Last Blog

Yep, school years ending so this is the last blog we've been assigned in class.

*Sigh*

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas (Review)

Date Finished: May 11, 2018

Page Count: 444

Genre: Realistic Fiction 

            Surprise, surprise, I was pleasantly surprised with this book. I must admit, I was a bit unsure about the content of this book and the only reason I picked it up was because my English teacher recommended it, but dang, was this ever good! In a sense it didn’t feel like realistic fiction but rather fiction set in our world. I know that’s the definition of realistic fiction but trust me, it’s something else as I’ve never described a realistic fiction book that way before now have I?

            Before diving into the review, yes this is still going to be short (at least I hope so, last time I said that it was still over one thousand words) as I’m in the home stretch right now and still have tons of projects dumped onto me. This is also not going to be as explicit as my normal reviews in case you were wondering. No, I will not tell you that Kai Sen dies in the very first sentence and make a big deal about it (but his death was a big deal in the book), I’ll just go over the big concepts I enjoyed and why so I can get this over with and go back to spending time doing homework (or with my mother if I can find where she is right now).

            First off, Chris was a godsend. I’ve been reading these things for a whole year and the only already established relationships so far have been married couples and minor characters. Giving the main character a boyfriend at first, and one she not 1000% happy with is great, and I wish more authors would do that. Watching Starr and Chris interact was just wonderful, and I hate to admit it, some of my favorite parts in the book. The romance wasn’t a big portion of the plot nor a small portion; it was just the right amount you’d expect in a book centered around a sixteen-year-old and contributed to the story in all the right ways. Thank you Thomas for giving me a Chris in my life (the world needs more like him).

            In addition, Starr had a strong, clear, colorful voice. You could get a strong sense of her character from reading the story and it was consistent, changing in the right situations around the right people. As for my opinion on her voice, yeah I don’t like it when people cuss (its trite and often makes people seem like their vocabulary is severely limited), but other than that it was very entertaining and a joy to read. It even felt like the diction a sixteen-year-old black girl would make in this decade, full of sass and passion. Part of the reason I like the book so much just has to do with the energetic and lively diction that helped to give this book some feeling.

            The final thing I’ll mention here is the world building. See I was expecting the character to be bland, the plot mediocre, the world super predictable and not worth caring about. Surprise, surprise, the plot takes some time for things to heat up with the disagreement on the results of the court case and stuff, but man, was there a whole lot of world building that happened in all that time. See, Thomas would drop these little pieces of information as the story progressed that didn’t make sense but as more piece were dropped the puzzle started to make sense. You learn about how Starr’s family functions, how her neighborhood functions, how her school functions, how her friends functions, how her family functions, and how the universe functions. Okay, that last one is a joke, but it may as well be true. Thomas does such a good job of explain Starr’s world down to the electrons, protons and neutrons that I couldn’t help but fall in love with it all. It didn’t help that she would bring things up at just the right time so that the story wasn’t conflicted nor did Starr’s character get compromised. The world building was what won me over essentially, just fabulous, fabulous, fabulous. I’m just amazed at all the world building was done in just 444 pages without being straight up exposition, high level stuff Thomas.

            And there you have it, a clean review that goes over everything I enjoyed about the book in less than a thousand words. You should totally go read the book by the way; it has great characters, great relationships, and great world building. I also loved the themes of community and identity which are highly prominent in the book and make it deep and a real rollercoaster for the emotions. Forgive me for thinking this book was going to be garbage if you read my last review as this book is far from garbage. It’s well thought out, has deep messages, strong characters and knows exactly what it’s going (not wants, going) to do on this earth. A book that has a goal is one of the best books you can find so if that doesn’t make you want to read it, then you must not be in high school or not like realistic fiction or even not like how some people act as though there are problems in the world pertaining to racisms and stuff (people are like that, sometimes I’m like that). If so then don’t read the book but everyone else go for it! Peace out y’all and happy mother’s day mothers!

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie (Review)

Date Finished: May 8, 2018

Page Count: 230

Genre: Realistic Fiction 

            This book is relatable. This book is funny. This book is honest (from what I can tell). This book has got to be one of my favorites that I’ve read this entire school year. It has a great message with a great story and great literature devices and I’ll be *insert appropriate cuss word* if I can think of anything negative to say about it.

            Before I begin the review however, just know my English teacher (that may be you if you’re reading this) gave us a choice in some allegories to read and I chose Dante’s Inferno, which is one heck of a complicated book. There are also other assignments, exams coming up, theater related stuff (still salty with my theater teacher right now) I need to do/prepare for, and yeah, this review is going to have to be short sadly. On the bright side, my thoughts about this are pretty simple surprisingly.

            So in a nutshell, this book is a glance in the life of Arnold Spirit Junior as a high school freshman when he decides to go to an all-white school (being an Indian on a reservation with a colorful medical history). Automatically you can see that this book takes up the mantel of “the struggle of being a minority” which I actually try to stray from for some reason. Maybe I feel like they content will be too jarring with its stereotypes and the main character’s struggle (or whoever) will be unbelievable or offensive in some manner. This is a rather touchy subject for me as I’m a minority in a class full of the majority and constantly feel like I need to prove something to my classmates. I kid you not, I walk into my class with the mindset that I’m going to war and have to represent all the black people in my school since I’m one of the few (like less than ten) black people in pre-AP/AP/any type of advanced classes in my school. So depressing.

            Any who, I already had an established connection to the main character that gave me some reason to like him, but what I really like about Jr. was the fact that he had drive. People with drive are my kind of people, and 90% of the time I meet someone without drive I have it in my mind that they’re a waste of resources and would be better off not existing. Yeah I know it’s harsh, but overpopulation is a problem and I can’t stand it when people who don’t try complain. So before I go on a tangent that comes back to haunt me if I try to run for any political office, I found Jr. a great respectable character as he came from humble origins, wanted to do something big with his life, and was willing to take the steps to make that happen. Even if that meant leaving the reservation. Even if that meant seeming like a traitor to his people. Even if it meant losing his best friend. That is some serious drive guys.

            Jr. even was a better person than me as he wasn’t bent on proving his worth to the white kids a Reardan (the school he went to). He was relaxed, had his faults, and failed at lots of things, and wasn’t about to let things stop him from getting a good education. Did things come close to stopping him? Heck yeah. At one point his grandma died (a hilarious chapter by the way, not the fact that someone died but the way he handled the subject was humorous) and his dad’s best friend too. He became (slightly) depressed thanks to that, but it’d didn’t stop him from going to school. After that, his older sister died too, (she eloped early on in the book by the way) and although that was another strong blow to him it didn’t stop Jr. from working hard. Needless to say, Jr. wasn’t a quitter and I loved that about his character, super inspiring and nice to know that other minorities struggle in life as fight uphill know as tradition and expectations.

            Other cool things I liked about the book include:

·         Drawings Jr. was a budding artist and he included lots of pictures to go along with the text (also another reason I can relate to him).

·         Pacing The story as well paced and featured the right amount of time in Jr.’s life instead of rambling or focusing on pointless chapters that didn’t develop his character.

·         Diction Such lovely, casual, teenager diction. You shouldn’t expect anything less from someone of Jr.’s character and it’s nice that Alexie could keep with the times on this.

·         Struggles Yes, Jr. struggled with lots of things from the excess amount of cerebral spinal fluid in his brain, to his acromegaly later on in life, to his trouble keeping up with all the fancy “rich” kids at Reardan, and all sorts of things. Character in poverty appear in books pretty often, but if you ask me it can be hard to find a book where the economic situation of a character is written as well as it is here.

·         Rowdy The best friend of Jr. for a brief point in the book, I must say I loved the way Jr. and his relationship progressed through the book. They were the best of friends, they were the worst of enemies, and when they made up at the end of the book it wasn’t too much feels to be unrealistic or rushed too quickly to be unbelievable. While things may not be 100% patched up between them, I loved reading about the evolution of their relationship as it gives me comfort to see two friends not agree on everything and be forced to go through some challenging times. I wish some of my friendships were as durable as this (or maybe they are and I’m just unaware of this).

There you have it folks, nothing but good stuff to say about this book. I don’t know if you can feel the soullessness of this review (I can kinda sense it since I didn’t explain things too much), but I do apologize for that again, these next few weeks of school are going to be tough (they’re the last few weeks of school, they’re always a challenge). I recommend this book to all people middle school and up, as it will give them a good laugh here and there, has cool pictures (who doesn’t love pictures?), and give some deep insight to the life of a minority that struggles to get some quality education when he faces discrimination. Having experience this myself, I resonate strongly with the content of the book and find its message of perseverance and taking the high road to be quite touching. With the way America is screaming for people to embrace their diversities while at the same time creating clear boundaries for different communities it can be rather hard for people in my generation to feel like they belong to anything. I find it hard belonging to the African American community even though both my parents are clearly black, as I’m more of a golden-brown and I don’t act black or dress black if you know what I mean. I don’t want to “betray my people,” but at the same time I don’t necessarily want to associate with every aspect of “my people.” Funny thing is, there’s this one picture in the book that sums up my feeling about all this pretty well:

 

            All that aside, perhaps I’ll get to go into depth about my feelings over America’s black community in my next book review as I’m reading The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas. If you’ve heard anything about that book, then you know I’ll probably have a lot to say (and over 50 pages in already I already got some beef with the book). For real my dudes, read The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, it portrays a lively account of a freshman that struggles to find his identity and I feel that’s something we (Americans) could all use in this day. At the end of the day (book) one has to realize that while similarities group us together they also isolate us from others, and deep down there’s no reason for these boundaries as we’re all human and we shouldn’t divide ourselves this way. Such a wonderful message shouldn’t be conveyed to you just through my book review, go pick up a copy of the book and discover the masterpiece Alexie has created. Until next time!