Katy O.'s Reviews > On the Come Up

Angie Thomas didn't just live up to the expectations I had after reading and loving The Hate U Give, she went to an entirely new level with On The Come Up. As a school librarian and reviewer of a great deal of young adult literature, I can tend to feel a bit of ”been there, read that" with many stories. This isn't a knock on YA, it's simply a result of being an adult reading a lot of YA. However, with On the Come Up, Angie Thomas brings a fresh and vital story to the genre, and also one of the most amazing voices I have ever read in any level of literature.

This story is about the systemic racism (and poverty) that prevails in America and the realities of so many Black youths in our country. It hits rap culture, racism, police brutality, gangs, drugs, and more. Thomas doesn't hold back in her scathing criticism of the current state of things (and many of the people) in fictional Garden Heights and the surrounding wealthier neighborhoods, projecting to the cities of the US as a whole. What impresses me the most is her ability to build empathy in readers for characters who so often are written as villains - she digs deep into why drug dealers are dealing, why addicts are using, why parents abandon their children, why families are living in poverty, why gang members are in gangs, why some rappers are using the lyrics that they do, and more. The why is honestly the most important part of all of those issues when reading through a critical lens with the knowledge of the systemic racism that has always plagued the US.

Reading this book at the same time as The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration and immediately following Heavy: An American Memoir gave me such important context to bring to the story. I also recently read Rap Dad: A Story of Family and the Subculture That Shaped a Generation which helped me immensely as a reader who listens to NO rap music, but holds a very healthy respect for the genre as a cultural standard.

On the subject of issue book vs. non-issue book - this is a capital-I-issue book. And it's the gold standard of such. If you get a chance to listen to Angie Thomas' interview on the podcast "It's Been a Minute", please do. It added such a rich layer to my reading of this book because it made me understand completely who this book is for and the motivation for writing it. Thomas makes it blatantly clear this book is for the Black kids in neighborhoods like the one she grew up in in Jackson, Mississippi and how closely the neighborhood of Garden Heights is based on this same neighborhood. Sure, this book is a window for suburban white kids and middle-aged white women like me, but that's not who she's really doing the work for.

In addition, her words in the interview about the attempts to ban The Hate U Give are spot on. When she describes how an 8-year-old wrote to her after reading it and said his mom gave it to him and he loved it, she talks about how some white moms are worried about their 13-year-olds reading it. She lays it out that if a Black mom feels that her young son needs this story because of his reality, then white moms shielding their teens from even reading about it is absolute privilege. That hit me so hard. The attempts to keep OTCU out of hands of teens will surely come, and I guarantee Bri would have words to throw back about it. This is the life and circumstances that teens are living, and the very least white parents and teachers/librarians can do is encourage more privileged kids to read it, rather than shield them from it. As for the kids that Thomas is writing for, let's all do our part to get this book to them. In any way possible.

If you are a white adult who claims to "not read YA because I'm an adult", I challenge you to READ THIS BOOK. Open your mind. Listen. Learn. You don't need to review it, but know that Thomas is speaking her truth, as well as the truth of a vast number of people in our country. Honor them and hear the story.