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After Tupac and D Foster
29/7/09 13:27Brain and fingers are still runing at half speed, but for IBARW I wanted to write about some books by and about people of color -- especially in the wake of the controversy about the US cover to Justine Larbalestier's book Liar.
After Tupac and D Foster, by Jacqueline Woodson, is one of those quiet quiet books where almost nothing happens, and then suddenly I find myself in tears in the laundromat. Neeka and the unnamed narrator are best friends, eleven years old, living in Queens -- not allowed to go past the end of the block on their own. And then D shows up in their lives: D, a foster kid with an unpredictable, alcoholic mother. D never had what both Neeka and the narrator have: security, a stable and loving home. But what she does have -- the freedom to roam around the city -- seems more alluring to a girl on the cusp of adolescence. The girls want to find their purpose, to make a difference in the world. But the dangers of the world outside seem about to burst in: Tupac, who the girls adore, is shot; Neeka's gay older brother Tash is in jail for a crime he didn't commit. Their mothers aren't paranoid or overprotective. They're dealing with the realities of a world that an eleven-year-old girl should be spared from. They live in a dangerous world, dangerous despite their caring families, just because they are black.
And yet, there's this one beautifully transcendent moment when D sneaks the girls off their block and onto a bus, and they go to the park at night, in the snow, and make snow angels.
I've seen a number of op-eds lately about how we used to let kids run around catching frogs and getting muddy, and now we don't. Sure, there's truth in that. But there's some privilege in it too.
I want these girls to keep on taking steps away from their block. I want them to make snow angels in the dark, and to grow up and find their purpose. And at the same time I wish they could just stay in that bubble of time before D's mother comes back, before Tupac gets killed.
The loveliness and the sadness of the book is that you can't have both.
After Tupac and D Foster, by Jacqueline Woodson, is one of those quiet quiet books where almost nothing happens, and then suddenly I find myself in tears in the laundromat. Neeka and the unnamed narrator are best friends, eleven years old, living in Queens -- not allowed to go past the end of the block on their own. And then D shows up in their lives: D, a foster kid with an unpredictable, alcoholic mother. D never had what both Neeka and the narrator have: security, a stable and loving home. But what she does have -- the freedom to roam around the city -- seems more alluring to a girl on the cusp of adolescence. The girls want to find their purpose, to make a difference in the world. But the dangers of the world outside seem about to burst in: Tupac, who the girls adore, is shot; Neeka's gay older brother Tash is in jail for a crime he didn't commit. Their mothers aren't paranoid or overprotective. They're dealing with the realities of a world that an eleven-year-old girl should be spared from. They live in a dangerous world, dangerous despite their caring families, just because they are black.
And yet, there's this one beautifully transcendent moment when D sneaks the girls off their block and onto a bus, and they go to the park at night, in the snow, and make snow angels.
I've seen a number of op-eds lately about how we used to let kids run around catching frogs and getting muddy, and now we don't. Sure, there's truth in that. But there's some privilege in it too.
I want these girls to keep on taking steps away from their block. I want them to make snow angels in the dark, and to grow up and find their purpose. And at the same time I wish they could just stay in that bubble of time before D's mother comes back, before Tupac gets killed.
The loveliness and the sadness of the book is that you can't have both.