Junauda Petrus

This book has stayed with me. I read it standing in a bookstore and on first take it didn't stick. However, I came home and kept thinking about it. I looked it up online and found a video of the author reading it as a poem. The delivery of it was magnificent. The book makes the message more accessible to new audiences.

The message is important. It forces us to reimagine a world and community where we are accountable to each other, not police, not heavy-handed laws, but where we can have compassion and accountability to our community. Our elders can help to guide and shape it. An artist friend said good art should make you feel something and force you to think, even if it is uncomfortable.

I used this to open up a conversation in a college class about language and reimagining what racial justice could look like. I also read it to my pre-teen and enjoyed it. I want both to see a different view of what community could look like, that is what art can do.… (más)

Hear me out as to why I do not like this book. Like at all.

It was originally a poem. By putting it into picture book form, it no longer readers like a poem. Rather it reads, and I try to comprehend it, like a picture book. It would have been a more effective medium in a style similar to "Ain't Burned All The Bright" (if you want pictures) or "The Hill We Climb". It needs to feel like a poem.

But it doesn't and with it, I feel the message it lost.

Additionally, due to how it is presented, I feel as if myself, admittedly a white woman, is slighted and ignored. That I am part of the problem. Which is neither here or there (because yes, white cops have been brutal and wrong in their treatment of others.) But what about my white grandmothers? Who would give me a look and get me on the straight and narrow? What about my white grandmothers with whom I would cook gnocchi and cannoli and be reminded that I could do anything I set my mind to? What about those with abuelitas? Those who taught them to make tamales? Should we the police department to those grandmothers too? Or just those in urban populations?

I don't mean to sound harsh. I love the essence of what is there. But additionally, when a poem originally uses words like "badass" and "sensual", I think of adults reading it. Not children. Not only now do caregivers need to tackle topics like brutality and incarceration they now need to tackle words too.… (más)