Reviews with content warning for Racism - Whats Mine And Yours

Reviews tagging 'Racism'

Whats Mine And Yours by Naima Coster

42 reviews

serendipitysbooks's review against another edition

4.0

emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I’ve found it very difficult to review What’s Mine and Yours because a couple of things outside of the book really impacted my reading experience. The first is the flap copy and marketing which led me to believe the book focussed on one thing, when in reality that thing is only a very small part of the actual plot. My advice is to ignore the synopsis and go in blind. I ended up feeling disappointed because I was really looking forward to reading what I’d been led to believe the book was about. The second factor impacting my reading experience is that I had the really unnerving feeling that I’d read sections of this book before. They just felt so familiar to me and I’ve no idea why since it is a new release. But it kept distracting me - were parts of this book really similar to something I had read and if so what? Or was I hallucinating? I’m still none the wiser.

The book itself focusses on two families whose lives intersect at one point. Noelle and her two sisters live with their white mother Lacey May. Their Colombian father is in prison and their mother remarries, chiefly for financial security. Gee is Black. His father was in the wrong place at the wrong time and was shot and killed when Gee was six. His mother constantly pushes and wants more for him. The book switches between the two families and back and forwards in time. It obviously has lots to say about race and about parenting. There are some great individual moments but as a whole this book didn’t entirely come together for me. How much of that is the book, how much of it is the factors above, and how much is down to me I simply can’t say.

Content Warnings

katsbooks's review against another edition

4.0

challenging emotional reflective slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

“She hadn’t needed lectures or coddling; most girls didn’t. The needed choices.”

“She was an ignorant woman, dangerous. Another woman’s child was laid up in the hospital, and all that she could see was the imagined threat to her own.”

“It was too easy for people to see their interests and disinterests as pure, functions of their desires and personalities.”

“Maybe this was another way that she was white: the ease with which she could ignore calamity, focus mainly on what she wanted.”

“She wanted Gee to know this music was for him, that irreverence and rage weren’t just for white boys."

“Go to your bosom; Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know.”

I must be getting old because this is one of those books that I would never been able to enjoy five years ago. It is so realistic. The characters feel raw and real. They're lovable, yet utterly fallible. I felt like I was reading a memoir; that's how realistic it was. Following that vein, it also meant that there wasn't necessarily a big reveal or climax per se. I was honestly stunned when I turned the final page because I felt like it could just keep going and going. I think the reason this book was really compelling to me is because it explores so many of the subtle nuances of racism, even when it's internalized. It wasn't portrayed as this character fault that is eventually triumphed over. I could see pieces of the Ventura girls, and especially Lacey May in so many of my own relatives. This is the type of book that could be read in a classroom. There are so many layers.

Content Warnings

just_one_more_paige's review against another edition

4.0

challenging emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I think I mentioned this in an earlier post, How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House, but I have managed to snag a couple pretty sweet ARC copies now that I work at the library…and this is one of them! It totally caught my eye after seeing @irisbooklist talking about it and I was hype to get my hands on it.

This is one of those novels that it’s kind of hard to give a summary of, but I’ll try. Although it jumps in time, to help give us context for the characters, the primary conflict is within a central NC community that is dealing with a sort of school-rezoning. Essentially, Black students from one side of town and being integrated into a primarily white high school on the other side of town. On one side, Jade is fighting to overcome a deep tragedy in the past and give her son, Gee, the very best possible life, knowing the challenges he’ll face as a young Black man in America. On the other side, Lacey Mae sees herself as defending the life she’s built for her daughters, refusing to acknowledge their half-Latina heritage. When Gee and Noelle, Lacey Mae’s oldest daughter, meet and start spending time together as part of a school production, their relationship flies in the face of their mothers’ wishes and hopes for them and sets up their turbulent and interconnected future.

WHOA. What a stunner. Like, in the sense that I am stunned after finishing this book. I am struggling to remember the last book I read with characters this…real. They were complicated and difficult and just so pure in their individual efforts and ugliness and motivations and I couldn’t get enough, and was also slightly overwhelmed by, how recognizable these characters were. Like seriously, I live in the exact area that this novel takes place (the references were all very euphemistic, but I live in the Piedmont of North Carolina and let me tell you, I could see through a number of them…always kinda cool to read about your real life in fiction). Anyways, not just that, but having lived and taught her for going on 10 years, and having married into an NC family for a similar length of time, there were quite a few comments and observations about attitudes and reactions that were real not just in that they were written so authentically, but real as in I have personally lived/seen them. And it was amazing. So well done. But also, really intense to read sometimes because of it.

Getting a little more specific, just for a bit. I know that description of this novel makes it seem like the full focus is on school district changes and a battle over that and, in part it is. That is the sort of central linchpin event that redefines many of the characters relationships with each other. However, the story is told across time in with focus on different people, to really give that one defining moment the depth and meaning it needs to make it so powerful. The book opens with the tragic event that leaves Jade and Gee with just each other. And from there we jump forward and back in time to Noelle’s (and her sisters’) adult lives (their relationships, successes and failures), Lacey Mae’s “origin story” – husband who left her and the husband she chose for stability, and the school events that bring Noelle and Gee together. There’s a bit of a character twist that I guessed pretty early on, but that still held weight when the truth came out, because by then I was so invested in the characters and their development that the more “click into place” than “full on surprise” and felt more right anyways. Overall, fantastically paced and gorgeously brought together.

To close out my review, it’s absolutely necessary to highlight the insidious affects of racism on these characters and this story. At times more obvious and at times more subtle, Coster demonstrated with absolute skill the way nothing, from societal structure to interpersonal relationship, is free from the shadow of racism. Addressing everything from passing young love to internal identity to parenting (oh, the “parents doing the best they can” over and over was a focal and devastating theme), the nuanced legacy of racism for each and every person and community in these pages, connecting and undergirding the entire novel, is something truly special.

“She hadn’t needed lectures or coddling; most girls didn’t. The needed choices.”

“She was an ignorant woman, dangerous. Another woman’s child was laid up in the hospital, and all that she could see was the imagined threat to her own.”

“They’d be decent in some ways; they’d astonish her with how they seemed to keep up with the news, the shifting language around identity and race. […] But they’d be incensed, too, at the encroachments they saw on their world – the stars cast in movies franchises they had formerly adored, the people who had the nerve to go to marches and complain and vote in elections. They would guard everything they had, however little, as if their lives were prizes they’d rightly won that others had no right to claim. They’d never admit how willingly they’d played their parts.”

“It was too easy for people to see their interests and disinterests as pure, functions of their desires and personalities.”

“Maybe this was another way that she was white: the ease with which she could ignore calamity, focus mainly on what she wanted.”

“‘You know, they say that’s what gives life meaning. The fact that we’re all going to die.’ he said. ‘I don’t believe that at all. I don’t need death to remind me how good life it. If I had an infinite amount of life, I’d be happy to go on living. Look at all this.”

Content Warnings

bookmaddie's review against another edition

4.0

challenging dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I felt really close to this story, since it took place where I grew up. The setting, characters—it all felt so familiar, Coster captures it perfectly.

The beginning of this story is heartbreaking. It really hit me, and provided necessary context for the rest of the story, which weaves back and forth in time and between characters. While this structure was a bit confusing at times, Coster did a great job of making each section count. Sometimes a character is only followed for short periods, yet you really get to know each person deeply. Each personality radiated across the page, and it was really fascinating to see how individual decisions impacted their lives across time (and across families).

This story centers around the integration of a high school in North Carolina in the early 2000s, so there is a heavy focus on racism and classism. Even when people deny that their actions are fueled by racism (lmao this rlly reminded me of conversations I've had at home w family), Coster makes it crystal clear how racism is fuels people's actions and words. Reading about Gee and his friends trying to fit in at a (previously) all-white high school was really powerful and affecting.

What I found most unexpected was the beautiful focus on family and finding your own path in life. Because this story covers such a long period of time, you are able to zoom out and realize the circular nature that life can take at times.

Even though I felt really close to this story, it hasn't stuck with me the way I thought it might. I think it's a really impactful read and would encourage anyone to give it a read!

Content Warnings

whimsylindsey's review against another edition

3.5

challenging dark sad tense slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

whatskatiereading's review against another edition

4.0

emotional medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

Content Warnings

panickat123's review against another edition

3.5

challenging emotional informative reflective medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

mmmergz's review against another edition

3.5

emotional reflective sad

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Pretty sad from start to finish!

by the time I figured out Nelson was probably Gee I was really wishing he wasn’t. I don’t feel like I’ve ready many books where the sweetest character progressively gets worse.</spolier>

Content Warnings