Reviews tagging 'Death of parent'

Nigeria Jones by Ibi Zoboi

9 reviews

katie_helf96's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful inspiring sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

I give Zoboi credit for writing such a profoundly jackass of a dad that I was crying rage tears. He was just such a bulldozer over all the women in his life. As for race/racism, I understood where Nigeria is coming from, with her hate/mistrust of white people, especially with how she grew up in the movement and just knowing white people in general. I do think that the vast majority of white people are at least a little bit racist but there’s a sliding scale. Some white people are more racist than others, but a large amount of white people (especially younger ones) are trying to recognize and dismantle the inherent racism they were brought up with. Those people give me hope for the future. 

What I couldn’t stand was the misogyny/sexism from the dad. Friggin’ Keith. I did enjoy the ending though. It gave me some hope for Nigeria and her future/independence. This book needs more than just a couple paragraphs for a review. You could write a dissertation on the complexity of it. I didn’t even talk about Che/Chris. 

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tlaynejones's review

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challenging emotional hopeful reflective sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character

4.25


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achay91's review against another edition

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challenging emotional reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0


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lettuce_read's review against another edition

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4.0


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destinied's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful informative reflective sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0


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bujoxbooked's review against another edition

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emotional informative reflective tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Initial thoughts after finishing the book:

 
1) Baby girl really needed to go to therapy to have a safe place to be herself, talk about her mother's death and continuing to see her, and her life in the community
2) I expected a bigger reaction from Baba because she ran away with her stuff to Sage and KD's house and was just able to stay there for 3 weeks without issue? Like that makes no sense after the fight that he put up the whole time. I get that he was talking to his sister during that time, but still.
3) Baba sounded like such a horrible man from Nigeria's perspective and how he just kept sucking people into his society.
4) So if Nigeria's mom did not have Freedom because of her husband wanting an army of kids, she might have lived. Oooof I can't even imagine the resentment, but the author did not go down that path probably for good reason.
5)I like how the book ended with the 'next" generation after Nigeria (unsure how to spell her chosen name) taking over.

Overall, I'll go with 4 stars! After a while the book seemed to repeat the same thing over and over in regards to Nigeria's mom being a ghost, Nigeria's father being against her wanting to go to Philly Friends school.




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psistillreadyou's review against another edition

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challenging medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0


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bookcaptivated's review

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challenging emotional hopeful reflective sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0


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zombiezami's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional funny hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

4.5

In a lot of ways, I feel like this book was written for me. I notice a lot of similarities between myself and the protagonist. I thought the narrative had a lot of heart and the author did a good job of communicating Nigeria's internal struggle. 

One thing I didn't love was
the twist at the end with the protagonist's mother being dead the whole time

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