The Names of All the Flowers

by Melissa Valentine

Melissa and her older brother Junior grow up running around the disparate neighborhoods of 1990s Oakland, two of six children to a white Quaker father and a black Southern-transplant mother. Their house is flanked by both crime scenes and boutique cheese shops, and they play across these borders during their summer adventures. But as Junior approaches adolescence, strangers react differently to his presence; he develops a hard front and falls into drug dealing. Right before Junior’s twentieth birthday, the family is torn apart when he is murdered as a result of gang violence.

The Names of All the Flowers connects one tragic death to a collective grief for all black boys who die too young. An intimate recounting of a life lost, Melissa Valentine’s debut is a portrait of a family fractured by the school-to-prison pipeline and an enduring love letter to an adored older brother. It is a call for justice amid endless cycles of grief and trauma, declaring: "We are all witness and therefore no one is spared from this loss."

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Race, Biography Memoir, Family, Audiobook

296 pages, Paperback

First published July 14, 2020

Reviews

[Justin Demeter · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s been a while since a book has brought me to tears; since I’d rather keep reading than get up to be a decent human and wipe the streams of snot from my face. I wish I could leave a copy of this memoir as an offering on every street corner in Oakland, in America. If grief were a bouquet... somehow she turns it all into love. timely and tragic, and a testament both to resilience and to the enduring violence against black bodies. this should be required reading (particularly for white folks).

[Olga Zilberbourg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Melissa Valentine grew up in Oakland, California, in a family with a Black mother a white father. Fifth of six children, she was the closest in age to her brother Junior, and spent much of her childhood trying to chase him around the neighborhood, getting into adventures with him. As the two of them grew up and the world around them began to perceive her brother as a Black man, and respond to him based on the shade of his skin, their paths started to diverge. Junior was bullied in school and eventually started to look for ways to become powerful and intimidate his potential offenders. He landed in prison when he turned 18, and a week after he was released from prison, he was gunned down on the side of a highway by some people who chased after him. This book tells his story, but it also tells Melissa's own story, and the story of their family. The power of this memoir is that it shows each character in full, holding their flaws with love and showing pride for their achievements. I particularly admired the way the writer was able to balance her voice as a protagonist and as a narrator in this memoir, simultaneously showing and telling the events of her life. She uses the present tense, cutting in when necessary to give us her adult perspective. ("I can't feel compassion for my parents -- not yet -- I am still too young." ) This gives the narrative voice a timeless quality, constantly reminding us that these events are not in our historic past, but that Black men are dying today, just as young as Junior, and just as violently. It also gives another life to Junior, in the here and now.

[Alice · Rating 2 out of 5]

Lovely memoir, but I am not sure of Melissa is simply telling her story or excusing some of the abuse her family put her through (ie, her brother, Cornelius, beating her up & pushing her down the stairs). I feel like her lifelong victimization is present in her writing and thought process.

Great memoir highlighting victimization & secondary victimization. Both tell her story & her brothers story to highlight the systematic disadvantages the two of them face as people of color. Melissa is a very strong woman.

However, my one qualm was brushing the fact that her brother (and a friend), while a victim of circumstance and systematic behaviors, also drunkenly beat up and assaulted a prostitute and proceeded to run her over and leave her for dead. You can be both a victim and a perpetrator. Many times, perpetrators only exist due to inequities and unaddressed issues from earlier in life, which was Junior's case. I also understand that even if your family has done bad things, it is nearly impossible to not still love them. You can be mad at someone and still love them.

Overall, this book is a great read & I believe it should be in many social science courses. It is great education & discussion material for socioeconomic gaps between white people and people of color, as well as the disturbances within the CJS & foster care system. It shows how oftentimes, even domestic disturbances within colored communities will go unreported due to the mistreatment of both perpetrators & victims on part of the police system. I think that this memoir is more valuable than many other non-fiction novels, as we are learning directly from someone sharing their own life story.

[Linda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rigorously compassionate love letter to the author's family, to Oakland, and to Black youth everywhere resisting and succumbing to the school-to-prison pipeline. While absolutely her own voice, Valentine brought There There and The 57 Bus to mind.

[Cassandra Lane · Rating 5 out of 5]

As police brutality and state-sanctioned murders of black people continue, we often hear the rallying cry: "But what about black-on-black crime?" This-- from the same people who are not willing to explore the historical and present-day racism, the school-to-prison pipeline, the deep economic disparities and the kind of debilitating self-loathing this country attempts to plant inside every black baby born here. The kind that whispers to you when you are just a wee thing, watching movies and commercials and reading books that try, over and over again, to get you to buy into the lie that you are less than. That whisper turns into a roar that rips from the inside out.

I have not read a book like Melissa Valentine's THE NAMES OF ALL THE FLOWERS, which is a beautiful, painful and exquisitely written narrative about her brother Junior, who was gunned down on the streets of Oakland when he was 19. "Say his name, Say her name," we chant when yet another one of our brothers or sisters is killed. In this memoir, Valentine gives us not only Junior's name, but an intimate look into his head, his heart, his fear, his dreams, his joy. While we know upon opening this book that her brother does not make it, her storytelling powers help us get lost in the "now" of watching these kids grow up. We hope with and for them, for the whole family. We see how easy it is to get lost in our schools, to get caught up, to view the streets as a way out. A way out of what? The constructs this country created as the American Dream, a dangled carrot that might as well be a rainbow for far too many. While Valentine's parents worked hard to build their own piece of that dream, to live in a middle-class neighborhood, they, too, are victims of the machine.

Through telling this personal story, Valentine gives us a story that is global and whole, bursting with life in the middle of such pain. Every parent and guardian of black children should read this. Every teacher and administrator should read this. Every person who's ever uttered that statement about "black-on-black crime" should pick this book up today.

[Aimee Garay · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Names of All the Flowers by Melissa Valentine is a memoir about the author and her older brother, Junior, who was killed when she was 16. The story of their childhood offers us a chance to see Junior as a child: innocent. Before he is labeled a problem or scary or a monster as Black boys too often are. How an incident that resulted in his loss of control and power led him to the streets. The descriptions of the neighborhood they grew up in in Oakland and the trips to Alabama to visit their mother’s family are poetic. The desperate feelings she had of wanting her brother to just “be good” are heartbreaking. It’s hard for me to imagine the trauma of losing a sibling. Let alone revisiting it and sharing it with the world. Melissa does this and does it masterfully. I don’t usually cry with books, but this one definitely brought the waterworks out.
The author shares her brother’s story but also her trauma and the retrauma with the deaths of so many other Black boys and men. Too often the media reports these deaths and we never really learn about who these boys and men are. This book is a beautiful tribute to Junior and I highly recommend it. 5/5

CW: physical violence, drug use, self harm, grief

[Lauren Parvizi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Melissa Valentine writes with such candor and eloquence, I knew right away this memoir would stay with me. The complex relationship she describes with her brother, her other family members, and the streets of Oakland, is imbued with compassion as the author recounts a heartbreaking and, at times, frustrating reality. Even as she describes the powerlessness she felts as a young girl, her gaze is unflinching, and she’s able to deftly navigate family dynamics, generational trauma, misogyny, grief, and the devastating damage of systemic racism, particularly for black boys and the people who love them.

[Riley Hughes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Valentine paints a beautiful picture of family through this memoir. This book individualized an issue that is so often coined as “Black on Black” crime, which dehumanizes and minimizes the trauma felt on an individual. “The Names of All the Flowers” is sad, but beautiful and will definitely stick with me.

[Tyanna Jaye · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully impactful. A read that will stick with you long after you've put it down.

[Tesilyaraven · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are so many things I loved about this book, I’m not sure where to start. Once I started reading, I couldn’t put the book down.

First, there are the outlines of this story: losing her brother to gun violence before he turned twenty; growing up in Oakland, the daughter of a white father—an eccentric landscaper prone to collecting things strewn everywhere from his truck to their front yard—and a Black Southern mother who works nights and sleeps days; the hilarious stories of “pitchforking” to clean up the house with her siblings when relatives come to visit; her brother’s struggles to find his place in the world—not fitting into the Black or white world, he shapes an identity meant to protect himself.

This memoir beautifully fills in those initial outlines. I was moved by the author’s rendering of her love for her brother—stories that show us how she looked up to him, ways he protected and looked out for her when she felt no one else did (I especially love her recounting of the time he bought her Nikes for her first day of high school); how they were left to their own devices as kids in the “lawless” days of summer in Oakland.

Her words bring Junior to life. There are clear themes, in beautifully rendered prose, of what it is to grow up in a Black boy body; how Junior was labeled as bad (as she tried to be the good, silent daughter); how powerless he felt; how, try as they might, his parents were powerless to protect him. In one of the most painful scenes in the book she describes the violent bullying he endured in middle school, making it clear why he built up an armor to protect himself, choosing among few options given to a Black boy growing into a man

Her writing puts you in the moment as she navigates the streets of Oakland, observes the annual family reunions in “mythical” Alabama, shares her joy—yes, joy—when their cluttered family home burns to the ground, making her feel like she can make a fresh start. Humorous, realistic dialogue captures each of her siblings’ character. She makes her own and Junior’s desires clear—they both want to be big, visible, free, to take up space. Junior in particular wants to feel unafraid, powerful, fearless—a Black boy “ravenous for power”. She observes as Junior builds a fortress, a shield, around himself—his tough, mean, strong costume, as she calls it—that will show the world that he is master of his own body, that only he can protect himself. But as she says, “there is no protection from Black boyness.” There is no good, safe place. So, he goes out looking for examples of who he can be. He starts stealing to fight against feeling so powerless and confused. Melissa doesn’t want to be shut out of his world, so she’s ready to participate in anything he’ll include her in, no matter how much it scares her, from stolen candy to the first time smoking weed to the gun he places in her hand. “I don’t worry. I feel cloaked, because my brother protected me.”

Meanwhile, Melissa is working on creating the “texture” of her own shield—apathy, which masks loneliness. She observes that they’re both failing, not blooming—but that Junior fails loudest, while she fails “slowly, quietly.”

In this book Melissa makes sense of Juniors actions. She observes his transformation. “The cold hard thing that lives inside my brother is growing larger.” I found the section toward the end of part two particularly compelling where she shows us how the separation she’s made of the different men inside her brother painfully begin to mix. “I will bear witness to who you are in your mask, so I can be there when you return: I must be willing to see it all if I am to see you.” This mixing is particularly painful in part three where she pieces together the crime that lands Junior in prison. Every time she tries to re-enact the scenario in her mind, she cannot make Junior do it.

It all comes crashing down when Junior is put in jail. “I was a good accomplice…I was a good sister. All of it was my investment in some future I imagined for us. Some future where we could be free and happy…” Her disappointment is heavy when she realizes nothing she’s done, nothing her family did, could keep him from the street, could protect him from the few options he and other Black boys like him are given in our society.

In the final pages of the book you experience the shock and grief that just as quickly becomes the realization that Junior is one of “endless black boys” who will die “chasing some kind of power.” She focuses on not forgetting, on holding onto every memory of him, on surviving the trauma, and ultimately healing. In so doing, she unites Junior with all of the other Black boys who’ve died senselessly, and unites all of the families and loved ones who are left with this gaping hole. And she brings the rest of us into this pain and beauty to witness his singular, beautiful life. “His lost black life is every lost black life…my grief is part of a collective sorrow.”

Melissa’s love for Junior is inked into every word. I could barely read the final pages through my tears.

Highly recommend to anyone who loves great memoir writing. This book should be on all of the anti-racist, Black Lives Matter reading lists.

[Erinp · Rating 5 out of 5]

Should be required reading. Left me breathless at the end. Beautiful. Loved it.

[Vishy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I discovered Melissa Valentine's memoir 'The Names of all the Flowers' recently, and I just finished reading it.

When Melissa Valentine moves back to Oakland after being away for many years, she gets in touch with her childhood friend and they catch up. Then this friend's brother and their cousin also join and Melissa looks at this friend's brother and remembers her own brother, whom she calls Junior, whom she loved very much, who was shot dead by unknown assailants when he was nineteen. The rest of the book is about Melissa and her family, and especially her brother Junior, the good times and the bad, and how things happened which ended in this heartbreaking tragedy.

Melissa is biracial – her mom is black and her dad is white. Her mom's side relatives treat her and her siblings as one of their own, and they even accept her dad as a part of the family, while her dad's side relatives attempt to show affection, but it looks like condescension. This adds to the complexity of her and her family's experiences, because frequently they are treated as outsiders, both by the black and the white community, and so things are doubly hard and challenging for them. It is especially hard for the kids, especially Melissa's brothers, and her favourite brother Junior gets beaten up in school for not being black enough. The book starts with this complex background and gives a perceptive and sensitive depiction on what it means to be a black teenager in today's America. Melissa's love for her brother Junior shines through in every page, and Junior comes through as a complex character, someone who is happy and cheerful to start with, but whom the system and society harass and pigeonhole into a box, and when Junior tries protecting himself by any means possible, it all ends in tragedy. It is moving, poignant, heartbreaking. I cried after I finished reading the book.

I loved 'The Names of all the Flowers'. I can't wait to find out what Melissa Valentine will come up with next. This book is published by the Feminist Press and they continue to rock – this is the third consecutive amazing book by them that I've read.

I'll leave you with some of my favourite passages from the book.

"Dad is a poet in the way he believes in life, the growing of things, of children. But his poetry is the kind people don’t understand, maybe he doesn’t either, the way it grows out of control, the desire for life so great it escapes even him; he cannot control this life. He loves children, which are another kind of life. I have observed the way he admires babies. He holds them awkwardly, kind of like the way he dances, as if his joints do not easily bend, moving choppily to a rhythm only he can hear. Instead of the normal way of holding a baby—bringing it to your chest, rubbing its back, smelling its skin—instead of the cooing and pleasantries most people make in the presence of babies, he stares into the child’s eyes lovingly, with reverence, while holding its head in his sandpaper palm. I have seen him do this with my baby cousins in Alabama. I have felt the discomfort of the people around him, wondering what this white man is trying to transmit into the skull of this black child. It is usually a black child he holds up with this kind of reverence."

"She warns us not to show our true colors, warns us regularly—before we go to the neighbors’, before we go to school, before we go to Grandma’s. What color is that? Sometimes it is the color of desire—don’t show hunger, don’t show need or want of any kind to outsiders. But often it is something else—the color of the city, the color of the cement, the color of the curse words that often slip from our mouths, the blackness of our bodies that mixes with the white to make us what the little Southern kids call bright. “Why are you so bright?” they ask in earnest, and I look at them bewildered, wondering with my literal city ears what brightness they see in me. Bright, but still very much not white. Is that the color Mom means? The not-white? Or is it another color? She would prefer we act like we don’t come from the city, like our feet were born dusty, like we came from roads, not streets. She would prefer we act full, satisfied. Junior doesn’t care; he always shows his truest colors."

"I know by now that nice and good are myths. There is no good, no nice. And if there is, it is impermanent. There is proof all around me : a homeless summer and a burned-down house full of trash that was masquerading as good, as nice; a brother whose bad follows him wherever he goes, no matter how nice—there is no protection from black boyness. Good and nice are only illusory feelings, but, at least for a moment, I enjoy wrapping myself up in the illusion."

Have you read 'The Names of all the Flowers'? What do you think about it?

[Galena · Rating 4 out of 5]

Heartbreaking story of a girl growing up in Oakland with her fairly disfunctional family and the trauma of a brother who dies in the streets. Beautifully told and hammers home the cycle for black men especially in our culture. Early on they told they are bad, then dangerous and in search of their own power are lost to the streets. She struggles with feeling this same sense of powerlessness but also trying to keep her own ship upright. Another book that helps understand the deep racism that as a white person I never experience.

[EJ · Rating 1 out of 5]

I feel somewhat awful giving a memoir 1 star, as I am not out to rate someone’s life experience. This book is about trauma, loss, and grief, and I am sympathetic to the author’s heartbreaking loss of her brother; a tragedy I cannot begin to fathom. That said, this book came across as heavy handed, redundant, and trying too hard to be poignant. There was a lot of telling and not a lot of showing being done here, and while I think the story was an important one that needed to be told, the overuse of certain words, use of italics for emphasis and apparent lack of several rounds of heavy edits made this an unenjoyable read that I found myself desperate to finish at the end. TL;DR: a story worth telling, but terrible exectution.

[Wendy Millstine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dear Melissa, and author-extraordinaire!
I just finished devouring your memoir. It’s going to take me some time to process the weight of emotions and reactions that your words and story have conjured for me. Having lived in Oakland for 27 years, your family is familiar to me. I walked those same streets and I got to know my neighbors. Their stories pierced my heart and still affect me to this day. I didn’t know your family, but I recognize Junior and your parents and your siblings and your friends and you. You and your family now live permanently inside me, and I carry them with me with great care and tenderness.

Your memoir is a brave and courageous political act. Memoirs shape and affect society, history, politics, culture, and the discourse in the media. The timing of your book will no doubt fuel and be an important contribution to the current Black civil rights movement of our time.

I also want to share how much I value and was memorized by your craft. I found myself entranced by your poetic passages and your youthful perspective maintained throughout. Chapter after chapter, I felt swept up in your unique rhythmic language. Page after page, I was in a constant state of awe and wonder and horror and fear and empathy and compassion and humbling revelation.

Thank you sounds so inadequate and incomplete for the brilliant and moving gifts that you’ve shared with the world. But what I feel is genuine gratitude. I am singing your praise and sharing your book with others. Word is spreading!

Only love, only respect,
wendy

[Naomi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not in a long time have I read a book that literally took me to the childhood of the author. I could feel myself in Selma, AL and in California and in all of the other places with Valentine as she masterfully retold the truth of her youth. This book is a testament to the power of family, as messy as it can be, and a hearkening to the pain of loss and suffering. The Names of All the Flowers is a story that many will find parts of themselves in the pages. For those who have never experienced a similar set of circumstances, Valentine gracefully allows the reader to come alongside her pain, lessons learned, and in the end, we can all celebrate Junior's life - in spite of, and because of the tragic loss.

[Rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

The intimacy of Valentine’s smitten-sibling adoration for her brother as she witnesses the forces of racism and white supremacy encroach on his body make this book required reading for anti-racist positionality and work. It is precisely in the tenderness of how Valentine cherishes her older brother that we as white-identified readers acknowledge the weight of responsibility we carry to take action. Anti-racist work is not cognitive, nor, ideological alone - it is in fact an intimate pact we make to honor where love has been ruptured by systems of violence. A violence that we must find and feel in order to heal. Valentine makes this reckoning of heart-breaking responsibility impossible to escape. As it should be. Nothing less than being haunted by what has been lost is acceptable.

[Lara Lillibridge · Rating 5 out of 5]

“This book is an ode to our collective grief and trauma. It deserves to have a name. It deserves discussion." (5)

Melissa Valentine grew up in Oakland (born in 1984) and although she was raised in a two-parent home in a decent neighborhood, still she lost her brother to the streets. This memoir is a recounting of her childhood and the tragic loss of Junior right before his 20th birthday. Valentine writes beautifully about her life and loss with a lyrical voice. A must-read for 2020.

"There aren’t enough walls to fit all the names of all the lost ones and all the poetry they incite." (288)

[kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

it is heartwrenchingly frustrating to read about the collective grief black communities continually have to face. this memoir serves as an open letter, a specific address: to oakland, california; to her older brother, junior; and to other black boys who die too young to needless violence. keeping his memory alive is the primary purpose of this memoir, and it is obvious; weaving between past and present tense ensures we still feel junior's presence while able to mourn his passing. her grief as a sister, as a black person, as a human, is visceral.

[Lori · Rating 4 out of 5]

Powerful and Strong

Born to a white father and black mother in Oakland, California, author Melissa Valentine and her siblings live in a working class family crammed into a small home filled with things not necessarily useful. Things her father collects thinking he may find use for them someday. The children: Cornelius, Claire, Vivian, Melissa, Chris (called Junior throughout as their father is Chris Sr.) and later, Angelica fight for space both physical and emotional, identity, to feel seen and loved as they sometimes feel invisible, hungry --for food but something much deeper, something they cannot fully name when still so young.
Melissa and her siblings are close but she and Junior seem to have a special bond. He is protective of her even though HE needs protection from the chaotic and sometimes violent streets of Oakland and from the bullying in the schools and on the streets. Melissa builds her big brother up when she can, admiring the treats he brings her even as they later grow more extravagant. She knows he's stealing them but she is young and candy and gel pens excite them, fleeting bits of a little extra "stuff" to fill some of the emotional void felt by well meaning parents and a mom who works nights and has to catch up on sleep while the kids are going about their day at school etc.
A prominent theme throughout the book is how black children are born into a white world where they often feel at a disadvantage. This theme is illustrated in Junior's behavior as he longs to be powerful, have the things he wants and feels he needs, be able to stand up to the bullies that bother him but he chases the wrong things to achieve self sufficiency, self esteem and monetary wealth as he grows. And before he has time to see it he ends up in prison and more. Melissa and the family miss him desperately during his relatively short incarceration. They tell themselves he will do better and change direction when he's released. He will learn he IS worthy and powerful just as he is. But that's not how it works out.
The author writes well and the book is professionally done. I did find it to drag in some areas and at those times I would set it aside and try again later. Overall, a little better than average but not a favorite for me.

[Hannah · Rating 1 out of 5]

i tried so so hard to get into and finish this book. i ultimately made it about half way through. the back of the book had me believe it would center around junior and his death however that isn’t the case. i found that for a memoir about grief, the loss of a loved one, being black as a mixed person, and gang related trauma it would have a lot more of that.

instead this was a book about a young girl with disdain for her parents, living in the house of a hoarder, and idolizing the perceived freedom of her siblings. if anything i think the author saw her economic status and skin color as prisons that confined her and prevented freedom (which although is true isn’t what the book was advertised as being about).

i found that the book lacked emotional connection. stories and memories were told in a way that i found disconnected, as though melissa watched this happen rather than experienced it herself. but at the same time assumes what was happening with other members of her family and their experiences.

ultimately i think that this memoir didn’t at all tell the story or was designed to tell.

pet peeves: the constant mention of dad being a hoarder, the way melissa only reflects on the events as an adult without connecting to herself as a child, the lack of emotion.

[Dorothy Bennett · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this a beautiful and touching memoir--one I chose to read because I lived in East Oakland from 1959 to 1963 while I was an undergraduate student at Mills College. My awareness of all the neighborhoods was rather limited, and Melissa Valentine's touching memoir about a mixed-race family attempting to protect a bright but adventurous son provided me with a stunning portrait of Oakland in the 1990s. Melissa was the fifth of six children born to a Southern black woman and a white Pennsylvania Quaker man. Junior was the fourth child and often Melissa's playmate. She watched her older brother blossom and also get into trouble, and like her parents, she worried about him. How can a family keep its children safe when they are old enough to get out into a dangerous world? This book will reach into your soul and convince you, if you still need convincing, that black lives do matter. It's a heartfelt tale of modern America and deserves a wide readership.

[Rebecca H.]

The Names of All the Flowers tells the story of Melissa Valentine’s experiences growing up in Oakland. We learn early on that her beloved older brother, Junior, was shot and killed at the age of 19. The book backs up to describe the circumstances that led to this tragic event. Large and working class, the Valentine family struggles to get by on a landscaper’s and postal worker’s salary. The children are mixed-race, with a white father from Pennsylvania and a Black mother from Alabama. In Oakland, Junior struggles after a bullying incident that leaves him feeling powerless. Melissa begins to struggle as well. This powerful, engrossing story illuminates structural racism in the U.S., particularly the school-to-prison pipeline.

https://bookriot.com/new-nonfiction-b...

[Jeannine Perez · Rating 5 out of 5]

I felt like i knew young Melissa, like she could have been someone i played dolls with or hung out at each others house growing up. I would read certain parts about her childhood and think, "Ha, yea i remember that from when i was little, too."

It saddens me to see how overlooked and alone i felt she was sometimes, the heartbreak that was inevitable as her and Junior got older. In the last chapter, however, i love how filled with joy she is when she's back in Selma with her Mom and Aunt's. The driver to the ocean is sort of a symbol of being able to pick herself up and continue living and fighting.

This book had me in tears! If you haven't read this book, you definitely need to add this to your list!

[Dhartridge · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am not the audience for this well written memoir in which the author works out her painful childhood and teen years in a family fraught with stress. There are six children, a mother who works nights, a father who exudes anger and overwork, all mixed in with the pressures of blackness. She has an impressive memory for the details of her very young life, in which I began to lose interest. The center of her story is her brother's early death on the streets of Oakland, which followed some terrifically bad choices on his part, including robbing and seriously injuring (or worse, it wasn't clear) a prostitute, followed by his imprisonment. This book was touted in my college alumnae magazine, where she went to graduate school.

[Potassium · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow.

This story is beautifully written (I underlined so many phrases) and so powerfully told. I was there with them. I was surprised when it happened, even though technically I knew it was going to happen. I was heartbroken. I AM heartbroken. I will be forever haunted by the words “do better.”

Also shoutout to the mixed-race girls in the room. There were some parts of this book that were like looking at my own family, and it was incredible to see my own experience reflected back to me for once.

Favorite line (about grief): “It is the heart stitched closed as an act of self-preservation and then it is a wondrous capacity to love that rips you back open.” Simply gorgeous writing.

[Michelle P · Rating 5 out of 5]

"In that space without labels when I can’t hear the soundtrack, when I shut out the crack, the guns, the murders, the failing, the chaos—we just are. We are not good or bad, no walls nor shields have been built around us, and we have no names because here we are far too brilliant, far too bright for labels. In this space we are transcendent; here, we bear the names of all the flowers. In this space, we are free to bloom—to be big, fragrant, joyful, radiant. It is in this place where I wait for you. You are not a thug or a delinquent or a monster. I am not stupid, a whore, or a fuckup. This is the place I like to see us, the space I want to make for us."

[Kayti · Rating 5 out of 5]

In her debut memoir, Melissa Valentine writes about the life and death of her older brother, Junior, and the larger collective grief experienced by Black communities as a result of school to pipeline systems and Black boys dying too young. Valentine tells her story with captivating lyricism and does a fantastic job at creating vivid imagery and complex characters. I very much look forward to reading future work from this author and will be recommending her book to friends and colleagues all summer.

[Brinda Gurumoorthy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This memoir is compelling and beautiful and paints a vivid picture of Valentine's family and her relationship with her brother. Because I teach high school students, this book made me think a lot about how young people can lose their way and make mistakes when they don't have enough support or sense of community. I wanted to hear more of the author's thoughts about systemic factors behind poverty / gun violence / the criminal legal system, and she hints at some of that but focuses more on her personal meditations (which is totally valid!)

[Julie Zigoris · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a beautiful, haunting memoir that should be required reading for every American. Not only is the prose insanely gorgeous, but the story is unforgettable. I feel so lucky that I came to know Junior through Melissa's eyes, to understand his path, and to see the inequities of racism that can "stamp" someone as bad from the beginning. I loved being inside this big family from Oakland—full of heartache but also full of love—and understanding a bit more about the overwhelming injustice of being Black in the United States.