Living in an age where movements like #OwnVoices mean increasing representation for BIPOC stories, Malcolm and Me is a historical fiction story that I would have appreciated as a young reader who rarely saw Black history on the shelves of my local library.
In Robin Farmer’s debut novel, we encounter Roberta, an eighth-grader in Philadelphia who finds herself revolutionized by The Autobiography of Malcolm X. The target of her revolt? A combative and racist nun who just so happens to be Roberta’s homeroom teacher, and Roberta’s mother who can’t quite seem to understand Roberta. Through the course of the story we see the ways in which watching her parents’ marriage fail moves Roberta to take out her emotions on others in destructive and self-righteous ways. As one of the few Black students at the private Catholic school that her parents sacrificed to get her admitted into, Roberta is greatly aware of how her high academic standing provides her access to classes that she rarely sees other Black students in, while also feeling trapped by this particular dynamic. As she learns more about Malcolm X, she draws more connections between the unfairness that she experiences — from no longer spending as much time as she is used to with her father because of her parents’ separation, to being kept out of the school’s writing contest that she longs to enter due to the after effects of her altercation with the racist Sister.
Read full review Black Girls Create.
