Khalil is described as a thug, as if to excuse the cop’s action. Her uncle is a detective and vows to protect her. Can he?

Starr battles racism at school at the hands of blond Hailey. But Maya, her Asian friend says, “We minorities must stick together.” Chris is frustrated by Starr’s secrets. But she can stand on her feet and won’t take any nonsense, just as her Momma won’t.

“Daddy once told me there’s a rage passed down to every black man from his ancestors, born the moment they couldn’t stop the slave masters from hurting their families.” You accept Daddy’s rage, and, boy, do you worry for him. You see him humiliated by cops in front of his children. You love every member of this family who is trying to change a bad situation, but in a real way. There is nothing sugar-coated or easy here. Wow!

 

Patricia Hruby Powell’s is the author of the young adult documentary novel Loving vs. Virginia, Josephine, winner of Boston Globe Horn Book Honor, and other books. talesforallages.com

Rowan Chase, 17, the daughter of a white oil magnate father and a black lawyer mother finds a skeleton under the floorboards in the “back house” of her spiffy Greenwood area Tulsa home in “Dreamland Burning” (Little Brown 2017) by Tulsa resident Jennifer Latham.

Will Tillman, 17, son of a white shop-owner and full-blooded Osage Indian mother, is in love with Addie, the prettiest girl at school, in 1921 Tulsa. Sincere and ignorant Will sees Addie at a speakeasy with a handsome young black man. It’s Prohibition, which doesn’t stop anyone from drinking, and Will is stumbling drunk. His manly pride injured, Will goes racist haywire on the black man, Clarence. In defense, Clarence pushes Will who falls and breaks his wrist. Bad news in segregated Tulsa.

In 1921, Greenwood was the wealthiest black neighborhood in the nation. If you know your race riot history, you know Memorial Day weekend began the worst race riot of the nation, when white people burned 35 blocks of black Greenwood. An estimated 300 people were killed. And it was all hushed up for decades. That’s the background story.

Alternating voices take us back to Rowan who slips a mildewed wallet from a scrap of pocket off the skeleton before her mother calls the police. The police aren’t real concerned about a hundred year old murder case, but Rowan is.

1920s Will is white enough to attend the white school, but his detractors call him “half-breed.” His Osage mother has oil rights to Maple Ridge plus she’s inherited 2 other portions. She’s rich. But racism against Indians requires her to have a white sponsor to hold her monies. That would be Will’s father, who is building a luxury house for the family on the edge of Greenwood.

Rowan and Will are both complex and well-drawn characters. Privileged and snarky Rowan describes a nearby high-end shopping mall “where the flowerbeds are perfect and the luxury cars roam free.” Her summer job is at a free clinic, and she loves the job.

Under the influence of his friend Clete, Will has falsely accused Clarence of assaulting him. Clarence is beaten by a white mob that plans to lynch him. Will isn’t bad, but he’s young and weak, until he begins to grow up.

Due to the parallel stories we can view racism—the degree of hatred allotted to varying complexions—then and now. Rowan’s mother says, “Black men and women are dying today for the same reasons they did in 1921. And we have to call that out . . .”

Rowan and best friend James are trying to solve the aged mystery with the contents of the skeleton’s wallet and it’s not pretty. Because we, the reader, have Will’s story, we’re a little ahead of Rowan, but not much. Latham has ingeniously structured her story to be a page-turner—every single page.

Readers follow two teens coming of age, making moral decisions and discovering their own values, while being steeped in the deep waters of history.

 

 

Patricia Hruby Powell’s young adult documentary novel in verse, Loving vs. Virginia, is now available. talesforallages.com

 

Affable Adam, a senior, appears to have a perfect life. Maybe he’s a little wired, but he’s lovable, affable, and he’s everyone’s friend. His Mom deals with his ADHD with homeopathic drops so he’s on no hard medications. His elective is perfect—he’s the aide to the school psychologist in Robin Roe’s debut novel “A List of Cages” (Hyperion 2017).

Adam’s first assignment is to deliver the elusive freshman, Julian, to counseling. Julian turns out to be the kid that Adam tutored in reading when he was ten and Julian was five.

Then two years later, Julian’s parents both die and Adam’s family fostered him. That fostering ended badly. On every page you wonder why.

Julian is still sweet, he writes stories like he used to—but he’s quiet now. He disappears at school, is never seen at lunch. He’s keeping secrets.

We follow Adam with his lively group of close friends. Alternately, we follow Julian into the theater, into the fly area, over a gap, through some loose boards and into his hidden space. And boy, does this kid have a lot to hide from.

Julian is meek and broken like a whipped puppy. He lives with his Uncle Russell now, but Russell is gone for days on end. Whereas that’s lonely, it’s worse when Russell arrives home. Julian had cleaned his grimy shoes with something he found under the sink and left a bleach mark on Russell’s beautiful wooden floors. Russell accuses Julian of being spoiled. Sensitive Julian hears “spoiled like old meat”—“no-good garbage.” Just like Julian “spoiled” his bedroom when he put up a poster the first day he’d arrived, some years ago.

Russell whips Julian with a willow switch. He leaves scars but his ill-fitting clothing hides the marks and Russell has arranged Julian not to take PE. So why is Russell’s house beautiful, pristine, expensive, while Julian wears too-small filthy clothes? Adam sees that something is amiss. As a reader, I got so immersed in Julian’s pain it was sometimes hard to leave him and transfer to Adam.

Julian says about the school psychologist: “She’s being nice, but it just makes me more nervous because she expects me to tell her things so personal that they need to be confidential.” Playing SORRY! is too cruel a game for Julian because the SORRY! card means you kill off your opponent’s people. Who would want to do that?

About missing his parents: “You miss the things they did and who they were, but you also miss who you were to them . . . When you know you’re going to tell someone everything, you see your day through your eyes and theirs, as if they’re living it alongside you . . . But when you don’t, it isn’t only not seeing double—it’s not seeing at all. Because if they aren’t there, you aren’t either.”

Robin Roe counsels troubled teens and you know this is real. You will love both Adam and Julian and rejoice in their friendship.

 

 

Patricia Hruby Powell’s young adult documentary novel in verse, Loving vs. Virginia, is now available. talesforallages.com

 

What a perfect cast for a love story! Natasha, 17, is slated to be deported from New York City with her family, back to Jamaica. Daniel’s parents immigrated from Korea and had their children in the U.S. They run an African American hair supply store. Despite the injustice and weirdness of this, it turns out that most black hair and beauty stores are owned and run by people from South Korea.

“The Sun is Also A Star” (Delacorte 2016) by Nicola Yoon is told in the alternating voices of romantic Daniel and Natasha who thinks like a scientist. Daniel, the poet, sees Natasha on the street, not at his parents’ shop because she wears her hair in a huge Afro. Whereas Natasha is precise and reasons empirically, she’s also sensual. When she listens to her music she is transported. When she eats Korean food for the first time (with Daniel), she’s close to ecstasy.

When they meet, Daniel is making his way uptown to talk to a Yale admittance interviewer—only because his family expects him to become a doctor. Natasha is on her way uptown in a last ditch attempt to rescue her family by talking to a reputedly stellar immigration attorney.

Daniel professes his love at first sight, but Natasha is a hard sell. However, she agrees to walk along with him. The two could not be more charming as they get to know each other—she keeping secrets and he wearing his heart on his shoulder. Natasha meets Daniel’s über-strict Korean father and cruel older brother, Charlie, who has just been kicked out of Harvard. Daniel is delivering the bag of money his mother has entrusted to him. The entire story, except for an epilogue, takes place in one day. And you might read this 350-page book in one day. Do not assume that it will resolve in a Hollywood ending.

Daniel oftentimes subtitles his sections, as if it were a news report: “Local Teen Accepts Destiny to become Doctor, Stereotype.” The cadence he gives his mother’s speech over brother Charlie’s shame makes us hear her and know her. “Why you grades so bad? They kick you out? Why they kick you out? Why not make you stay and study more?”

Or Natasha, quoting her mother: “You no think is time for you to give up now, ‘Tasha? You no think that what you doing is futile?”

        The alternating voices of the couple are interrupted by narrations of a character they’ve met during the day and with little histories—such as why South Koreans dominate African American beauty supply stores. Starting in the 1960s and ever since, straight black Korean hair wigs were extremely popular. At the time, the US government banned the import of wigs containing hair from China. So South Koreans had the monopoly. And the wig business evolved into general hair care business.

The story of opposite personalities falling in love sounds like a cliché, but it feels new in Yoon’s hands. No wonder it’s a best seller.

 

Patricia Hruby Powell’s young adult documentary novel Loving vs. Virginia released 1/31/17. You’re invited to the Book Lunch Party 2/16/17 at 5:00 pm at the Esquire. talesforallages.com

“The Passion of Dolssa” (Viking 2016) by Julie Berry is certainly an oddity in the world of young adult literature—and what a terrific oddity.

The subject matter will not be found in many U.S. high school curriculums. Set in 13^th century Provence or Provensa, as it was called at the time, the story centers around 18 year old Dolssa, a Catholic mystic, born in the waning years of the crusades to a prosperous wine merchant. This was also the dawn of the Inquisitions that are best know for the later Spanish Inquisition of the 15^th century.

Just as important as Dolssa (or more so) is 17 year old Botille the aspiring matchmaker, along with her two sisters, beautiful older Plazensa who dabbles in prostitution, and Sazia, younger, who tells fortunes. When their parents died some years back, they’d become petty thieves, but since, had moved to the seaside village of Baja and opened a successful tavern.

The early chapters are Dolssa’s testimony as recorded by Father Lucien of the Cloistered Fathers in Tolosa (Toulouse). She speaks of her beloved Jhesus who she claims visits her and directs her actions—which many in Tolosa see as miracles of healing. However, Father Lucien condemns Dolssa as a heretic. When she will not renounce her “beloved” she is sentenced to burn at the stake.

Where as Dolssa’s sympathetic mother is not as fortunate as her daughter, Dolssa escapes her execution. She is wandering the countryside close to death, when Botille, while traveling with her sister Sazia and neighbor men on a village errand, saves her. Sazia predicts that Dolssa will bring Botille only pain. But spunky clever Botille cannot turn the suffering young woman away. They bring her to Baja and begin nursing her back to health.

Father Lucien and the Knight of Tolosa are searching for Dolssa under the orders of the archbishop who must rid the Catholic world of the devil—that is—“heretics” such as Dolssa. We learn that the Crusade, that recently swept through the area of what is now southern France, was a bloody purge and the Inquisition is the next step of the church’s attempted control of its faithful. The reader sees how an oppressive force works one neighbor against another. Betray a friend to save one’s own family.

The cast of nuanced characters is listed in the back, as is a copious author note that further describes this little known moment of history, which is reminiscent of the Salem witch hunts, as well as a precursor to how the Nazi regime gained control of the German population.

This is every bit an adult book as well as a young adult read. It’s exquisite.

 

Patricia Hruby Powell’s young adult documentary novel Loving vs. Virginia releases 1/31/17. You’re invited to the Book Lunch Party 2/16/17 at 5:00 pm at the Esquire. talesforallages.com

U.S. Congressman John Lewis from Georgia was having a meeting with his 2008 re-election committee, when staff member, Andrew Aydin, mentioned he was on his way to a comic book convention. When other committee members teased Aydin, Lewis remembered that in 1958, at 18, he’d read the comic “The Montgomery Story,” about Martin Luther King Jr. and his nonviolent movement. This had inspired John Lewis to nonviolent action. He used the comic as the model to organize his first sit-ins.

 

Not terribly long after that 2008 meeting, Aydin convinced Congressman Lewis to write the “March” trilogy. Book One tells of Lewis’s origins as a sharecropper’s son from Georgia and the lunch counter sit-ins of 1959 and 1960. (I reviewed it in January of 2014). Book Two covers the sit-ins and the Freedom Riders.

 

“March: Book Three” (Top Shelf Production 2016) by John Lewis and Andrew Aydin, and illustrated by Nate Powell is the final volume of the graphic novel trilogy. And the National Book Award Winner for Young Readers of 2016. It spotlights the bombing of the 16^th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, AL; Freedom Summer, the 1964 Democratic National Convention, as well as the Selma to Montgomery marches. Everyone should read this nonfiction trilogy of graphic novels.

 

As the president of Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and a board member of Martin Luther King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), young John Lewis was a pivotal figure in the Civil Rights Movement of the early sixties. He illuminates the tensions and factions within the movement. We’re introduced to Fannie Lou Hamer, Malcolm X, and of course Martin Luther King Jr. and many others. We see these historic figures as three dimensional, emotional beings in both the text and the wonderfully-wrought black and white wash drawings.

 

We see Fannie Lou Hamer, the woman from Mississippi, who co-founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, in her unsuccessful attempt to be seated as a black Mississippi delegate for the presidential election of 1964. To that purpose she is depicted in a televised appearance addressing the Democratic National Convention’s Credentials Committee, which presidential candidate Lyndon B. Johnson interrupts with his own press conference in order to distract viewers and voters from the rift in the party. The book is not altogether clear on that, but like any nonfiction book, the reader can look up information to clarify and find out more.

 

Getting books like this one into the hands of young adults might help keep us from backsliding into a darker more contentious history in the upcoming years. Let’s not allow history to repeat itself.

 

Patricia Hruby Powell’s young adult documentary novel Loving vs. Virginia releases 1/31/17. You’re invited to the Book Lunch Party 2/16/17 at 5:00 pm at the Esquire. talesforallages.com