This book is weird. Maria the main character is confused about her feelings for her fiancée and has a bizarre obsession with a poet she knows casually. She does very weird things because of this poet.

Around that she muses about race (both she & her fiancée are bi-racial) and how they fit into their roles as black or white people depending on their choices.

I kept waiting for something more important to happen but we are just stuck in Maria’s mind for a few months and there’s no real resolution to anything.

I learned about this on a podcast by somebody who said it was the best book they’d read in ages. I didn’t get it. ( )

Maria is a mixed race college student who is very fair skinned, she is adopted at a very young age by a black woman who desired a black baby. Maria has dated several white young men but is now dating and plans to marry Khalil, a mixed race young man. Maria is doing her thesis on the Jonestown massacre. She and khalil are being filmed for a documentary about mixed race young people ie The New People.
For whatever reasons, Maria becomes obsessed with a black poet she meets. She breaks into his apartment and sort of stalks him. Her behavior is curious, illegal and not explained by the author.

The ending is so bizarre and abrupt, I didn't quite get it. ( )

This book was definitely interesting, with the narrator Maria making for a complex and layered character, although I had a lot of misgivings about whether she was a reliable narrator and the wisdom of many of her choices. I can see why this book would resonate with many, and it kinda did with me, but not completely. My feelings towards the book are mixed - I honestly can't say either that I liked it or didn't like it. ( )

Spoilers Abound
I think I hated this book. It is so negative & so blaming. Yes she is screwed up by reality but so are we all. What a sad story! I starting yelling at her but it didn't help. I guess she has no one to turn to. Jonestown was a horror but why was it her focus? What about what the boy asks? Why was she that way? What is Ethan's role? And why was Khalil so oblivious? I feel like reading it was a bad experience.

This novel made me think. I’ve been white all my life, never really thought about it, certainly didn’t ever wonder if I or my friends and family were doing whiteness right. I think, aside from the KKK, Nazis and other such groups, we white folk just take our whiteness for granted (it may be different in the south). Maria is what she terms as a one dropper, just barely, barely has African American heritage. She and her boyfriend and his sister are the objects of a documentary called “New People” about mixed race younger people. To my mind she’s a pretty unlikeable character because she is completely self centered. She obsesses about race and rightness and uses race to beat people over the head, and she is loyal to no one but herself. She was adopted by a single black woman when she was 6 months old and was whiter than her mother wanted, but still Grace, her mother, seemed to give her all the love and guidance she needed. How did she end up this way? This book could be used to get people of different races talking with each other mainly because it points up our blind spots. I’ll be thinking about it for a while. ( )