Dear Martin by Nic Stone

The systemic injustice perpetuated against Black Americans has been thoroughly documented in nonfiction and dramatized in television, film, and other media. On one level, the conversation is nuanced and complex, but at the same time the conversation is pretty simple: racism ensures unequal opportunities for purportedly equal Americans. Fiction can help to engage young people in these conversations, which is where books like The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas and Dear Martin by Nic Stone come in.

Dear Martin is a story about Justyce, a promising young Black man on his way to Yale. The book opens with him trying to get his drunk half-Black ex home safely by taking away her keys and loading her into the back of her car. An officer assaults him, cuffing him and accusing him of nefarious crimes. Stone balances the story of Justyce’s trauma from the encounter alongside his love triangle situation—his hot ex Melo and his debate team partner, SJ, of whom his mom would not approve because she’s White. We see the day-to-day exchanges at Justyce’s prep school, where vocal White boys like to loudly pretend that racism in America is over. The story takes a turn midway through the book—Justyce and his best friend Manny are at a stop light when a White man pulls up beside them, demanding that they turn their music down. The conflict escalates, and as Justyce reaches to turn the music down, the man shoots them both, fatally wounding Manny. The rest of the book is the fallout, the trial, and Justyce trying to work things out.

In terms of police violence narratives, I’d place Dear Martin ahead of The Hate U Give on the grounds of pace alone. Where The Hate U Give starts with a traumatic scene and then takes its time reaching a conclusion, Dear Martin moves forward at a rapid clip. Sometimes, that clip is even too quick—particularly with respect to the climax and resolution, but as a ‘teachable’ book I think it would retain more engagement from students, even if it sacrifices some of the Black joy that peppers Angie Thomas’ work.

To keep the tight clip of the book, Stone is put in a position of more rapid intensification. At times, I really appreciate that. For example, the court case gives a sample of critical conversations instead of an extended back and forth. At other times, the intensification seems a little bit convenient. For instance, at the climax of the book one of the antagonists is killed off suddenly without any ramp-up, which is pretty deflating, and, while true to life in its irresolution, feels a little narratively unsatisfying. There’s another scene where Justyce is roped into a group Hallowe’en costume of ‘stereotypes.’ He presents himself as a thug, but one of the White kids in his group goes as a Klansman. It doesn’t feel in character with Justyce, even if he is trying to fit in.

While the book has some level of the inescapable cringe of YA dialogue, the characters generally felt sincere and likable. The White boys are a little too villainous; the gang members a little too TV-movie, but in the closing scene of the book I found the interaction between Justyce and Jared at Manny’s grave genuinely moving.

From a formal standpoint, the book keeps things fresh. Stone alternates between chapters written in third person, describing Justyce’s daily goings on, and letters that Justyce writes to Martin Luther King Jr. as part of a reflection exercise. There are also sections that revert to a screenplay format replete with snappy dialogue and parts that offer one-page news reports. The style is somewhat inconsistent, but I really appreciated the big swings Stone took for a young adult fiction novel, blending theatre and reportage and the epistolary form.

I also like Stone’s use of symbolism throughout the book. There are a few different reasons that she draws attention to Justyce’s wrists—starting with handcuffs before moving on to some tender moments with SJ and a gifted watch that had been intended for his dead best friend. The resonances are a nice treat for observant readers.

The debates that get illustrated cover a range of complications and contradictions in the Black experience. I think most of the conversations would be familiar to readers, but they get presented in a way that I could see teachers engaging productively with students to address social issues. It’s always tricky when navigating using a text like this as a core novel. As a White teacher, is it my place to force Black students to read about and discuss traumatizing experiences with their predominantly White classmates, especially when the book makes reasonably frequent use of the n-word? Am I shirking my responsibilities by not teaching the book and having White students open their eyes to injustices? These questions are tough ones to navigate that can only really be answered contextually in the moment.

All things considered, Dear Martin is an engaging text that has a lot to offer to young readers. The book isn’t without its faults, but Nic Stone covers a lot of ground in what amounts to be just a few hours of reading. Fiction is a vehicle for more deeply understanding the reality of others and Dear Martin is a really nice portrait of the systemic injustice we need to continue to rail against. 

Keep up the good fight!

Assata: An Autobiography by Assata Shakur

    A common adage would have us believe that history is written by the victors. I would contend instead that history is written by the writers, which might sound like tautological nonsense but the official record of history, in my mind, is nothing if not the most thoughtful and compelling narrative of the time. Victors are all too often selective in their relationship to fact and victors are rarely good writers.

    Assata Shakur’s autobiography, by contrast, is writerly, poetic, and offers incisive societal commentary. It’s rare to find nonfiction with such a novelistic approach, much less one that is so well-achieved. The structure of the book is highly attuned to the literary medium and takes full advantage of its potential. Not that Shakur wrote the foreword, but Angela Davis’ introduction to the book gives excellent background to Shakur’s life that helps to contextualize the narrative. It outlines the crimes for which Assata Shakur was accused, the role of the FBI in creating false evidence, COINTELPRO’s program of targeting Black Liberation activists, and Shakur’s escape. It was a helpful primer for people who may not be familiar with the injustices of the time.

    Following the introduction, the autobiography is presented as a compelling story. The first chapter is a tense account of her in the hospital after having been shot, with police trying to extract a confession. The dramatic tension is then interrupted as she recounts her early childhood in chapter two. From there, Shakur expertly navigates two storylines, alternating in short increments between her incarceration and trials followed by her upbringing and budding engagement with Black Liberation. Her approach was an excellent way to keep me engaged. I found it riveting. Moreover, the chapters of Shakur’s early life always seem to be oddly prescient. They often end on a poignant note that applies to her future trials.

    The engaging effect of alternating time periods is heightened by a sort of mixed media approach; Shakur often punctuates moments with poems she has written, and inserted into other chapters there are transcripts of kourt conversations. Shakur offers an impassioned speech while on trial that is absolutely stunning and remains relevant today—more on that shortly.

    Assata, as a literary character, is incredibly endearing. Angela Davis’ foreword highlights Assata’s positivity in the face of horrific conditions; she notes that Shakur downplays the awfulness of her conditions in prison, but I also want to highlight the joy and warmth that radiates from the text. For instance, Assata recounts a boy having a crush on her for the first time. He leaves flowers on her windowsill every day and her mom says “You tell that boy to stay away from that window [...] Now he’s putting flowers in the window, the next thing you know he’ll be trying to climb in” (72). Immediately after, Shakur comments, “But she still thought it was kinda cute. The next thing I knew she was telling all her friends about it. While I was embarrassed, it also made me think I was cute. No boy had ever paid me that much attention before and I loved it” (72). Given Shakur’s storied life, the fact that these simple moments of humour and joy make it into the book are so endearing, but also aligned with Shakur’s approach to revolution: it cannot happen without love for others and a kind of gentleness of spirit.

    As I mentioned, though, even these personal moments are connected to broader social commentary. After recounting this moment of sweet childhood tenderness, there’s an absolutely heartbreaking moment. The boy with the crush asks Assata out and she says no. When he asks her why, she says, “Because you’re too black and ugly” (72). It’s absolutely crushing and Assata immediately provides commentary on how wrong it was and how it was formative to her future politics:

“I will never forget the look on his face. He looked at me with such cold hatred that i was stunned. I was instantly sorry for what i had said, but there was no taking it back. He looked at me as if he despised me more than anyone else on the face of the earth. I felt so ugly and dirty and depraved. I was shaken to the bone. For weeks, maybe months, afterward, i was haunted by what happened that day, by the snakes that had crawled out of my mouth. The sneering hatred on his face every time i saw him after that made me know there was nothing i could do to make it up to him. There was nothing i could do but change myself. Not for him, but for me. And i did change. After that i never said ‘Black’ and ‘ugly’ in the same sentence and never thought it. Of course, i couldn't undo all the years of self-hatred and brainwashing in that short time, but it was a beginning” (72).

I love this passage for a few reasons. First, it connects the personal and the political in one paragraph, highlighting the way Shakur’s autobiography weaves the threads of her life so thoroughly. The emotional tenor of the moment is so powerful, especially in being presented after a moment of sweetness. Moreover, you can see Shakur’s poetic lilt here; describing her words as “the snakes that had crawled out of my mouth” is a great turn of phrase that encapsulates the horror and venom of the moment.

    On the topic of poetry, Shakur’s poems are paired with chapters in a logical way. I’d be curious to know whether Shakur wrote the poems at those times in her life or if they were written after the fact for the sake of the autobiography project. In any case, some of the poems are clearly revolutionary in their approach—she uses repetition to emphasize key ideas, appeals to brother and sisterhood, lays claims to a better world—and she reframes her experiences in the grander scope of amerikan politics. I’d like to highlight, briefly, my favourite line from her work:

“Love is a contraband in Hell,

cause love is an acid

that eats away bars” (130).

I am always a fan of unexpected line breaks, so to have “cause love is an acid” establish such a painful idea and then follow it up with how it’s an acid “that eats away bars” in the next line is just a chef’s kiss. Again, it also seems to embody the need for compassion and care for the self and others that drives Shakur’s politics.

    The text is full of tension. While the trial procedures, imprisonment, and kourt battles read like high drama, Shakur’s early experiences are also riddled with a quiet (and sometimes overt) tension. One moment that is stranger than fiction is when Assata goes home with a “nice guy,” who calls his friends for an attempted gang rape. Not knowing about Assata’s life, I felt genuine horror for her. It’s the kind of scene that would read as outlandish in a novel, but here comes across with such genuine suspense. The boys start fighting over who gets ‘first’ with her and when things start to break, the host boy starts panicking that his mom will be mad if things are broken. It’s kind of funny how pathetic it is that he’s doing this horrendously awful thing and a broken vase is what allows Assata to escape unharmed. The only thing I’ve seen in fiction that comes close is when there’s a chapter from Londonstani by Gautam Malkani that builds up for a violent gang fight and then it gets cancelled at the last moment because one of the boys had to buy groceries for his mom.

    From Shakur’s time in prison, there’s a series of circumstances that lead to her being pregnant. I was never totally sure where things were going (again, since I lacked background knowledge to her life). I wasn’t sure if the pregnancy would last or how it might affect her experience in prison. It was interesting when the racist doctor gets replaced and the new one essentially evokes an anti-choice argument for altruistic purposes, saying that he’s “prepared to testify in any court that to deny you proper medical care would be tantamount to committing murder” (128). I can only imagine the gratitude Assata must have felt for hearing those words.

    In kourt, Assata’s statements are prescient. She clearly was speaking to her times, but also speaks beyond it. While the focus might have changed a little, this passage could have had a few words changed and been read out in kourt today. I’m going to quote a passage at length here and allow you to think of how it resonates:

The idea of a Black Liberation Army emerged from conditions in Black communities: conditions of poverty, indecent housing, massing unemployment, poor medical care, and inferior education. The idea came about because Black people are not free or equal in this country. Because ninety percent of the men and women in this country’s prisons are Black and Third World. Because ten-year-old children are shot down in our streets. Because dope has saturated our communities, preying on the disillusionment and frustration of our children. The concept of this BLA arose because of the political, social, and economic oppression of Black people in this country. And where there is oppression, there will be resistance. The BLA is part of that resistance movement. The Black Liberation Army stands for freedom and justice for all people. / While big corporations make huge, tax-free profits, taxes for the everyday working person skyrocket. While politicians take free trips around the world, those same politicians cut back food stamps for the poor. While politicians increase their salaries, millions of people are being laid off. This city is on the brink of bankruptcy, and yet hundreds of thousands of dollars are being spent on this trial. I do not understand a government so willing to spend millions of dollars on arms, to explore outer space, even the planet Jupiter, and at the same time close down day care centres and fire stations. (169)

The passage highlights so many issues that remain pervasive. Given the recent history of the space race between billionaires, it’s easy to parallels to what Shakur writes about building rockets and going to space while day care centres and fires stations close down.

    Incidentally, one of the compelling elements of the narrative is Assata’s gradual conversion to socialism and communist philosophy. Watching her education happen is interesting for a few reasons. First, she offers commentary on her elementary and high school teachers, and it’s encouraging that all of the components of education that actually resonated with her have become, essentially, mainstays of public education now. It actually made me think of the book Cultivating Genius by Gholdy Muhammad, which also historicizes Black reading groups. Then, when Assata grows up you see her engagement with the work of Revolutionaries like Mao and Marx and Castro. Even more importantly, I found it compelling to see Assata navigate revolutionary circles. She complains of groups that are all talk and no action, and groups that are not thoughtful in their approach, groups that struggle to maintain coherence in their tactics and become paralyzed in their own work. Watching that trajectory felt relatable and really humanized the process of revolution.

    I have very few complaints with Assta’s autobiography. The one area I felt ought to have been given more attention was the ending. The penultimate chapter is Assata in prison. Her grandmother comes to visit her to tell her about a dream in which she was free. The postscript is then an account of her being free and her new life in Cuba. The book closes with her grandmother, mother, and daughter coming to visit her. A few thoughts crossed my mind because I wanted to hear more about how the escape actually happened. I initially thought that the FBI had killed Shakur, which would account for the ending feeling more abrupt than necessary, but when I looked it up I found that she is still alive. Knowing that she is still alive, I can understand why she might have left details of her escape out of the book. Certainly if her accomplices are still alive, publicizing the information would be unwise. The FBI still has a $1 million reward for her apprehension.

    The whole book felt so prescient it could have been contemporary. The social issues Shakur writes about have persisted, the phrases she uses have become part of our modern parlance, and the spirit of the work offers inspiration for the work currently being done by groups like Black Lives Matter. It was extremely compelling hearing about the shady tactics that the FBI was using to railroad her, the mistreatment she faced by police, the false evidence, the slew of injustices committed against her in her wrongful arrests, and so on.

    Assata Shakur’s autobiography is a wonderful reflection on an extraordinary life. It’s well-written, beautifully structured, informative, inspiring, personal, and political. I often don’t find autobiographies that compelling, but Assata is a wonderfully literary work well worth the read.

    Happy resisting!