On the surface, seventh graders Kirsten and Walk couldn’t be more different. Kirsten is an overweight secret eater who hides her unhappiness over her parents’ constant fighting behind mountains of candy bars and bags of potato chips. Walk is a smart loner trying to make it as one of the only black students in Kirsten’s mostly white private school. But they become unexpected friends when Walk stands up for Kirsten when she is falsely accused of stealing a teacher’s wallet. When they each begin to talk about their new friendship at home, their families become suspicious, and neither Kirsten nor Walk can understand why. Is it because Kirsten is white and Walk is black? While that seems to be the rationale at first, there is another reason their parents don’t want them to become friends, a secret that will shake the growing tree of their relationship to its very roots when they find out. What looks like a benign school story from its innocent, colorful cover is actually a pretty deep read that will challenge the way you think about race and economic class, and help you understand that even though they often try to convince you otherwise, adults mess up too. And if you haven’t read her stuff before, you’ll definitely want to go back and check out Choldenko’s hip historical fiction, Al Capone Does My Shirts.
Category: #BlackLivesMatter
Stories that center around the Black American teen experience for everyone.
The Skin I’m In by by Sharon G. Flake
Everyday Maleeka Madison dreads going to school. She already knows that the other kids are going to tease her about her home-made clothes, her good grades and her black, black skin. Even though it makes her hate herself, she bows and scrapes to the reigning teen queen, Charlese, because she gives Maleeka her brand-name, cast-off clothes to wear. But Char makes Maleeka pay by turning her into the butt of every joke and forcing Maleeka to give her answers to each day’s homework. When a new teacher with a skin disorder challenges Maleeka to celebrate her blackness instead of hide from from it, Maleeka starts to wonder if she can break away from Charlese’s vicious circle. But Char doesn’t plan on giving up her homework slave without a fight, and Char plans with her last act of defiance against the new teacher who gave Maleeka confidence, to take Maleeka down with her. I guess I’m a little out of it, guys, because I don’t remember high school being this cruel. But this is still a good, good book about learning to like yourself no matter what anyone else says.
Jazmin’s Notebook by Nikki Grimes
African American children’s poet Nikki Grimes has tried her hand at prose with this short but sweet novel of 1960’s Harlem. Seen through the pages of 14 year old Jazmin’s journal, the neighborhood comes alive with Jazmin’s descriptions of her older sister CeCe, who’s too young to be so jaded, and Aunt Sarah, a neighbor who shows up with lots of steaming “leftovers” when money is tight for Jazmin and CeCe. Jazmin knows she’s going to be a real writer someday if she can just get past the school counselor who wants to keep her in vocational classes and the mother who abandoned her to foster homes and poverty. Told in a jazzy, lyrical voice, Jazmin’s Notebook just sings with Nikki Grimes’ poetical turn at prose. Make sure to jot down this title in YOUR notebook next time you’re looking for something good to read.
Storm Warriors by Elisa Carbone
In the post Civil War South, one of the few jobs that an able bodied African American man can hold in North Carolina is that of a “surfman,†one of the professional life savers that work to save floundering ships and crews during the winter storm season. Twelve year old Nate Williams wants to be one of those brave, before-Baywatch guys instead of a boring old fisherman, like his father. He can’t understand why dad is so against him becoming like one of his heroes, a “storm warrior.†Nate soon learns that father actually has his best interests at heart when he discovers that only the surf outpost on Pea Island, NC is open to African American workers. Nate could train to become a surfman–but he’d never be able to get another job off of Pea Island due to the prevailing racism of the day. Down but not out, Nate finds a way to help his community and himself in a totally different way that is just as brave as boogie-boarding out to shipwrecks. Full of daring rescues during wild and stormy nights, Storm Warriors is only for the bravest of sailors. Landlubbers should stick to Little House on the Prairie!
Life is Funny by E.R. Frank
Life is Funny is a book of inter-connected stories about this group of teens who are growing up in Brooklyn. Their individual first person voices are at once innocent and jaded, funny and incredibly heartbreaking. First-timer author Frank is also a social worker, and does she ever prove how well she knows her stuff. Gingerbread is in love with Keisha, who doesn’t mind that her hilarious and loving boyfriend has to control his manic personality with Ritalin. Eric is determined to keep a hold of his little brother Mickey, no matter how many foster homes they are moved to. Grace and Ebony, though worlds and skin colors apart, manage to have an awesome friendship in spite of Grace’s racist and alcoholic mom. And those guys are just a sample of the teens you’ll meet in these pages. Frank tackles almost every contemporary teen issue and put a new face and a fresh talking mouth on it. Which is a struggle for established YA authors, let alone a newbie. A guaranteed perfect read.
145th Street by Walter Dean Myers
These ten stories are about what life is like in the Harlem neighborhood of 145th Street. You got quiet Monkeyman, who’s still waters run deep the day he decides he won’t be intimidated by gang warfare no more. There’s Kitty, who won’t let Mack give up on their love and Big Joe, who wants to enjoy his funeral NOW instead of after he’s dead. There’s drive-bys and beatings and unexpected death, but also tons of friendship, humor and laughter. An excellent introduction to Myers writing, if you haven’t read him before. And if you haven’t, shame on you! His novel Monster won the first ever 2000 Printz award, for outstanding YA lit!
Bucking the Sarge by Christopher Paul Curtis
Fifteen Luther Farrell wants a lot of things: to win the state wide science fair, to ask out Shayla Patrick, the secret love of his life, to save up enough money that he can someday blow out of the depressed factory town of Flint, Michigan and never look back. There’s only one thing standing in the way of all these dreams. Luther’s tight-fisted, tough-talking mother, the Sarge. The Sarge needs Luther too much to let him waste his time with a girlfriend or leave her after graduation. Otherwise, who will help her run her evil empire of illegal housing projects and shady half way houses? But when Luther learns that the Sarge never intended to give him the money she claimed to be saving for his college education, he hatches an ingenious plan to hit her where it will hurt her most–in the wallet. At turns funny and achingly sad, this is Christopher Paul Curtis’s most edgy novel to date. Taking a risk with both audience and fan base, the author dared to take the image of the self-sacrificing single African American mother and literally turn it on its head, with great success. Fans of former CPC novels be warned, this is no Watsons Go to Birmingham. So don’t go reading it aloud to your little brother or sister!
America by E.R. Frank
America started out in this world with a lotta strikes against him. Born to a drug-addicted mother and shuffled through foster home after foster home, America has been molested, abandoned and broken too many times to count. Now, after a botched suicide attempt, he has ended up in the office of Dr. B, a caring psychiatrist who has decided to help America no matter what, despite his potty mouth and huge attitude. Rock-star YA author Frank (who is my all-time fav., check out my rave for her first book on the Short Cuts list) avoids the notorious sophomore slump and scores another hit record with her awesome follow-up to Life is Funny. America is a smart, scared teen whose heart of gold can be glimpsed periodically under his nasty exterior. And Frank can write in both a convincing kid and teen voice. My favorite part of this book is when America is forced to go and visit his crack-head mom and she leaves him and his two half brothers (all under the age of eight) alone for days and America, in a confused, little boy way, keeps writing his foster mom’s phone number over and over on any surface he can reach, because he doesn’t want to forget it since there’s no working phone in the apartment. Both heartbreaking and amazing, America is so moving that Rosie O’Donnell has already bought the film rights. Which means America could be coming soon to a theatre near YOU! Keep your peepers peeled for it!
Monster by Walter Dean Myers
Steve Harmon is on trial for a crime he may or may not have committed. And by using a unique viewpoint, W.D. Myers turns you, the reader, into Steve’s judge and jury. By telling Steve’s story in alternating chapters of his personal journal entries and a transcript of the trial proceedings, you are presented with all the evidence of the supposed crime and allowed to come to your own conclusions by novel’s end. Did Steve act a lookout in a convenience store robbing and murder, or was he just an unsuspecting witness who happened to be at the crime scene? Will Steve’s dream of becoming a screenwriter be fulfilled, or will he spend the most important years of his life behind bars? Well? What do YOU think?
Little X: Growing up in the Nation of Islam by Sonsyrea Tate
In the 1970’s, Sonsyrea Tate was a member of a family that belonged to the Nation of Islam. She didn’t go to public school, but instead attended a private Muslim school where her subjects included Arabic, history according to the Honorable Elijah Mohammed, the Nation’s Leader, and black pride. She liked how the Nation gave her and her family a sense of identity and worth as a people. But as she grew older, Sonsyrea grew dissatisfied with the Nation. She hated the way the women were forced to be subservient and wear restrictive clothing. She felt that her parents were hypocrites who disobeyed the Nation’s rules against drugs by smoking pot. Her eyewitness account of the corruption that went on behind the scenes of the Black Muslim movement caused her to make a permanent break with the Nation when she became a young adult. The feelings expressed in Sonsyrea’s story will probably remind you of feelings of disillusionment that you may have had about your parents or the religion you were brought up in. An absorbing first hand account of the Nation of Islam from the inside-out.
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Before all the Oprah hoopla and the big movie whoop-de-doo, I read this book for a creative writing class in college, and we were supposed to study Morrison’s intricate pattern of structure and characterization. Forget that! I was so wow-ed by the power and lyricism of the story that I finished the book long before anyone else and walked around in a stupor for days afterward. Beloved is the story of a female ex-slave, Sethe, who mourns the fact that she murdered her child in order to save the baby from a life of slavery. In fact, she mourns so much that her grief becomes manifest into a body of a young woman named Beloved–a ghost the same age that Sethe’s dead baby would have been had she lived. With powerful storytelling skills and flashbacks that are woven better than in Pulp Fiction, Morrison brings home the meaning of love, hope and pain all gift-wrapped in this little book.
Caucasia by Danzy Senna
Birdie is torn between her two parents–one black, one white, as she grows up in the racial war-zone of 1970’s Boston. Her pain deepens when she realizes that her parents, who can no longer get along, intend to separate her from her beloved sister. Her black father is taking her sister to live with him in Brazil while Birdie and her white mother, who is on the run for some of the political crimes she has committed, are leaving Boston to travel around the county, hiding from the authorities. While I have not personally had the experience of being biracial, Senna really made me feel the confusion, ambiguity and even guilt Birdie felt in denying one side of her heritage and “passing” as white with her mother. Senna herself is a biracial child, and her novel has a very autobiographical feel to it. Read it along with James McBride’s autobiography, The Color of Water
A Hero Ain’t Nothin’ but a Sandwich by Alice Childress
Benjie likes to do a little heroin, but it’s no big deal, he can stop anytime. He’s not a junkie, he’s not a stoner. But if you listen to the voices of those around him–his long-suffering mother, the grandmother from who’s purse he steals, his old best friend, even his drug dealer, you’ll see that they all agree–Benjie is hooked. Benjie may think he can save himself, but he’s really going to need all the help he can get from his family and friends if he wants to dump the junk before it dumps him. A thin book that makes you think.