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A review by kierscrivener
The Black Kids by Christina Hammonds Reed
2.0
I think this could have been an incredible novel with a few more drafts, it tells a lot of different important stories, but with Reed's writing still developing it was not executed the best.
I love when a novel that tackles a variety of issues but The Black Kids seemed to lack a clear idea of what the main focus or focuses was, it is kinda all over the place and there's a lot of extraneous scenes that don't add to the overall narrative. This was mostly in the school/Michael plot. It is clear from the moment that they are together in the first scene that they slept together but it is dragged on as Ash doesn't even admit it to the reader until the last third. So everything she thinks about whether she is a bad person I am frustrated with the superficially of it, because we all have figured it out but instead of working through it, it is a big mystery. And this probably qualifies as a spoiler but it doesn't matter. We have the prom confrontation and Michael NEVER even appears again and Kimberley appears in one scene. What even was the point? I get wanting to make Ash not a 'perfect good kid' protagonist but then I would have placed it as already happened and her figuring out how to go to school with those 'who she was a girl with but won't be a woman with' like the incredible When You Were Everything by Ashley Woodfolk, and that would have kept the whole beginning being taken up by school drama that didn't matter.
One of the main issues is that the promises made in the beginning aren't kept. Because yes Ash does find more about her family and start to embrace her racial identity but her relationships aren't fully fleshed out as they are jammed in the last third and we have all surface level connections with only a few scenes each and her family stuff never gets enough attention to feel fully attached to it, I care because the racism, and the family discord are objectively bad and I care because mental health and hiding behind the sheen of perfection is something that is too true but I don't care because of the characters. And as for the riots, we never see them. It only ever feels like a sub-sub plot, there is more conversation about her hating Jo then actually with Jo. I wanted to see her actually exploring these things, working through something more than prom and even when we do it is summarized tears, but not dwelled, instead it on to the next thing. We are never allowed to process with Ashley, we are just told how Ash felt.
On a more superficial level, especially in the beginning, Reed relied heavily on 90s pop references and an oddly huge amount of comments about the body and sweat and pimples and such. It felt like it was trying hard to capture teen speak but it just felt like it was trying too hard to be edgy and gritty and ending up immature/superficial. It also had a fair amount of shaming in this that made Ash come off not the best, she overly describes people physically so that the 'sex scene' is the least descriptive scene in the novel. And even in the aftermath, when she is talking about protecting Kimberley of giving too much to Michael 'who doesn't know how to feel up a girl's boob properly' rather than about how devastated she will be that her first time was with the guy that cheated on her a week before. How that would be a betrayal. It's things like this that make me frustrated, it seems as if being edgy is always prioritized over the heart.
Same with how Ash asks if Lana is bisexual and than this is never touched on again, or that Ash wanted her to like her. It was like we need a queer checkmark beside this. Maybe I am just jaded, but I don't need everything to be a long drawn out conversation but when you compare the mention of the AIDS crisis in The Vanishing Half that is only a passing mention and it the few sentences made me weep because it took to the heart of the feeling even if for a paragraph, or the casual mention of queerness in Dear Justyce and that 'they were getting use to two black guys loving each other' and about checking preconceived notions, it has a humanity to it even in a sentence. It shows flaws and representation, not just a checkmark, and I don't want to come off too harshly as this is her debut level and it might be part of that.
I really wanted to love this novel and it touches on so many important things to be discussed racism, riots, police brutality, incarceration, homophobia, AIDS, bullying, slut shaming, child abuse ans I hope to read more of Christina Hammonds Reed as this is her debut novel and I can see her heart and but until then here are some fantastic books that touch on similar issues. Dear Martin by Nic Stone, Dear Justyce by Nic Stone, The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett, For Black Girls Like Me by Mariama J. Lockington, Ghost Boys by Jewell Parker Rhodes
I love when a novel that tackles a variety of issues but The Black Kids seemed to lack a clear idea of what the main focus or focuses was, it is kinda all over the place and there's a lot of extraneous scenes that don't add to the overall narrative. This was mostly in the school/Michael plot. It is clear from the moment that they are together in the first scene that they slept together but it is dragged on as Ash doesn't even admit it to the reader until the last third. So everything she thinks about whether she is a bad person I am frustrated with the superficially of it, because we all have figured it out but instead of working through it, it is a big mystery. And this probably qualifies as a spoiler but it doesn't matter. We have the prom confrontation and Michael NEVER even appears again and Kimberley appears in one scene. What even was the point? I get wanting to make Ash not a 'perfect good kid' protagonist but then I would have placed it as already happened and her figuring out how to go to school with those 'who she was a girl with but won't be a woman with' like the incredible When You Were Everything by Ashley Woodfolk, and that would have kept the whole beginning being taken up by school drama that didn't matter.
One of the main issues is that the promises made in the beginning aren't kept. Because yes Ash does find more about her family and start to embrace her racial identity but her relationships aren't fully fleshed out as they are jammed in the last third and we have all surface level connections with only a few scenes each and her family stuff never gets enough attention to feel fully attached to it, I care because the racism, and the family discord are objectively bad and I care because mental health and hiding behind the sheen of perfection is something that is too true but I don't care because of the characters. And as for the riots, we never see them. It only ever feels like a sub-sub plot, there is more conversation about her hating Jo then actually with Jo. I wanted to see her actually exploring these things, working through something more than prom and even when we do it is summarized tears, but not dwelled, instead it on to the next thing. We are never allowed to process with Ashley, we are just told how Ash felt.
On a more superficial level, especially in the beginning, Reed relied heavily on 90s pop references and an oddly huge amount of comments about the body and sweat and pimples and such. It felt like it was trying hard to capture teen speak but it just felt like it was trying too hard to be edgy and gritty and ending up immature/superficial. It also had a fair amount of shaming in this that made Ash come off not the best, she overly describes people physically so that the 'sex scene' is the least descriptive scene in the novel. And even in the aftermath, when she is talking about protecting Kimberley of giving too much to Michael 'who doesn't know how to feel up a girl's boob properly' rather than about how devastated she will be that her first time was with the guy that cheated on her a week before. How that would be a betrayal. It's things like this that make me frustrated, it seems as if being edgy is always prioritized over the heart.
Same with how Ash asks if Lana is bisexual and than this is never touched on again, or that Ash wanted her to like her. It was like we need a queer checkmark beside this. Maybe I am just jaded, but I don't need everything to be a long drawn out conversation but when you compare the mention of the AIDS crisis in The Vanishing Half that is only a passing mention and it the few sentences made me weep because it took to the heart of the feeling even if for a paragraph, or the casual mention of queerness in Dear Justyce and that 'they were getting use to two black guys loving each other' and about checking preconceived notions, it has a humanity to it even in a sentence. It shows flaws and representation, not just a checkmark, and I don't want to come off too harshly as this is her debut level and it might be part of that.
I really wanted to love this novel and it touches on so many important things to be discussed racism, riots, police brutality, incarceration, homophobia, AIDS, bullying, slut shaming, child abuse ans I hope to read more of Christina Hammonds Reed as this is her debut novel and I can see her heart and but until then here are some fantastic books that touch on similar issues. Dear Martin by Nic Stone, Dear Justyce by Nic Stone, The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett, For Black Girls Like Me by Mariama J. Lockington, Ghost Boys by Jewell Parker Rhodes