Midnight by Sister Souljah

Oh the buy 2 get 1 free table at Barnes & Noble...Oh how it gets me every time. Often I use it to get books I have been waiting to read for awhile, but sometimes I find books that I might never have come across otherwise. This was one of the later.

I read the back of the book and the setting was the setting of my childhood, the Brooklyn projects, and the time the story is set in was the years of my early teen years, as a matter of fact Midnight and I were born in the same year. While reading the exploits of 14 year old Midnight I was revisiting much of where my 14 year old self was at the same time. It was surreal, I could see the streets, hear the sounds. Sister Souljah had me back in 1985 NYC.

At times 43 year old me was thinking there was no way a 14 year old could be doing these things...then I remembered me at 14 almost 15. I was running around NYC by myself, riding the subway, hanging out in East New York, exploring Greenwich Village, going to Coney Island...

Midnight is way to tough and grown up for someone so young. But I knew boys like him and boys like those he tried to avoid back then. And it isn't so far fetched to think this was happening to any of them. When you are forced to grow up, you do. And so many young people in the projects are grown before they are of legal age.

This was a gritty read, a coming of age story unlike any I have ever read before. A young Muslim man comes to America with his pregnant mother from Sudan to escape danger there. He wants so badly to do what his father has taught him is right, to live by the tenants of his faith. He cares for him mother and once she is born his sister. He becomes the protector of his family at the tender age of 7 and by the time he is 14 almost 15 he is more man than any male in his neighborhood. He works, he loves, he protects, he struggles to do what is right in the face of danger and temptation. He does a couple of awful things to protect what is his, but he is really a very good human and it makes him an intriguing character.

This was my first Sister Douljah book but it won't be my last. If nothing else I need to know what happens to Midnight.

(Finished July 8, 2015)