One of the Good Ones Book Review

 

Who gets to be “one of the good ones” and why?

Maika and Maritza Moulite’s sophomore novel explores this concept and adds a mysterious twist to it. One of the Good Ones follows sisters Happi and Genny in the aftermath of their sister’s (Kezi) mysterious death. Kezi, a teen activist and YouTuber, is arrested at a social justice protest and dies while in police custody. She is deemed “one of the good ones” by the media, but her family is left grieving. To honor Kezi, Happi and Genny embark on a road trip Kezi had planned before her death using an heirloom copy of The Negro Motorist Green Book. One of the Good Ones discusses a wide range of topics such as family and social injustice.

The novel opens three months after Kezi’s death. Happi and her family are attending a ceremony where Kezi was to accept an award for her activist work. As she is listening to the ceremony presenters, Happi reflects on the aftermath of her sister’s death and how the media has portrayed Kezi:

“She was mine before she was anyone else’s. All mine. Partly mine. Now she belongs to you and them and shirts and rallies and songs and documentaries. They say she has A Bright Future Ahead of Her and She Was a Star Whose Light Burned Out Too Soon. She Was Going to Make a Difference. That’s all true, but it is not the Truth. She was more than her future. She had a past. She was living her present…She was my sister before she became your martyr, after all” (Moulite 11).

This excerpt from the novel expresses its overarching commentary on who is worthy of remembrance by showing how Kezi has been deemed “one of the good ones.” In the above quotation Kezi has become a headline, a trend but to Happi she was her sister. Happi counteracts the sensationalism of Kezi’s death by presenting a headline of her own, which she calls “the Truth.” The truth is what does not get circulated around the news or social media and Happi is there to remind the reader of it. Happi reminds us how before her death Kezi’s story belonged to no one else but Kezi and those who loved her, to them she was a person. This beginning passage sets the tone for the rest of the novel, which explores who these three sisters are in relation to the “one of the good ones” concept and their family history.  

Authors Maika and Maritza Moulite do an excellent job of developing characters who are less than perfect. This is mainly depicted through Happi’s character arc. Happi is constantly juxtaposed with her sister Kezi. Kezi is studious and invested in her relationships with her family and family history; whereas Happi keeps her family at arm’s length, is more preoccupied with her peers, and self-involved. Kezi is positioned as the responsible one while Happi is the more rebellious one. The juxtaposition between Happi and Kezi exemplifies how society expects members of the Black community to be perfect in every way in order to be deemed worthy of remembrance. This is why characters like Happi need to come in abundance. Characters who learn how their actions affect those around them and once they realize such mistakes they are shown reflecting on their choices. Happi’s character arc depicts how easy it is to forget that those close to us are going through different experiences. Happi's arc also shows how there can be growth without changing the core self, an aspect which I loved. Happi was not perfect and that was the beauty of her character because she was depicted as living her Truth. 

One of the Good Ones presents multiple perspectives, some being Happi's, Kezi before her death, and various of their ancestors. The novel weaves the stories of these different family members through a physical item, The Negro Motorist Green Book. This guide was used by Black Americans during the segregation era to travel safely across the US, it catalogs places which welcomed Black folks. The novel traces the history of the copy in Happi and Kezi’s family through flashbacks of their ancestors. These show how the use of the Green Book changed throughout the generations, but also how despite the book being out of print the US is not a safe place for Black Americans. By doing this Maika and Maritza Moulite present us with the truth of this family and the importance of being connected with our family history because to know it is to understand something bigger than us. Using a physical object, tracing its history through the family, and creating a new narrative with it was absolutely brilliant. The story’s structure offers full immersion by showcasing family history and providing the reader with a larger scope of the story. This aspect of the novel took me by surprise since I was expecting the story to follow mainly the sisters, but instead it depicted the importance of being involved with your family and knowing who they were.

One of the Good Ones is a wonderful exploration of the concept and should not be bound by one genre. The story is a contemporary one because of the themes explored but it contains elements of mystery. The mystery of it will keep the reader on edge while providing a roller coaster of emotions. The use of valuable physical objects to depict family ties, the narrative structure, and the character work are just some of the amazing aspects of this novel. One of the Good Ones contains multitudes and it’s a read you won’t want to miss!

 

-NA

 

Moulite, Maika, and Maritza Moulite. One of the Good Ones. Inkyard Press, 2021.

Author and cover images from the publisher.

Review of "Black Girl Unlimited"

Echo Brown’s debut novel, Black Girl Unlimited: The Remarkable Story of a Teenage Wizard may have been one of my favorite books of 2020, and I don’t give those titles out to just any book. 

Black Girl Unlimited is described as a magical realism memoir. If this sounds counterintuitive, I promise it works. Echo, the protagonist, is growing up on the East Side of Cleveland with her mother and two brothers. As she navigates through life, she frames her experiences with elements of magic. What I love about this book is that it fights, and succeeds, to stand out as a unique reading experience. 

Instead of chapters, the book is split into nineteen sections, or “Lessons” of wizard training that Echo learns throughout her life, including “Evading the Black Veil”, “Performing Miracles of Unity”, and “Forgiving Yourself”. 

Although this book tackles a lot of heavy topics, including rape, depression, poverty, and drug use, Brown still manages to hold onto the magic throughout the book. 

The character Echo refers to herself and her mother as wizards, thus the lessons of wizard training at the start of each section. Although this is the magical realism element of the memoir, as I read the book I felt as if Echo and her mother truly were wizards. This book isn’t just being silly, but the use of them as wizards feels purposeful and real because this is based on her real life. 

Brown states that these lessons (the chapter titles) were healing work that she has done through her life due to her trauma, so each of these lessons was inspired by, as Brown states, her therapeutic and spiritual work to heal herself. She continues, “I also think some of the lessons are rooted in bigger themes I have aspired to in my real life that readers also may find useful. For example, the last lesson, “you are unlimited, be fearless in your pursuits” is something I remind myself of over and over especially when fears and insecurities rise. My hope is that some of the lessons will be inspirational for readers, reminding them of their own potential and abilities” (We Need Diverse Books, 2020). By putting in these lessons she learned based on her real life, they feel relatable and attainable. 

Although dealing with magic, the book breaks down real life stereotypes. Beautifully said by Karen Valby in the New York Times, “Brown’s greatest gift is evoking intimacy, and as she delicately but firmly snatches the reader’s attention, we are allowed to see this girl of multitudes and her neighborhood of contradictions in full and specific detail. Stereotypes, like the bitter myth of the strong black woman, wither on the page” (Valby, 2020). 

Echo the character is balancing the worlds of stereotypes, school, her home life, and her magic, while also dealing with a “black veil”. 

There is a reoccurring image of “black veils” that Echo sees over all people. She first sees a disembodied veil: 

“At first, I assume it’s a bird, but it doesn’t move like a bird…I see it, the black veil, right outside, hovering in the dark of night. I see clearly now that it is an ominous creature with no face, shaped like a rectangular piece of fabric, that ruffles and moves like a flag in the wind.” (Brown, 77)

Her mother reveals she also has seen the veil in times of intense trauma: “Black and scary-like, hoverin’ right ova me. I started screamin’ at da top of my lungs ‘cause I didn’t know what it was…I would see it e’ry night, until finally, I sank so far down, at da bottom of myself, it finally swooped on down and covered me, my whole head. I felt like I was suffocatin’. I couldn’t breathe.” (Brown, 80)

Author Echo Brown Brown highlights an interesting metaphor of generational trauma. Like the trauma Echo’s mother passes to her, her mother also passes what I would describe as an ability to see the veil, but Echo’s mother emphasizes that the black veil must be evaded. 

Brown worked with tweaking this metaphor throughout the writing process: 

“It felt like the black veil needed to descend somehow and submerge the victim, so it eventually changed the black veil that wraps itself around its victims. This was another instance where it wasn’t enough to just describe depression as it is, which is so challenging in real life. I needed a magical concept to really describe its impact and effect in a way that straightforward reality would miss, which is how the concept of the black veil came about.” (We Need Diverse Books, 2020) 

Ultimately, Brown landed on a way to convey her trauma to the reader in such a concrete and innovative way, and in my opinion, an incredibly effective way as well. 

Only wizards, like Echo and her mother, can see this veil, but they must fight to keep the veil off: 

“Only way you can keep it off is to stay lifted. Got to stay spirited and in da light….Only way I can get mine off now is drankin’ and druggin’, othawise it’s always on me. I done learned how ta live in it mostly, but sometimes, I just cain’t control it, the darkness inside of me.” (Brown, 83) 

This section truly spoke to me. The depression is so powerful it has become a physical object that practically suffocates Echo, and appears to have pushed her mother into a deep addiction, something her mother struggles with throughout the novel. It is so real it turns into a physical black veil, almost described as a menacing creature or spirit, that must be evaded. Brown takes this portion of her life, potential trauma, and creates this metaphor of an object that can finally be understood or have logic applied to when these emotions can feel anything but logical. 

I think this is part of the importance of the magical realism in Brown’s novel. She has these events in life that she could not control and turns them into physical objects that as the author she can control. This book isn’t just Echo overcoming trauma, it’s the author rewriting her own trauma experience, as this is a memoir. Although I do not know to what exact extent the trauma in the novel is based on her own life, in this case the character Echo explores the idea of trauma to show how suffocating it can feel, while also how it is possible to overcome. 

Magical realism is a tool for Brown to portray trauma, and she uses that tool like an expert. In a way, the trauma as a physical object makes it feel possible to overcome. Trauma can feel incredibly abstract and therefore almost intangible to understand or simply deal with. By making her trauma a physical thing, it both shows the reader the overwhelming aspect of trauma, while also showing that it is possible to manage, in this case through “magic”, or her writing. Ultimately, a step of overcoming this appears to be through writing her own memoir. She wields the genre like a wizard controlling magic. 

I also notice Brown challenges the very nature of how books are written. She does this fascinating technique where she ends midsentence, then starts a new paragraph finishing the sentence but with a completely new idea. This sounds complicated but she still makes a full sentence.

Brown is not only turning what we think of memoirs on its head, but she even challenges the structure of how a book is written, as seen above. The character is not the only magic, this book itself is a magical experience made of careful artistry. 

An important aspect of the novel is she is challenging what a memoir is. We as the readers are not privy to knowing what truly did or did not happen because of the fantastical elements, so Brown is now in control of not just her narrative, but she can finally control her trauma at least to some degree. Brown takes her story and is finally able to control it. We are being guided through her story by her. Brown is there to control what is or is not seen of her in her story, something that through her experience she was initially powerless to. 

Although this is her first book, Brown has already made a name for herself in the book community. Brown shows care and expertise in her writing, creating a novel full of love and magic. I cannot wait for her sophomore novel, The Chosen One, set to publish in 2022. 

-SS 

Brown, Echo. Black Girl Unlimited: The Remarkable Story of a Teenage Wizard. Holt/Ottaviano, 2020.

“Q&A With Echo Brown: BLACK GIRL UNLIMITED.” We Need Diverse Books, 17 Jan. 2020,                diversebooks.org/qa-with-echo-brown-black-girl-unlimited/. 

Valby, Karen. “In Hollywood, Stories About People of Color Are Still Rare. These Y.A. Fantasy                Novels Pick Up the Slack.” The New York Times, 4 Feb. 2020,                                                                  www.nytimes.com/2020/02/04/books/review/dark-and-deepest-red-anna-mari-mclemore-black-            girl-unlimited-echo-brown.html. 

Author and cover photo from goodreads.com

Not Lunar New Year

 

When I noticed that Lunar New Year fell on Friday the 12^th of February, I thought it would be a perfect chance to highlight an Asian American text in a blog post. Browsing for suitable books, I came across a beautifully illustrated cover – that of A Big Mooncake for Little Star by Grace Lin. I placed a hold immediately, eager to read and blog about a literary depiction of the Asian holiday so often eclipsed by Valentine’s Day.

The cover of A Big Mooncake for Little Star by Grace Lin

As I read it, delighting in the lovely images that softly illuminate the starry sky background, I quickly realized that the storyline had nothing to do with Lunar New Year.

Why had I made that assumption?

The fact that I had associated mooncakes with the wrong Asian holiday felt like a personal mistake, and the shame I felt upon recognizing this was both uncomfortable and surprising. I’ve only ever eaten mooncake around the Mid-Autumn Festival, which is clearly months before Lunar New Year rolls around in February. This wasn’t something I had to look up; I knew this from my own upbringing.

 

    

Images from San Diego’s Huy Ky Bakery (Yelp), the mooncakes I grew up eating!

But in my need to position myself as a graduate student specializing in Asian American children’s literature, I had taken on the mantle of representation to a fault. I had latched onto the idea that I had to display traditional food and a festive holiday, falling right into the diversity trap that offers limited and often damaging representations of cultures through what Dolores de Manuel and Rocío G. Davis call “tourist-multiculturalism.” Though seemingly benign, this method of showcasing texts (often in classrooms or library displays) emphasizes Asian culture as foreign or different than American culture. This construction elides the experience of Asian Americans, who must contend with and sometimes reject ethnic markers to even be recognized as American. Asian American experience is more than Asian traditions, and to look for “foreign” or “exotic” elements in a book to mark it as “Asian American” is a flawed way to showcase the diversity of this genre and the multiplicity of the population it depicts.

Lin strikes a thoughtful balance in this picture book. For starters, the protagonist’s name, Little Star, does not indicate any particular ethnic heritage. The background images do not provide any clues such as writing or cultural artifacts to this mystery either. The characters’ country of origin simply does not matter to the story. What does matter is Little Star’s agency. Her desire to eat the mooncake, in spite of the promise she made to her mother to not touch it, leads her to munch away at it night by night until nothing is left. That the large mooncake was hung in the sky lends the storyline a touch of magic. The result is a new “myth” to explain the phases of the moon, distinct from the traditional stories of the past.

By writing a new storyline, Lin evades the historical use of multiculturalism, wherein “the proliferation of folktales meant to teach Americans about Asian cultures instead reinforces and perpetuates the stereotype of Asians as exotic foreigners” (Manuel and Davis ix). Rather than focus on difference by rooting the story in a particular ethnic heritage, Lin focuses on what is relatable: the irrepressible desire to eat forbidden snacks. A Big Mooncake for Little Star is not meant to be didactic or to teach an uninformed audience. Instead, it allows Asian Americans who have eaten mooncake before to see a bit of their traditions portrayed casually, without emphasis on its “foreignness.”

Image from Grace Lin’s A Big Mooncake for Little Star

What I’ve learned from this experience, and what I hope those who are interested in children’s literature will recognize, is that not all books highlighting Asian characters and a traditional Asian food is immediately speaking to an “authentic” Asian American experience. I still have a long way to go before I can present myself as a scholar of Asian American children’s literature, but beautiful books such as this can help correct initial misreadings. The lesson: don’t judge a book by its title, cover image, or author’s last name! Instead, just open it up and allow yourself to be surprised by something new.

-AN

Works Cited

Manuel, Dolores de and Rocío G Davis. "Editors' Introduction: Critical Perspectives on Asian American Children's Literature." The Lion and the Unicorn, vol. 30 no. 2, 2006, p. v-xv. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/uni.2006.0023.

Lin, Grace. A Big Mooncake for Little Star. Little, Brown and Company, 2018.

New Graduate Assistant

 Hello everyone!

My name is Natalie Alvarez and I’m currently a first year M.A. student studying English with a specialization in Children’s Literature. Being a new student to the program means that I’m still exploring my definitive areas of research. Nonetheless, areas such as queer studies, media studies, sexuality studies, and Digital Humanities have caught my attention. When it comes to Children’s Literature, I gravitate towards Young Adult Literature. I’m especially interested in YA narratives written by authors of color in the Fantasy genre. I would like to explore how cultural and/or queer identity operate in Fantasy landscapes.

 

My love for reading blossomed due to my desire to learn English. I was learning the language in school, but I wanted to experience more than grammar rules and the assigned texts. Then a family member talked to me about a certain book revolving around vampires. After devouring such in a couple of days my journey began. The rest as they say is history and now here, I am now pursuing the degree that I dreamed of when I was younger.

 

When I'm not doing schoolwork I can be found creating book related content for my Instagram. I post everything from book inspired makeup looks to book reviews. Besides reading I enjoy fashion, watching the latest tv series or horror movie, digital art, and blogging. In case you were wondering (and I know you were) some of my favorite books are We Set the Dark on Fire by Tehlor Kay Mejia, A Song of Wraiths and Ruin by Roseanne A. Brown, and Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor.

 

I’m extremely grateful for the opportunity to be a Graduate Assistant at the National Center for the Study of Children’s Literature, and I can’t wait for all the amazing things this will bring. I’m excited to be part of the conversation and immerse myself more into the scholarly world of Children’s Literature. I look forward to sharing with you all everything related to Children’s Literature and the National Center for the Study of Children’s Literature.

 

-NA