Book Review : For Black Girls Like Me

Book Name: For Black Girls Like Me 
Author: Mariamma J Lockington

Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux (Imprint of Macmillan)

Genre: Contemporary Fiction 

Format: Paperback

Print length: 336 pages 

Rating: 5/5

Mariamma’s For Black Girls Like Me is a fiction that explores different themes including mental illness, belonging, racism, identity and resilience. 


Blurb on Amazon


In this lyrical coming-of-age story about family, sisterhood, music, race, and identity, Schneider Family Book Award and Stonewall Honor-winning author Mariama J. Lockington draws on some of the emotional truths from her own experiences growing up with an adoptive white family.

I am a girl but most days I feel like a question mark.

Makeda June Kirkland is eleven years old, adopted, and black. Her parents and big sister are white, and even though she loves her family very much, Makeda often feels left out. When Makeda's family moves from Maryland to New Mexico, she leaves behind her best friend, Lena— the only other adopted black girl she knows— for a new life. In New Mexico, everything is different. At home, Makeda’s sister is too cool to hang out with her anymore and at school, she can’t seem to find one real friend.

Through it all, Makeda can’t help but wonder: What would it feel like to grow up with a family that looks like me?

Through singing, dreaming, and writing secret messages back and forth with Lena, Makeda might just carve a small place for herself in the world.

For Black Girls Like Me is for anyone who has ever asked themselves: How do you figure out where you are going if you don’t know where you came from?


Review


The story features an eleven-year-old black girl, Makeda, adopted by White parents. She struggles throughout the story to fit in society and tries to adjust to a white family to prevent facing racism. The plot navigates through her experiences in the white world, and people's take on her life being in a white family, yet facing the eyes of people who never leave a chance to make her feel vulnerable and show her that she did not belong to that place.


The character development is smooth. Readers will relate to the protagonist in many ways because of her attitude of resilience and fighting to find her identity, though in her case, it is about her race and caste. The protagonist's mother is again another character that readers will pity as she goes through mental illness. When readers come across Lena, the protagonist's best friend, they will love and resonate with their bond reminding them of their friends, their safe space.


The author's writing style is thought-provoking and honest which will draw readers to the story and keep them tied to the book till the end and crave for more. The story flawlessly explores multiple serious themes with profound and utter carefulness that will make readers understand how making fun of people can lead to serious consequences and how specifically categorizing people based on caste, creed, race, poverty, and other parameters can turn their lives upside down because we never know what the other person is going through in his life.


The overall experience of reading this book is fulfilling both in terms of themes and the way the author wrote it. 

Buy it from Amazon - For Black Girls Like Me

I’m participating in #TBRChallenge2024 by Blogchatter.

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