The Hate U Give

Dear Martin (2017) by Nic Stone

Everyone should read this book. Everyone. Black, white, young, old, everyone needs to hear the conversations that go on in this slim volume from a phenomenal debut author.

Justyce is a stellar student at a great school who plans to attend an Ivy League university. He’s doing everything right - but the police officer who handcuffs him on the ground when he tries to help his drunk ex-girlfriend doesn’t know anything about who he really is. All the cop sees is a young black man, and he assumes the worst. Justyce is all too aware of what his skin color makes some people think, and the dangerous race relations still very much alive in this country. As part of his processing of what happens to him and people like him, Justyce writes letters to Martin Luther King Jr. He wants to be able to emulate Dr. King’s peaceful, thoughtful style, but sometimes that seems easier said than done. It’s a good reminder of the ties to the past, and the ways we’ve changed - and haven’t.

There’s a long dialogue of a class discussion in which several white students don’t grasp the fact that there are still serious and systemic race issues in this country. I witnessed a disturbingly similar discussion between a group of 9th graders this year - this is real.  It’s crucial to see how the other half thinks, if only to understand how to better prove to them what pieces of the puzzle they are missing.  There’s also a conversation here about how affirmative action is unfair to the majority, and after hearing an educated adult in real life say that, it’s interesting to hear the conversation play out on the page.

Dear Martin is the legacy of recent YA hits like The Hate U Give and All American Boys, and those authors have put their stamp of approval on this one, for good reason. As in The Hate U Give, the main character has left his neighborhood to go to a mostly-white private school, and that certainly creates tension in his identity. He doesn’t always agree with his friends’ concepts on race, and he has to figure out what to say to them and what he is willing to stand for.

This book is much shorter that The Hate U Give (a little over 200 pages) and a simpler narration style than All American Boys, so it may reach a larger or different audience than those books. It’s also a logical next book or companion to one of those, to continue the conversation. Part of me wishes this were in 1st person POV (rather than 3rd person limited) because while we definitely get Justyce’s thoughts, I’d like the reader to be even closer to him.

It’s heartbreaking, difficult subject matter that is so crucial to get out there, to students and adults alike. I hope this gets the recognition it deserves, and the wide distribution it needs.

“45 years ago today, the Chicago Police Department and the FBI murdered Chicago Black Panther Chairman Fred Hampton while he slept in bed. The assassination was both the goal and endpoint of an illegal nighttime raid that saw agents and officers spray more than ninety bullets into the apartment where he, his pregnant fiance, and others slept.  Prior to his death, Hampton had been the leader of a citywide interracial organizing effort, laboring to bring blacks, Puerto Ricans, and poor whites into a functioning alliance – what he called a “Rainbow Coalition.” Among his other core initiatives were the negotiation of a truce between Chicago’s gangs to curb street violence, establishment of a free health care clinic for the urban poor, and implementation of one of the most successful Free Breakfast for Children programs that the Panthers ever ran. He was 21 years old when they murdered him. No one was ever convicted in his death. The City of Chicago later settled a civil case for nearly two million dollars.“