From the Bookshelf of Diversity in All Forms!…

Dear Martin (Dear Martin, #1)

Nic Stone

Start date: February 1, 2018

Finish date: February 28, 2018

Discussion: Monthly Group Reads

Why we're reading this: February Bonus Read- Black History Month

Dear Martin by Nic Stone
[close] February Bonus Read- Black History Month

Dear Martin by Nic Stone

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What Members Thought

Mar 20, 2018 Summer rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: multicultural, kindle, 2018

There are a few things I didn’t love here, with the odd structure of the novel being my primary complaint. (If you’re going the narration route, stick with it. Don’t give me random news reports and stage play-style dialogue.) That being said, the story is what really shines here. Justyce and his friends and all their complexity is relatable and poignant and something we really need to read about.

Stephen King once mentioned that readers will sometimes ask about his characters like they’re real p ...more

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Sep 05, 2022 Rose rated it really liked it

Shelves: drama, read-in-2022, favorites, crime, audiobooks, realistic-fiction, contemporary, tough-subjects, romance, quick-read

Quick review for a quick read. This is the second book in a month long reading project I'm doing in September 2022. I'm picking up banned books in YA, those that I've read and those which I haven't and doing a bit of a deep dive into them. First of which was "All American Boys" by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely -you can find that review here. The book has been challenged or removed for reasons such as - directly quoted - "profanity", "sexual innuendo" and "anti-police sentiment"/police brutali Quick review for a quick read. This is the second book in a month long reading project I'm doing in September 2022. I'm picking up banned books in YA, those that I've read and those which I haven't and doing a bit of a deep dive into them. First of which was "All American Boys" by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely -you can find that review here. The book has been challenged or removed for reasons such as - directly quoted - "profanity", "sexual innuendo" and "anti-police sentiment"/police brutality.

"Dear Martin" is the first full Nic Stone book that I read and it's an emotional one for the story it offers. Though a short read, it feels like quite the journey with everything that happens. The mixed media presentation of letters, text messages, and prose fit the narrative of the overarching story well to me, and it makes sense for appealing to a teen audience, including reluctant readers. Written from the perspective of Justyce McCallister, a Black teen bound for Ivy League and being at the top of his class at his prep academy, he first has to survive getting to Graduation. That's not always easy considering he has to navigate microaggressions and tense relationships while at his prep school. He's lucky to have people in his life to support him - his BFF Manny, his classmate/maybe love interest Sarah Jane (SJ), his favorite teacher "Doc" Dray, and his mom, when his mother isn't worried about him falling into one terrible situation after another and projecting her own wishes onto him (which is a whole other conversation).

Even from the opening pages of "Dear Martin" you realize that Justyce's journey getting to Graduation and his university life isn't going to be an easy one. He tries to do the right thing, but even from the opening scene in this book where he's trying to help his former (and notably drunk) girlfriend get home and he gets arrested by a cop who judges him as suspicious based on his hoodie and being out at night...it's not going to be easy. It's that incident among others that compels Justyce to start a personal project - writing a series of letters in a notebook addressed to Martin Luther King Jr. He tries to reason how to navigate the various microaggressions and offensive events perpetuated in his peer circles in an intention of thinking "What would Martin do?" in the face of such situations, often with the intention of taking the moral high road and keeping peace and patience despite how it makes him feel - from discomfort to anger at the offenses. It's a project that Justyce doesn't realize how brutally the tides will turn, but he chronicles his experiences, both relationship and event wise.

I couldn't help but feel bad for Justyce as he stumbles from one tense event to another, and I think it's realistic in the sense of establishing how isolated Justyce feels when he sees himself (most specifically as a Black teen) being used in a way that's advantageous to others and they don't see who he really is behind crude assumptions and stereotypes. He tries to navigate between the environment he's in versus one he feels he should belong to, but realizes he doesn't fit in either despite his searches. It takes several events for him to get to that point, but it comes to a climax in a terrible incident that turns his world upside down, also involving police brutality in connection to a series of crimes that are chronicled throughout the story.

For me the note of police brutality in this is very realistic and horrifying, showcasing very specific racial prejudices and displays of hatred throughout the novel - escalating to some horrifying events that leaves Justyce with grief, turmoil, and uncertainty. He tries to do the best he can in the aftermath, finding support where he least expects it, and ultimately challenging conventions that he knows are wrong. I appreciated how honest it was and how it connected the dots of how Justyce navigates against the prejudices that are put against him and his loved ones.

I loved it, and I thought it did a great job of handling some difficult subjects in an immersive and nuanced way. I haven't had the opportunity to read the second book in this series yet, but I definitely want to see where the author takes the story beyond Justyce's journey here.

Overall score: 4/5 stars. ...more

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Jan 25, 2018 Maya B rated it really liked it

Shelves: young-adult, debut-novel

Excellent YA debut novel. Fast paced and well developed characters. I also enjoyed the letters written to Dr. King, it made the story very unique. Its a story I recommend parents read along to and discuss. I felt this story was filled with a lot of important topics that young black men are facing today.

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Nov 22, 2017 Kaytlin rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites, overdrive-read, read-2017

The characters is this book were easy to love. Justyce, the main character, writes a series of letters to Marin Luther King, Jr., which I think is a brilliant concept for a book. The letters are interspersed throughout the book, which I prefer to reading a book only of letters. Please pick up this book.

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Mar 02, 2018 Tippy rated it liked it

Shelves: race, coming-of-age, 2018, diversity-in-all-forms-group

Some things were really well done and others needed some work. First the good stuff.

This book does an amazing job of capturing how it feels to wake up one day and realize that everything you thought about the world is wrong. You get to watch as Justyce becomes totally disillusioned with the world he's in. It's not that he was sheltered or totally naive before, but he had defense mechanisms in place that made him believe that it wouldn't happen to him. After the triggering incident, we watch as h Some things were really well done and others needed some work. First the good stuff.

This book does an amazing job of capturing how it feels to wake up one day and realize that everything you thought about the world is wrong. You get to watch as Justyce becomes totally disillusioned with the world he's in. It's not that he was sheltered or totally naive before, but he had defense mechanisms in place that made him believe that it wouldn't happen to him. After the triggering incident, we watch as he realizes he can no longer give the world the benefit of the doubt- the world hasn't earned it and it can even be dangerous to assume positive intent when people around you are doing the opposite. So how do you continue to strive to be a good human in that world? Where no matter what you do, there will be people who assume the worst of you, believe you're inferior and deny you opportunities for no reason?

I thought this was really well done. I seldom see this captured in fiction so well.

Now for the bad....

One short-cut mechanism used by the author is to set up artificial discussions in a class called "Societal Evolution." In this class, a white kid will deliver one line- such as "affirmative action is reverse racism" and then the woke students get to deliver paragraphs of why that's nonsense. This feels like a really cheap way to get to lay down your argument on various topics. Rather than spell it out, I'd rather it was worked into the story better. Also, what rich boarding school, with a total of 8 black students, would hire a half black teacher to teach an entire class on "Societal Evolution?" I don't buy it.

One thing that comes up is that Justyce falls in love with a white woman and his mother disapproves. His best friend says not dating someone because she's white is not something MLK would do. For the record, this is false. MLK did fall in love with a white woman. He thought seriously about marrying her. But he decided instead to choose a wife that met the expectations of him for the career he had chosen, a preacher, long before he became a civil rights leader. (When he did look for a wife, he was looking for someone who had the right sort of temperament for a preacher's wife. Coretta also had to do things like pass a cooking test for him before he would marry her.)

We've gotten so caught up in the legacy of Dr. King. Assumptions are made about how he would have acted or what he would have believed and much of the time they contradict what he actually said or did. I would highly recommend the book Parting the Waters if you're interested in learning more about the Life of Dr. King. He was a complex individual and I think it does a lot of good to understand the civil rights movement as a whole, particularly as we continue to fight for equality. ...more

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Feb 25, 2018 Donna rated it it was amazing

Shelves: death, african-american, friendship, n-y-times-best-seller, multicultural, murder, relationships, fiction, realistic-fiction, mc-literature

Excellent!! Young adults should read this. All of this is present: driving while black, arrested for no reason, falsely accused of a crime, mistakenly thought to have a gun (which was a cell phone!), best friend killed by a policeman, policeman found not guilty... and even more.

But the way that Justyce deals with the mental anguish of all of this is by writing letters to Martin Luther King asking him what would he do?

Brilliantly done.

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