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emergencily 's review for:
Scarborough
by Catherine Hernandez
set in the neighbourhood of scarborough (formerly its own city, later absorbed into toronto's all-consuming orbit - welcome to the greater toronto area!), which has a higher concentration of low-income, culturally diverse residents, and is a severely underfunded municipality with crumbling infrastructure.
there's a big, interconnected cast of characters that flit in and out of the story, with each chapter told from a different character's POV. some reoccuring characters have a bigger part to play than others, such as bing, a young gay filipino boy bullied for his fatness and queerness; sylvie, a young native girl with a talent for storytelling; and laura, a little girl abandoned by her mother and being raised by her ex-skinhead father; and miss hina, the facilitator of the local children's reading program who grapples with racism and islamophobia as she struggles to make the centre's thin resources serve the vulnerable families who frequent the program.
i think some parts of this book felt kind of underdeveloped. the book would have been a lot stronger if it stuck to focusing on a smaller, core cast of characters. POV chapters on pretty irrelevant throwaway characters (e.g. the stuck up rich white girl) who have very little to offer narratively or emotionally didn't do much to serve the story, nor did it do justice to some of the serious and major issues raised in these short chapters (e.g. victor, a young black artist who deals with racial profiling and police violence, appears for one chapter and then just disappears). i also felt that the chapters from kory's POV (the ex-skinhead white father of laura) were a major weak point. there is a potentially interesting story to be told there, but he ultimately comes off as a silly caricature with no real depth and nothing interesting is said there.
i see a lot of potential in this book and this author though, and i still enjoyed the book. i think that laura and bing's stories were especially well-done and extremely moving. i felt my heart drop and tears in my eyes when i realized that laura died and that her spirit was visiting the different people in her life . i appreciated the author's commitment to giving voice to the children in this narrative and focusing on their unique experiences and perceptions, and i also liked that the kids had such distinct voices - e,g, laura's was much more childish to reflect her young age, bing's was very eloquent to reflect his intelligence. the final chapter where bing performs on stage and is loud and proud of his queerness, with the support and acceptance of his mother, moved me so much.
there's a big, interconnected cast of characters that flit in and out of the story, with each chapter told from a different character's POV. some reoccuring characters have a bigger part to play than others, such as bing, a young gay filipino boy bullied for his fatness and queerness; sylvie, a young native girl with a talent for storytelling; and laura, a little girl abandoned by her mother and being raised by her ex-skinhead father; and miss hina, the facilitator of the local children's reading program who grapples with racism and islamophobia as she struggles to make the centre's thin resources serve the vulnerable families who frequent the program.
i think some parts of this book felt kind of underdeveloped. the book would have been a lot stronger if it stuck to focusing on a smaller, core cast of characters. POV chapters on pretty irrelevant throwaway characters (e.g. the stuck up rich white girl) who have very little to offer narratively or emotionally didn't do much to serve the story, nor did it do justice to some of the serious and major issues raised in these short chapters (e.g. victor, a young black artist who deals with racial profiling and police violence, appears for one chapter and then just disappears). i also felt that the chapters from kory's POV (the ex-skinhead white father of laura) were a major weak point. there is a potentially interesting story to be told there, but he ultimately comes off as a silly caricature with no real depth and nothing interesting is said there.
i see a lot of potential in this book and this author though, and i still enjoyed the book. i think that laura and bing's stories were especially well-done and extremely moving. i felt my heart drop and tears in my eyes when