Jason Reynolds does it yet again!! He uses words to paint a picture, a picture of a slice of life that is authentic and not meant to make you comfortable but is guaranteed to make you feel and think. While not in the gut wrenching, rip your heart to shreds arena of Long Way Down and All American Boys When I Was the Greatest is powerful in its own right.
Ali is a 15 year old boy living in Brooklyn with his mom Doris and his little sister Jazz. As he tells his story we meet his best friend (only real friend) Noodles and his brother Needles. Needles has Tourettes and we learn as the story unfolds about the way this diagnosis has changed his family.
Ali's dad isn't exactly absent but he isn't exactly present either. Doris and John love each other and love their children but choices have consequences and John hasn't typically made the best choices and it cost him his family, at least living with them. Doris works six days a week at two jobs to make enough to provide for them alone. She works a full time 9-5 day job and has a night job too. So often it is a neighbor babysitting the kids when they are younger and Ali looking after Jazz once he is old enough. But Doris has set her kids up to succeed in the face of difficulty, she has drilled good manners and high expectations into them.
Noodles home life is not that way. His mother works a sketchy job, often leaving at odd hours and being gone for the night or a couple of nights. As Ali notices, there is never juice or soda at Noodle's home. Their friendship develops as Doris begins to feed Noodles and Needles from time to time and to allow Noodles to spend time in her home with her kids.
When John is in jail Doris puts Ali together with a neighbor man who steps in to be a strong male role model, teaches Ali boxing and pays him to do chores.
The neighborhood is as much a character in this story as the people who inhabit it. As the years pass the people in the neighborhood have learned about Needles and his "syndrome" and are more tolerant or and comfortable with his verbal outburst and tics than Noodles is.
The conflict (it's a Jason Reynolds book, you had to know there would be conflict) comes when the boys get to go to a party they have no business being at and things don't go well. But that is really just the breaking point for Ali. Leading up to that moment he is learning the painful lesson his mother has been telling him he would learn when it happens, there will come a point when you have to say enough is enough and end or alter relationships that are not healthy.
But this is also a loving story, a story of family, the ones we are born into and the ones we create for ourselves. And it is a reminder that happy endings look different for everyone.
And sometimes people burn the chicken.
One of the best things that Reynolds does in his writing is to make his characters feel like developed people, people who could be sitting next to you on a bus or in a classroom while giving children/teens who are people of color characters who look like them.
(Finished March 1, 2019)
No comments:
Post a Comment