You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
4.23 AVERAGE
4.23 AVERAGE
emotional
hopeful
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
*I'm reading all the 2022 FL Teen Reads. This is Book #8 out of 15 read. If you want to see a complete list altogether in one place in order of best to worst check my tag florida-teen-reads-2022 to see the star ratings*
In the author's note/acknowledgement at the end of the book, Randi Pink states this:
“Before, it was the story of a fictional place I’d tentatively referred to as My Wakanda. No superheroes or fields of magical flowers to swallow, no. Just a simple, self-sustaining Black community where two Black teens got to freely fall in love. That’s it. That’s the magical place I was trying to write.
They rode bikes up and down flower-lined streets. They shared ice cream at the parlor owned by their neighbor named Fred. They went to the same pediatrician, Dr. Watts, on the corner in the squatty brick building just of Main Street. They loved books and movies and plain white milk straight from the carton. It was to be a quiet book where not much happened outside of the two of them going on about the business of falling in love.
I never expected that book to be published since there was no real story. I didn’t care though. I wrote it for me, dreaming more than I was writing. (….) But one afternoon in my wonderful friend Claudia Pearson’s home, I met one of the best librarians in the world, Lisa Churchill. She asked me what I was working on, and I told her about the My Wakanda book. In response, she shared the story of Greenwood. My dreams had been an actual place, realized in the 1900s.(...)”
I wish she had put this at the front because then I would have known what I was in for. As she freely admits, this book was actually a fun, little romance that she tacked a major historical event onto after she'd been working on it for some time. I would have no problem with this if the stories were integrated well, but the mismatch of the two ideas shows immensely in the final product.
The pacing is where this is most clear. Every so often a chapter will begin with a heading that lets you know the date and how many days the chapter is occurring before the massacre. It starts 12 days before and then slowly drops a day as the story progresses. Suddenly, it's like Pink remembered that there needed to be time for the massacre so she skips 3 days out of nowhere. Day 10 was also skipped, but that's only one day compared to multiple. Still it doesn't help that she simply picks up where the previous day left off as if time wasn't passing in the interim. Out of 281 pages, the massacre totals around 60 in the end.
To add insult to injury, the romance that she purported to care so much about isn't even good. Isaiah is smitten with Angel after watching her dance which was fine at first. I can totally buy that he falls for her after seeing her in a new light. Teenagers can be fickle beasts. Plus, a person being good at something is attractive. But, then he starts saying he's in actual love with this girl which the narrative fully supports by having his mother, an adult woman who should know better, tell him that she can see he's in love despite the fact that - and I cannot stress this enough - Isaiah literally was not even an acquaintance of this girl yet.
He'd been picking on her since he was a kid to stay in the good graces of his miscreant best friend, Muggy. It doesn't go the route of reinforcing the toxic idea that picking on a girl means you like her, thankfully, but it's still somehow worse because now I'm supposed to assume his mother can just tell he's in love off of like vibes? I guess?
On Angel's side it makes even less sense seeing as, like I mentioned above, Isaiah has maliciously teased her for years. Not to mention the fact that it's not only her he's bullied. Though Muggy is the clear instigator, Isaiah is no better for accompanying and aiding his misdeeds. Yet, Angel's low opinion of him goes completely up in smoke after like a day of helping Mrs. Ferris with the bookmobile and reading a poem he wrote about her. A teenager choosing to pursue a relationship rife with red flags because they feel special being treated kindly by a person compared to the persons' treatment of everyone else is believable enough. Angel falling in love with Isaiah after literally 2 days half spent together is not.
Speaking of the bookmobile, unlike what it suggests in the synopsis the two do not grow closer together whilst cycling around town. The bookmobile takes days to fix up and in the end they only go on one trip before the massacre.
In fact the two barely spend any real time together bonding. All that talk Pink did about wanting the teens to eat ice cream and ride bikes down the street was for nought.
Most of their dialogue is heavy-handed soliloquy on the merits of W.E.B Dubois vs Booker T. Washington. The entire book is rooted in this conversation. Both characters spend countless pages opining internally on the fate of the Black race. It’s like they never thought about anything casual. Absolutely everything had a deeper significance in relation to racial issues. I consider myself a very well informed person. I am very aware of racial injustice - sometimes too much. I was exhausted reading this book.
Nonfiction is one thing. I expect and welcome an expansive exploration of a concept. In a fiction book I’m there largely for the story not education. I appreciate when an author wants to shed some light on a topic, but it needs to be balanced. The book often read like two puppets acting as mouthpieces for Pink’s random talking points rather than two characters having a nuanced discussion.
In fact most characters speak this way - in lofty double speak meant to sound sophisticated, but only comes off as trying too hard. It was so rare to have a straightforward dialogue. Even when there was it’d be ruined by Isaiah or Angel ruminating endlessly over it in the meantime.
The main plot thread throughout is an anticlimactic friendship break-up between Isaiah and Muggy, that for all of Muggy’s purported awfulness goes nowhere. A choice that is further undercut by the abrupt redemption Pink attempts to give him. He’s been nothing, but a mindless pawn of destruction this whole time yet suddenly he’s got all this depth that explains his malcontent? It’s the worst kind of redemption too;
The time after the massacre is also rushed. There is no time given to the fallout and there is absolutely no sense of what the community is going to do or has been doing in the intervening months as three months have been skipped. Angel is maybe a teacher? Isaiah is now a respected leader? What does this mean practically? Where do the people live? Are they rebuilding in Greenwood? Are people moving? What have people been doing for jobs or schooling? What about government response or aid? Or even local response by the white people? How about the death toll? None of this explained.
The book is written in a very detached, affected style. The romance is very underdeveloped. There isn’t enough attention given to the significant historical event. The little attention that it is given is rushed. There isn’t much action or suspense. You know the massacre is coming as there is a literal countdown at the beginning of various chapters, but there isn’t any spike in tension. It’s a meandering reflection on Black life in 1921 - I honestly don’t see many teenagers liking this.
I wouldn’t necessarily not recommend it. I actually didn’t dislike it - I just was not particularly wowed. The best advice I can give you is to go into it with your eyes wide open.
In the author's note/acknowledgement at the end of the book, Randi Pink states this:
“Before, it was the story of a fictional place I’d tentatively referred to as My Wakanda. No superheroes or fields of magical flowers to swallow, no. Just a simple, self-sustaining Black community where two Black teens got to freely fall in love. That’s it. That’s the magical place I was trying to write.
They rode bikes up and down flower-lined streets. They shared ice cream at the parlor owned by their neighbor named Fred. They went to the same pediatrician, Dr. Watts, on the corner in the squatty brick building just of Main Street. They loved books and movies and plain white milk straight from the carton. It was to be a quiet book where not much happened outside of the two of them going on about the business of falling in love.
I never expected that book to be published since there was no real story. I didn’t care though. I wrote it for me, dreaming more than I was writing. (….) But one afternoon in my wonderful friend Claudia Pearson’s home, I met one of the best librarians in the world, Lisa Churchill. She asked me what I was working on, and I told her about the My Wakanda book. In response, she shared the story of Greenwood. My dreams had been an actual place, realized in the 1900s.(...)”
I wish she had put this at the front because then I would have known what I was in for. As she freely admits, this book was actually a fun, little romance that she tacked a major historical event onto after she'd been working on it for some time. I would have no problem with this if the stories were integrated well, but the mismatch of the two ideas shows immensely in the final product.
The pacing is where this is most clear. Every so often a chapter will begin with a heading that lets you know the date and how many days the chapter is occurring before the massacre. It starts 12 days before and then slowly drops a day as the story progresses. Suddenly, it's like Pink remembered that there needed to be time for the massacre so she skips 3 days out of nowhere. Day 10 was also skipped, but that's only one day compared to multiple. Still it doesn't help that she simply picks up where the previous day left off as if time wasn't passing in the interim. Out of 281 pages, the massacre totals around 60 in the end.
To add insult to injury, the romance that she purported to care so much about isn't even good. Isaiah is smitten with Angel after watching her dance which was fine at first. I can totally buy that he falls for her after seeing her in a new light. Teenagers can be fickle beasts. Plus, a person being good at something is attractive. But, then he starts saying he's in actual love with this girl which the narrative fully supports by having his mother, an adult woman who should know better, tell him that she can see he's in love despite the fact that - and I cannot stress this enough - Isaiah literally was not even an acquaintance of this girl yet.
He'd been picking on her since he was a kid to stay in the good graces of his miscreant best friend, Muggy. It doesn't go the route of reinforcing the toxic idea that picking on a girl means you like her, thankfully, but it's still somehow worse because now I'm supposed to assume his mother can just tell he's in love off of like vibes? I guess?
On Angel's side it makes even less sense seeing as, like I mentioned above, Isaiah has maliciously teased her for years. Not to mention the fact that it's not only her he's bullied. Though Muggy is the clear instigator, Isaiah is no better for accompanying and aiding his misdeeds. Yet, Angel's low opinion of him goes completely up in smoke after like a day of helping Mrs. Ferris with the bookmobile and reading a poem he wrote about her. A teenager choosing to pursue a relationship rife with red flags because they feel special being treated kindly by a person compared to the persons' treatment of everyone else is believable enough. Angel falling in love with Isaiah after literally 2 days half spent together is not.
Speaking of the bookmobile, unlike what it suggests in the synopsis the two do not grow closer together whilst cycling around town. The bookmobile takes days to fix up and in the end they only go on one trip before the massacre.
In fact the two barely spend any real time together bonding. All that talk Pink did about wanting the teens to eat ice cream and ride bikes down the street was for nought.
Most of their dialogue is heavy-handed soliloquy on the merits of W.E.B Dubois vs Booker T. Washington. The entire book is rooted in this conversation. Both characters spend countless pages opining internally on the fate of the Black race. It’s like they never thought about anything casual. Absolutely everything had a deeper significance in relation to racial issues. I consider myself a very well informed person. I am very aware of racial injustice - sometimes too much. I was exhausted reading this book.
Nonfiction is one thing. I expect and welcome an expansive exploration of a concept. In a fiction book I’m there largely for the story not education. I appreciate when an author wants to shed some light on a topic, but it needs to be balanced. The book often read like two puppets acting as mouthpieces for Pink’s random talking points rather than two characters having a nuanced discussion.
In fact most characters speak this way - in lofty double speak meant to sound sophisticated, but only comes off as trying too hard. It was so rare to have a straightforward dialogue. Even when there was it’d be ruined by Isaiah or Angel ruminating endlessly over it in the meantime.
The main plot thread throughout is an anticlimactic friendship break-up between Isaiah and Muggy, that for all of Muggy’s purported awfulness goes nowhere. A choice that is further undercut by the abrupt redemption Pink attempts to give him. He’s been nothing, but a mindless pawn of destruction this whole time yet suddenly he’s got all this depth that explains his malcontent? It’s the worst kind of redemption too;
Spoiler
the kind where a character dies for a cause so we’re now supposed to handwave away years of hatefulness. The real testament to a true character turn is sustained change over time. In the words of Hamilton the musical: dying is easy, living is harder.The time after the massacre is also rushed. There is no time given to the fallout and there is absolutely no sense of what the community is going to do or has been doing in the intervening months as three months have been skipped. Angel is maybe a teacher? Isaiah is now a respected leader? What does this mean practically? Where do the people live? Are they rebuilding in Greenwood? Are people moving? What have people been doing for jobs or schooling? What about government response or aid? Or even local response by the white people? How about the death toll? None of this explained.
The book is written in a very detached, affected style. The romance is very underdeveloped. There isn’t enough attention given to the significant historical event. The little attention that it is given is rushed. There isn’t much action or suspense. You know the massacre is coming as there is a literal countdown at the beginning of various chapters, but there isn’t any spike in tension. It’s a meandering reflection on Black life in 1921 - I honestly don’t see many teenagers liking this.
I wouldn’t necessarily not recommend it. I actually didn’t dislike it - I just was not particularly wowed. The best advice I can give you is to go into it with your eyes wide open.
dark
emotional
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism, Violence, Fire/Fire injury
Moderate: Bullying, Death, Terminal illness, Grief, Death of parent, Murder, Toxic friendship, Injury/Injury detail
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
3.5/5
Wow, this book was something. I loved Isaiah and Angel, and how they had different views on the world. the climax was so chaotic and intense. I never knew something like this had ever happened and I'm surprised it isn't talked about more.
Wow, this book was something. I loved Isaiah and Angel, and how they had different views on the world. the climax was so chaotic and intense. I never knew something like this had ever happened and I'm surprised it isn't talked about more.
Such a four-and-a-half!
Slow to build but heart piercing from then on. Exceptional.
Slow to build but heart piercing from then on. Exceptional.
challenging
dark
emotional
inspiring
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
emotional
hopeful
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:
Complicated
emotional
informative
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated