A review by kimabill
The Reformatory by Tananarive Due

4.0

In this book (based on the real-life story of a relative of the author), 12-year-old Robert, a Black boy living in Jim Crow-era Florida, gets sent to the Reformatory after kicking a white teenager who was harassing his older sister Gloria. Not only does Robert have to deal with the incredibly sadistic and violent warden, but he is also confronted with the many ghosts that haunt the grounds of the Reformatory. The history of the school/prison is dark and violent so the ghosts are plentiful and angry. While Robert tries simply to survive, his sister Gloria is on the outside trying to figure out how to break him free. She faces her own cast of racist townspeople and is also helped by a cast of social justice advocates (many of whom are actual real-life people). This book is scary in so many ways- the ghosts are terrifying in a horror-movie kind of way, and Robert and Gloria’s circumstances are terrifying in a being-surrounded-by-racists kind of way. One of the most harrowing scenes is just Gloria and a relative driving down a street and realizing they have been spotted by a police officer. This is not an easy book to read but it is very gripping and propulsive and well-written. Since I knew it was based on a real-life person, I started googling the names of some of the ACLU lawyers and racial justice advocates in the book and reading their Wikipedia pages and it made me mad to see how little we learned about these kinds of things in school. There’s so many inspiring stories beyond MLK and Rosa Parks and we never learn any of them. What a missed opportunity.