I was expecting a mystery type thriller when I picked up MONDAY’S NOT COMING, and I definitely got way more than I bargained for. I started to read this book on a random weekend, but then finished it up in one sitting on the following Monday. Cue me staring at my ceiling in bed unable to fall asleep for the next twoish hours. I know the word haunting gets thrown around alot to describe books but damn, this one is haunting. It is harrowing. And it is one of the best YA books I have read.

I obviously came at this book with a teacher’s lens and let me tell ya, it really made me think about the times that maybe I have failed students in my own classroom. And I know a lot of us can say “Oh that would never happen to me,” (and maybe not as extreme as this book, but heck even as I type this it still seems like me making excuses) but the fact of the matter is that it could. I am sure in some ways big and small I have failed kids in my classroom, and I am just one part of a vile system that continues to fail Black children across America. My heart ached for Ms. Valente. Could she have done more? Maybe? I don’t know. There is one part in particular where she apologizes to Claudia for failing her. And I felt that. I think I could be doing more. And yet…

There is so much more to this book though that I won’t unpack here. From family values, to how friendships between two girls can shift and change as they grow into teenagers, Tiffany D. Jackson has crafted a true standout in the YA genre. I will say this, the less you know about this book probably the better, but if you need content warnings, please check them out on stroygraph or you can DM me. Because when I say I was unprepared for that ending….I mean it. Some content warnings include descriptions of child abuse, addiction, and racism. Synopsis in the comments!
[ID: The book Monday’s Not Coming with green plants in the background] #MondaysNotComing #TiffanyDJackson #Bookstagram #LibraryGlareDontCare #alwaysreading

“He knows that a lot of the literary people in college see books primarily as a way of appearing cultured, It was culture as class performance, literature fetishised for its ability to take educated people on false emotional journeys, so that they might afterwards feel superior to the uneducated people whose emotional journeys they liked to read about. Even the writer himself was a good person, and even if his book really was insightful, all books were ultimately marketed as status symbols, and all writers participated to some degree in this marketing.”-Normal People, Sally Rooney

My best friend gave me this to read and pretty much bugged me every week until I finally picked it up. She told me nothing, just that I “had to read it.” I try to go into a book knowing as little as possible, so knowing I was going to read it ONE DAY, I steered clear of reviews. All I really knew before diving in is that this book is polarizing and it’s about two people and their relationship.

Did I want to throw this book across the room several times? Yes, I did. Was I completely frustrated by the lack of communication skills between the two main characters? Also, yes. But did I also gobble it up and get completely lost in Sally Rooney’s prose? Definitely, yes. Listennnnnnn….she can write, so once I opened it up I definitely got lost in the story. I did have to take a short break after one moment shared between the characters BECAUSE I WAS SO FRUSTRATED WITH THEM. I can see why this book is so loved and also not-so-loved. But at the end of the day I can’t decide where I stand and don’t think it matters. It got a strong reaction from me and it was a fun book to talk about with my friend. I texted her multiple times in frustration and asked, “DO PEOPLE LIKE THIS ACTUALLY EXIST?” (of course they do). Will I read the next thing Sally Rooney writes? Absolutely.

Anyways, Marianne I hope you get the help you need one day. Connell, you’re also a hot ass mess. Have you read this? Tell me your thoughts!
#NormalPeople #SallyRooney #AlwaysReading #Bookstagram #PolarizingBook #bookstagrammer

Any Day With You is a sweet story about a Filipina-American girl and her relationship with her great grandfather. It’s a slow burn for a middle grade novel, but it is definitely one I will save in my own personal library in hopes my son and I can read it together someday. I loved learning the bits about Filipino folklore and mythology, and I craved to be able to speak with my Lola about it all. It also included an important part of Filipino and American History that often gets erased when we discuss WW2. CW: War Atrocities

“I was part of a catastrophic event called the Bataan Death March. This was when 75,000 captured allied soldiers – Filipinos and Americans – were forced to march from sunrise to sunset, nearly sixty-five miles across the Bataan Peninsula along Manila Bay in April of 1942. We were not given any food or water. We suffered from heatstroke and starvation. We were physically beaten along the way. Many of my friends died, some of them left to rot when we could not carry them. It could easily have been me, and there has not been a single day since that I’ve taken my life for granted. It’s why I try to stroll each evening and watch the sunset. It’s my personal marker of what I’ve lived through and what I still have to achieve. At the end of the March we were crammed into trains and brought to an internment camp. Somehow I had survived to that point, but the camp was torture, so many soldiers died from disease and malnutrition, some beheaded… The Philippines was a former colony of the United States, so those of us who fought were nationals; we should have received the same benefits as all American soldiers, including citizenship. But a law was passed that stripped us of these rights. We were left unrecognized, our role erased, and we’re still fighting for that recognition to this day. Sadly, it’s too late for some. There are not many of us survivors left.”

So often BIPOC narratives get erased from the white settler history books. I love seeing #MGLit tackle these topics head on, unafraid of the horrible truths in American colonial history.
#WeLoveMGLit #AnyDayWithYou #MaeRespicio

“Everybody wants to be a hero, but most of us/ are just misunderstood villains.”

I don’t know why I don’t read more novels in verse, or just more poetry in general, honestly. I know I am sorely missing out, and I’m looking to remedy that, especially after reading Chlorine Sky.

At the center of the story is Sky and her relationship with her best friend, Lay Li. But it’s also about self discovery and society’s expectations of what you should and shouldn’t be. This is especially challenging for young Black girls, who have to fight against racist AND sexist stereotypes at every corner. But this book is a celebration of Sky, and her journey to being authentic to who she is, whether that means taking no mercy when exhibiting her amazing basketball skills, or standing up to those that bully her. The exploration of how there is no such thing as binary good or bad also added so much depth to this amazing story. After reading, I looked up some interviews with the author Mahogany L. Browne, and it just made me fall more in love with this captivating story.

“This book was informed by the kind of people I met while figuring out who I was in the world as a young Black girl growing up in California, specifically the people I let stay around me. And I started thinking, when did that happen? Because it was a little weird — I went from loving everything to middle school where I started second-guessing everything, including my friend circle and who I was in that friend circle. I showed up for people emotionally, but also found myself being bullied. This was a pivotal moment for how I saw myself and loved myself. And if I could rewrite that history, that’s how Chlorine Sky was born.” (Shondaland.com)

She goes on to say part of her creative process was immersing herself in Sula, because it asks, “What does it mean to look at friendship with your eyes, what does it mean to look at friendship with your hands? Toni Morrison does that beautifully in Sula.” Sula is the next book we are reading in the #Toni21readathon, so I’m even more excited to make those text connections.

I read this because of @thatgoodgoodbook review. Thanks for the rec, I loved it.

CW: Death of a child, transphobia, murder, incest, grief, sexual abuse

(Slight spoiler warning)

“Chika’s jaw clenched, but he knew she was right. If Vivek had been alive, he would never have conceded her point, but when you’ve stood on the ground and known your child’s bones are rotting beneath you, rage and ego fade like dust in a strong wind.”

The Death of Vivek Oji is beautifully written and entirely engrossing. It was an uncomfortable read and I can see why it may not be for everyone, but I deeply appreciated this story about being true to who you are, found family, and parental grief. It is nothing short of incredible how much story exists in this otherwise short book. All of the characters are so well drawn with their different complexities and I was completely absorbed.

But the character that had me clutching my heart the most was Vivek’s mother, Kavita. The way Emezi describes her grief was just so utterly heartbreaking. It’s hard being a parent, because you hope that you will give your child the complete safety and space to be who they are. They are their own person and your relationship with them will probably shift and change as they grow older and they start to discover who they are, and you have to see them for who they choose to be, with you and without you. For so many parents (myself included) I’m sure sometimes this is a hard pill to swallow. In the book, Kavita has difficulty when she is confronted with other people’s grief over the death of her child. But she did not own Vivek, and she is not the only one allowed to grieve him. To see your child, truly, for who they are only after they die is a curse I don’t wish upon anyone. So I hug my child close, and I will see him in all his glorious humanity and hope he will forgive me if sometimes I stumble, as I’m sure I will.

#TheDeathofVivekOji #BIPOCBookstagram #AlwaysReading #Bookstagram #akwaekeemezi