Savvy's Reviews
Not sure you want to dig into that new book? Let Savvy do the hard work for you! Here's her latest review!
Black Brother, Black Brother by Jewell Parker Rhodes
Donte wishes he were invisible. As one of the few black boys at Middlefield Prep, he feels as if he is constantly swimming in whiteness. Most of the students don't look like him. They don't like him either. Dubbed the "Black Brother," Donte's teachers and classmates make it clear they wish he were more like his lighter skinned brother, Trey. Quiet, obedient.
When an incident with "King" Alan leads to Donte's arrest and suspension, he knows the only way to get even is to beat the king of the school at his own game: fencing. With the help of a former Olympic fencer, Donte embarks on a journey to carve out a spot on Middlefield Prep's fencing team and maybe learn something about himself along the way.
I hate to be the one to say it but I really did not enjoy Rhodes’s writing style in this book. Her sentences were all very short and choppy and it was very distracting and took me out of the book. I felt like, because of the writing style, I was either missing or missed a lot of details in this novel.
In this novel we have a couple of kids who are just trying to fight back against racial injustice within their private school by proving that they are just as good as anyone else and deserve to be treated as equals in their neighborhood. I thought the element of fencing was a great representation of how these characters were really fighting to prove themselves and their worth within their community.
I learned a lot about fencing though, honestly, and felt like it lingered a bit too much on that aspect. There’s a lot of metaphor meets in-your-face-symbolism in this book. It is definitely an excellent introduction into racial inequality for younger readers.
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