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Book Review: ‘One of Our Kind’ by Nicola Yoon

*Given a copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review*

One of Our Kind by Nicola Yoon is a slow-burn psychological thriller set in a Black utopia where race is no longer a barrier, but when some characters seek to improve race relations outside the utopia, they notice their neighbors eerily avoid the topic of race. 

Jasmyn is a Black woman carrying the world’s weight on her shoulders. Besides being a wife to King, a former teacher, and a mother to six-year-old Kamau, she is a civil rights attorney worrying about her cases and the ones that make the news. Those cases, like the one involving a young Black girl named Mercy Simpson being shot by police, have her wanting to stay rooted in her Los Angeles community. But King wants to move to Liberty, California. 

Over the last few years, King has transitioned his career from public education to finance. This has elevated the family to a new income bracket. Now, they can move to Liberty, which is 100% Black and high-income. Located on the outskirts of Los Angeles, Liberty is the brainchild of Carlton Way, a financial entrepreneur who happens to also be King’s mentor. Jasmyn is unsure about the mansion life, but King convinces her that it is the next step for their expanding family. Since she is pregnant with their second child, Jasmyn finally approves the move. She can’t wait to be around her own people and not worry about the weight of the world at home as a Black woman.

Right away, Jasmyn notices a coldness among her new Liberty neighbors. She brings up the developments in the Mercy Simpson case, and her neighbors don’t seem concerned. They may be too relaxed with their wealth and addiction to the wellness center atop the hill. She notices them meditating up there in their robes, and it doesn’t sit right with her. 

The only neighbor who shares Jasmyn’s concern is Keisha, who’s also Kamau’s teacher at the local elementary school. Keisha also detects the coldness and prefers to stay away from the wellness center, though her wife frequents the center. Together, they decide to start a Black Lives Matter chapter to raise awareness about the Mercy Simpson case and other future cases. They meet another neighbor, Charles, who wants to start the chapter based on his same interpretations of Liberty. He, too, doesn’t trust the wellness center that his wife loves. 

Then, suddenly, Charles changes his mind about starting a BLM chapter. He even cuts off his dreadlocks and sells his Afrocentric art collection. These moves bewilder Jasmyn and Keisha. They move forward with their plans. Then, Keisha changes her mind as well, now that she straightens her natural hair and wears neutral-toned business suits — a far cry from her Afro, colorful clothing, and large gold hoop earrings. 

Jasmyn is now the only one left standing. King won’t completely commit to opening the chapter with her or volunteering with Black youth like he used to when they lived in the city limits. Everyone seems to be addicted to the wellness center. Jasmyn has stayed away because she’s pregnant and doesn’t want any treatment to harm the baby. But King loves going to the wellness center. Things are not adding up. Using her court connections, Jasmyn hires a private investigator to see what happened to the last family who lived in her mansion. The family had only stayed for a year. Why buy a house for only a year? The more she finds out, the more she feels she’s in danger. 

The idea of a utopia was coined by Thomas More in his 1516 classic Utopia. He created the word “utopia” from ancient Greek, which translates to “not a place.” So, if a housing development or closed-off community boasts that it is a utopia, then there is already a reason to run in horror. The book garnered some online criticism for creating a story around a Black utopia that ends in giving in to the racism of the outside world. Without giving too many spoilers, the ending becomes a Get Out-esque situation. The utopia is flawed from the roots because it targets certain people and convinces them to be in a social experiment when reality seems too overwhelming. 

With the utopia, the novel taps into the monolithic definition of Blackness. One of the main examples is showing Jasmyn’s desperation to unite her neighbors to start a BLM chapter. The real-life controversial organization works to protect Black lives across the diaspora, but not every Black person supports the mission and its activities. Jasmyn assumes every Black person is in agreement with feeling upset over a police brutality case, and that’s not the case in Liberty. But that’s what makes the hairs on her arms stand up? In this politically charged society, it may feel safer for many Americans to live in communities that share their values, and Jasmyn is realizing she did not move into a like-minded community. Other examples emphasize the monolithic falsehoods within the African American community, such as Keisha wearing her Afro and hoop earrings, which means she’s down for the cause. And when her style changes, that is the telltale that she is not down anymore. While other characters seem cold for ignoring the Mercy Simpson case and straightening their African curls, it feeds into the stereotype that all Black Americans feel the same way about certain issues by their vocal expression and outward appearance. How the characters are constructed with simplicity may distract some readers expecting a complex racial thriller. 

Overall, the simplicity also speaks to the author’s transition from the young adult genre to the adult genre. In YA, character and story development must be easier for a young reader to follow. We see the same pattern in this adult book, though the tension between the characters and unfolding events still make it a page-turner. 

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what's lit

Congresswoman Cori Bush, Ibram X. Kendi Discuss Empowerment Factor in Banned Books Movement

Missouri Rep. Cori Bush and Dr. Ibram X. Kendi (Image: Penguin Random House / Janice Checchio)

Missouri Rep. Cori Bush and anti-racism intellectual Dr. Ibram X. Kendi discussed the magnitude of banned books in Washington, D.C., for one of the busiest Banned Books Week observances in recent years.

Holding their conversation at the Anacostia location of the Busboys and Poets bookstore on Thursday, the congresswoman and the author of anti-racist thought focused on the history of banned books, particularly for Black Americans. The event was hosted by The Emancipator, a vertical of The Boston Globe focused on racial justice and equity founded by Ibram.

Earliest censorship in this country began with beating and killing enslaved people for learning to read or being suspected of knowing how to read, they said. That legacy continues with readers now seeing books that share accurate histories and personal narratives of experiences with race and gender being banned, they added.

Banned Books Week is held every year in mid-September, but over the last few years, book bans have been making headlines over more school districts and local libraries removing books, primarily targeted to kids, due to complaints from parents and other adults. Many of these books contain themes surrounding race, gender, and sexual orientation.

Almost half of distinct titles banned are young adult books at 49%, followed by picture books at 19% and middle grade books at 11%, according to PEN America‘s recent report on banned books.

Book bans occurred in 138 school districts in 32 states, meaning 5,049 schools with a combined enrollment of nearly 4 million students have been impacted by a book ban, PEN America found.

Cori and Ibram sat in front of bookshelves with books by authors of color as they emphasized the importance of books giving young people the ability to see worlds different from theirs and how removing access to books is hurting that freedom.

“Some people don’t want to speak about their story, and that’s OK,” the St. Louis congresswoman said. “For those who feel compelled to, when we tell our stories, other people are able to see themselves. Just like you, I didn’t see myself when they made us read Huckleberry Finn. I didn’t see myself when I was made to read The Odyssey, and books like that. I didn’t see myself, and there weren’t books presented before me where I did.”

Cori will tell her own story in The Forerunner: A Story of Pain and Perseverance in America, which will be on shelves Oct. 4. Knopf of Penguin Random House is publishing the political memoir.

Ibram is the author of How to Raise an Antiracist and Antiracist Baby, published by Penguin Random House imprints Kokila and One World. The power of readers seeing themselves in books brings equity in itself, he said.

“Books are treasures. And they’re not just sort of treasures that reveal wisdom,” he said. “They’re treasures for that person who isn’t able to, or doesn’t have the ability to, travel around the world. But they can travel around the world into time through books. It’s a democratizer.

“But I also think as you mentioned that there’s something beautiful about the power of seeing your own story in the mirror through a book, and I also see the differences,” adds the humanities professor and founding director of the Boston University Center for Antiracist Research. “There’s just something affirming. There’s just this connective tissue that allows human beings to connect.”

The conversation is available on YouTube.

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book reviews

Book Review: ‘Crying in H Mart’ by Michelle Zauner

Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


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Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner is a grief memoir detailing the author’s journey in grappling with the death of her mother while suppressing the fear of losing the only tie to her Korean culture in America.

What makes this memoir beautiful is the descriptions of the food being used as examples to show readers the depth of Korean culture for the author, who identifies as biracial with a Korean mother and a White American father. Her mother’s cancer prognosis motivates Michelle, a twentysomething musician holding down odd jobs in Philadelphia, to move back home to Oregon to help care for her mother. As the author goes into caretaker mode with her father unable to handle the stress, she finds herself questioning if her mother dies, will her connection to Korean culture die.

The main way her mother is able to highlight her Korean culture in America is through food and venturing to Korean grocery stores. That’s why the book starts off with Michelle shopping and eating at H Mart, a Korean supermarket chain, after her mother dies, trying to piece together meals she had shared with her mother throughout her life with the right ingredients. But seeing other people sit with their families in the dining area and cruising the aisles for dish must-haves makes the author cry every time as she navigates her culture without her mother.

I closed my eyes and let my tears flow. I tried to envision us together again in Seoul. I tried to envision the mung bean batter sizzling in grease, meat patties and oysters sopped and dripping with egg, my mother explaining everything I needed to know before it was too late, showing me all the places we’d always assumed we’d have more time to see.

Growing up in Oregon, the author stays by her mother’s side as her father travels for work. Michelle and her mother take biannual trips to Korea to stay with family and absorb culture in the homeland. Being American, Michelle is seen as more rebellious, even as a child, a trait that escalates in her teenage years, upsetting her parents. The stain of adolescence lingers in the background as Michelle experiences her family as an adult and soon as an unexpected caretaker.

My mother had struggled to understand me just as I struggled to understand her. Thrown as we were on opposite sides of a fault line—generational, cultural, linguistic—we wandered lost without a reference point, each of us unintelligible to the other’s expectations, until these past few years when we had just begun to unlock the mystery, carve the psychic space to accommodate each other, appreciate the differences between us, linger in our refracted commonalities. Then, what would have been the most fruitful years of understanding were cut violently short, and I was left alone to decipher the secrets of inheritance without its key.

This memoir has raw moments around the author seeing her mother deteriorate quickly to stage IV squamous-cell carcinoma and searching for joy amid the process. As her mother is dying, she puts on her chef’s hat and leans on YouTube to guide her through recipes for traditional Korean dishes such as doenjang jjigae, described as “a rich, hearty stew filled with vegetables and tofu” that her mother had loved serving, and jatjuk, a porridge made of pine nuts, rice, salt, and water, perfect to serve to the sick. While her mother tries to keep food down, Michelle works in the kitchen to perfect her Korean dishes to preserve the culture her mother taught her.

Of course, like in most families, there is drama around who can care for her mother the way she needs as a Korean woman in America. The author finds herself butting heads with one of her mother’s Korean friends, who seems to know everything to do to make her mother comfortable. Her father is largely absent, unable to accept his wife is dying on the cusp of retirement; a fantasy full of travel is dashed by cancer. And at 25 years old, Michelle is trying to stabilize her life as a musician and maintain her relationship with her partner, as she worries what her life will be like without her mother.

Overall, the memoir illustrates the elaborate details we all experience in our own cultures, but the art of writing customs that are practiced and the foods that are eaten elevates the story. The balance of bittersweet is on every page, as the author deals with her mother dying but also experiences a renewed interest in diving into her Korean culture. It’s the uncertainty of being able to carry on the culture without the parent who taught you the culture that hops off the page. Despite the story leading up to the grief of losing a mother, the memoir ends on a hopeful note that as long as the roots are planted, they stay within you and the loss empowers you to nurture those roots.

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book reviews

Book Review: ‘The Underground Railroad’ by Colson Whitehead

The Underground RailroadThe Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

When I first started the novel, I couldn’t get into it. There was too much going deep into some characters and not others, and it wasn’t clear which characters would return in the story. This disjointed storytelling continued throughout, but the story picked up once Cora and Caesar began their journey toward the Underground Railroad. Then there was action with the tension building up until another character’s background interrupted the present. This is a good literary tactic to dangle what’s happening next over the reader, but I was conflicted on my investment in the characters.

Cora was the main character but Ridgeway’s background and presence sometimes made him appear as a stronger character. Caesar faded out of the story along with so many other characters I had to read the long backgrounds of. It’s about 75% background on multiple characters—some who won’t matter later—and 25% of the present. If the background on most of the characters were limited and weaved in better with the present instead of being placed in separate chapters, the story would’ve moved along smoother.

Seeing Cora’s journey to freedom with waiting in some places too long not in safer Canada because they seemed ideal until they weren’t, and her dealing with the impact of her choices enlivened the novel. The garden plot she had at the Randall plantation is a stronger symbol than the Underground Railroad, in which the idea of it actually being a train line seems unoriginal. Remember when Porsha from Real Housewives of Atlanta thought it was an underground railroad seasons ago? A lot of people think that.

Overall, the writing is well structured, but the way the story was structured annoyed me as a reader more than pulled me in.

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