The heart wants what the heart wants, and our hearts want books.

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With just eight days until our Virtual Book Club discussion of  House of Earth and Blood (#1) one of us has already finished and one of us hasn’t touched the book in over a week.  Will we both finish?  It’s looking good because powering through those last pieces doesn’t feel hard at all, but it’ll be close.  Will you?  You’re welcome regardless, but spoilers will abound as we prepare our hearts and theories for the second book’s release!  If you’re ready to commit to a couple of hours of discussion of witches, and angels, and fae (oh my!), with a bit of demon drama too, sign up here to get the link for our conversation on Friday, February 11 at 7:30 pm CST.

We want to make note that today’s title, Black Enough: Stories of Being Young and Black in America is, as of this writing, available to read digitally and for free through your Amazon Prime account. But, we always recommend supporting authors through your local independent bookstore, you can always read how you read, and buy a copy to loan out, or leave casually on your shelf for your people to notice and pick up, not that either of us have done either of those things…recently.  

You know the books you never gravitate towards, but always enjoy?  I have a couple, and they’re mainly about structure – I always enjoy short stories and interesting structure.  I talked about this a little when we reviewed Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi with the interesting structure piece, and now we’re going to talk about the short story piece.  

Black Enough: Stories of Being Young and Black in America edited by Ibi Zoboi is the collection I didn’t know I needed in my life.  These seventeen YA stories by seventeen Black authors were simply fantastic.  They were challenging and real, and they were lyrical and engaging.  Magically, I felt very satisfied at the end of each of them.  Yes, seventeen stories in about 400 pages, and it was enough.  Would I say no to more?  Nope.  But each felt complete.  Each of these stories felt like the author did exactly what Leah Johnson pushes her characters to do in “Warning: Color May Fade” they “Tell. [Their]. Truth.”  As Zoboi says in the introduction, these truths are “… are whole, complete, and nuanced.”  They’re complicated, in the way teens’ lives are complicated, but also in the way the entire world is complicated, partially because it is, and partially because we, society, “the man” has made it so with our assorted social constructs.  

The stories in Black Enough included things familiar and new to me ideas as well.  I felt seen in Renée Watson’s “Half a Moon” with the discussions of half siblings.  It’s one thing when you grow up together, but quite another when you don’t.  The guy from the perfume kiosk in the mall in Lamar Giles’s “Black. Nerd. Problems.” felt like a throwback to me (that I loved), but perhaps I just don’t get out much any more (or both, that’s an option too).  But I’d never thought about why it’s not uncommon for older Black people to not know how to swim, so I was both heartbroken and grateful it was spelled out in “The Trouble with Drowning” by Dhonielle Clayton – because when they were the age people commonly learn, Black children weren’t allowed in the public pools.  I’d also never considered how Black people might have complex feelings about HBCUs despite growing up very close to four HBCUs and with a next door neighbor who attended another.  Brandy Colbert explores this, and several other ideas in “Oreo.”

The piece about Black Enough that makes it stand out for me, other than the amazing stories written just beautifully by seventeen different people, is the intersectionality woven throughout the book.  How each protagonist is impacted by their gender, sexuality, upbringing, nerdiness, etc., in addition to their Blackness, how it’s all compounded, even if they’re in predominantly Black environments, and especially if they’re not.  In a recent episode of Man Enough Podcast with Tony Porter, the hosts discuss power imbalances with Porter, and quite a bit of the conversation focuses on Black women specifically, and how their voices need to be centered because for so long they have been silenced, because of the intersectionality of being marginalized for being Black in majority culture, and of being marginalized for being female in Black culture.  Man Enough is always a great listen, but Porter’s episode hit me in new ways, especially as I was reading through Black Enough starting the day after I listened.

I am giving Black Enough four solid stars.  This is an amazing set of stories by a fantastic group of authors who are all now on my TBR list.  Four stars doesn’t seem like enough to me, but I’m sticking with it because I’m not likely to reread it, but I am likely to search out the full-length works of these authors.  Even if YA isn’t your jam, I’d highly encourage you to pick up this collection because these stories of Black teens are relevant to us all, especially as the young people who live these truths are growing up and becoming leaders.

What’s a book that’s really made you think about your truths?

~Nikki 

I know that you, our darling readers, are going to give me grace by not giving you the biographical information on SEVENTEEN different authors. I will, however, discuss the amazing editor of Black Enough, Ibi Zoboi. She is a National Book Award Finalist for her debut novel, American Street. Her three other titles, Pride (a Pride and Prejudice Remix!), My Life as an Ice Cream Sandwich, and Punching the Air (co-authored by Exonerated Five member Yusef Salaam) are all New York Times Bestselling titles. She was born in Haiti, grew up in New York City, and now lives in New Jersey with her husband and their three children. In the introduction, I have two important quotations highlighted (different ones from the one Nikki shared above!) But, it is the shorter of the two that I find most important to share with you: “Like my revolutionary ancestors who wanted Haiti to be a safe space for Africans all over the globe, my hope is that Black Enough will encourage all Black teens to be their free, uninhibited selves without the constraints of being Black, too Black, or not Black enough. They will simply be enough just as they are.”

Isn’t that the reminder that we all need to have? That we are enough!  But those people and ESPECIALLY those children and teens who are marginalized by society need the reminder even more so than I do as a grown white woman. I see people who look like me in every television show, in my favorite movies (except Black Panther and I’m 1000% OK with that!), and all over the internet in advertisements, but these teens, who grow up to be Black adults have to search to find representations of themselves in the media. Each and every one of these seventeen short stories give us examples of how hard it is for Black teens to find versions of themselves out in the world through the lens of each character while providing those examples in the characters themselves. The stories that touched me the deepest were the stories of the girls navigating sexual assault. What? You thought that a young adult book wouldn’t touch on such a heavy topic? Then, obviously, you don’t realize that girls are aware of the possibility of sexual assault at a younger age than the teen protagonists in these stories. These girls are real and nuanced and struggling with balancing how to see themselves and how to be seen in society. Who can’t relate to that?

I’m so grateful that Zoboi “invit[ed] sixteen other Black authors to write about teens examining, rebelling against, embracing, or simply existing within their own idea of Blackness.” I have learned so much about the lived experience of people who are unlike me and that’s why we read books by diverse authors. Black Enough: Stories of Being Young and Black in America is getting 4 stars from me, and the only reason why it’s not a 5 star review is that I’m unlikely to re-read this title, as much as I predict I will recommend this title to everyone and pick up the authors’ backlists in the future.

~Ashley

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