I enjoyed this book. It's message driven, but the message is timely and much needed. Jade is a scholarship student at a prestigious private school in Portland. She is an artist who takes things other people throw away and makes them beautiful. Inspired by current events, and the experiences of York, the slave who traveled with Lewis and Clark on their famous expedition, her artwork is her outlet and form of self care.

Jade's story is telling in many ways. Watson's message of embracing oneself aims to strip away the stigma of inner city black women, and does so in ways I appreciate greatly. We see Jade's mother as hard working - and Jade's teachers, mentor, and society see Jade's mother as negligent. Jade sees her mother as loving, and doing the best she can to both provide, watch over her daughter, and trust the school and mentorship program to fill in where she is time strapped and financially unable. When Jade's mentor, Maxine, begins making plans without Jade's mother's knowledge, Jade's mother speaks up and lets her know this is unacceptable. I saw a lot of my teenaged self in Jade. Thoughtful and introspective, yet being so afraid to speak up. By the end of the book, one conversation from Jade's mentor makes Jade magically able to speak up for herself.

Jade is deeply affected by a police brutality case of a teen in a nearby community who is the same age as she is. The teen is hospitalized due to her encounter with a police officer over a small infraction. Watson does a great job of showing the inner turmoil of the protagonist, similar to what young women may be thinking or feeling in today's climate. This incident leads to a heated discussion with Sam, Jade's white friend, who sees the situation differently. Watson faces difficult topics of race head on. Themes in this book touch on classism within the black community, discussing racial incidents across the color lines, mentorship - both good and bad, and opportunities for low income students - who gets what.

Also, I appreciated that this was not a romance driven YA! And this too is a message. Jade mentions that mentoring programs seem to overwhelmingly focus on telling girls that they should be wary of boys - but boys aren't a problem for Jade. She would like for the mentoring programs to focus more on teaching about maintaining a budget and opening a business. I was really feeling Jade as a protagonist!

The story does end happily - almost too happily, but a happy ending does not a flaw make! Overall this is a great read that encourages us all to do better, and I for one, am taking note--the Jade's of the world are watching.

**Recieved Netgalley eBook ARC

This timely young adult book hits the reader with brutal insights on race, class and wealth on a regular basis, all while telling the story of Jade, a black girl in Portland, Oregon trying to fit in and succeed in a biased world. The prose is fairly stark, while occasionally breaking into a more poetic style to draw attention to the emotion and message being conveyed. At some points it feels as if Jade’s story is a bit rushed and merely a backdrop for the necessary and welcome commentary on being black in America, but given how striking that commentary is, the story draws you back into caring deeply about the characters and their reflection of modern America. Jade’s art and her relationship with her mentor, Maxine, are focal points of the book and provide depth to the narrative. I read an ebook advance reader copy of this title, and look forward to having a final copy to re-read and mark all of the passages that struck me on topics of race, gender, police brutality, body image and class.

VERDICT: A must-purchase for middle and high school libraries and a book for all teens to read immediately. Adults will also find the social commentary compelling.

The first half of the book went a little slow for me but it was a good read. I knew it was a realistic contemporary going into it but I still thought it would have a little more grit. I loved that Jade was smart and knew where she wanted to go in life. Her relationships with everyone grew around her in turn making her grow. With her mom letting go, with Maxine letting in, with Leelee always understanding, and with Sam learning to hear each other. Jade transformed in front of us. I found myself getting more involved toward the end. I really ended up wanting to know more. I want to see I'm so here for a sequel of jade in college! I want to see her blow the world away with her art. All in all it was a good read but I was left wanting more. 3.7 stars

Reflections on Emotional Resonance in Renée Watson's PIECING ME TOGETHER

There are so many things which have been happening in the last several years (days!?) which have deserved our emotions. As a person of color, the uptick in police slayings of African Americans indeed engaged my emotions - but sometimes those emotions are so massive they can't be expressed - and the "public" page seems not the place for something so large, unwieldy, and indiscreet. But Renée Watson has shown herself to be a woman with a dab hand at conveying complex emotional nuances in a delicate manner - not clouting the reader over the head with them, but allowing them to feel and experience them, and to puzzle them out, in their own time.

While there are a few novels out this year speaking directly to the experience of being a minority in a dominant culture world, I haven't read one which deals as well with the poignancy of the human condition of wanting acceptance and love just because -- and not wanting to be bundled with being "fixed" or "helped" in some way. Occasionally, I observe themes or topics in the zeitgeist, and try to work through these ideas in a talking-out-loud kind of way. This is an occasional series which proposes to study these elements in children and young adult fiction from a writer's perspective.
Let's survey a story!

Listening to these mentors, I feel like I can prove the negative stereotypes about girls like me wrong. That I can and will do more, be more.

But when I leave? It happens again. The shattering.

And this makes me wonder if a black girl's life is only about being stitched together and coming undone, being stitched together and coming undone.

I wonder if there's ever a way for a girl like me to feel whole.

Wonder if any of these women can answer that.

- from PIECING ME TOGETHER, by Renée Watson, p. 86, uncorrected proof

What is emotional resonance, anyway? It's not just playing up an emotional angle within a narrative... it's allowing readers into the character's mind to understand as the character reacts, and to feel in concert with them. The emotion ...lingers, like a chord played on a piano seems to hang in the air. That this author is able to take such messy emotions dealing with race and empathy and class and create in them an entrance for the reader to access them and echo them is nothing short of amazing. This is truly some world-class writing, and while I'm not one for blethering on about awards before their season, I'd be surprised if this book didn't take home at least a few.

I was gifted to come to this book with little or no expectation, other than that it was a story about a black girl in Portland, Oregon. As Portland is historically racist and still struggling with that legacy, I expected something touching on that. Growing up on the West Coast, I've been a "model minority" in a culture which has surface expectations of us all "getting along," -- because we're not the South, after all -- but which underneath often has its own stinking brand of putrescence in the form of "genteel" racism and people able to explain away or turn a blind eye to things which don't directly impact them. (Yes, it's the same everywhere, but it is particularly interesting at times on the West Coast.) Having been that person who - of my own self - was doing pretty well, yet the color of my skin and general poverty and lack of opportunity made people want to jump in and save me, and having to negotiate my emotions surrounding my gratitude for the help and my resentment for its need, boy, do I relate to this book pretty strongly. Watson starts out with that idea of a black girl needing and getting help, and then just ....dives down deeper and deeper into it -- unpacking the ways in which black people judge each other and seem to ask each other to conform to a fracture idea of normal, as well as the ways in which "good" white people are so eager to "help" us that they are often blind to what we can give. If this sounds like it's too deep for a YA novel, though, it's not. Number one, there's really nothing too deep for a YA novel, if the writing and exposition is done well, and two, Watson has such range in terms of bringing something up and letting the character - and the reader - react to it that you find yourself with an unputdownable book.

That doesn't often happen to me. I found myself taking notes. How. Does. She. Do. That!? And I knew it had to do with how she skillfully lays out emotion.

Jade has already accepted that upward momentum in her life is going to mean getting up out of her neighborhood, but as she's already scholarshipped into a mostly-white school, she's wondering how much further "out" she's going to have to get. Her mother - her counselor at school - her teachers - all urge her to get involved in this and sign up for that, and she's constantly having Opportunity pressed on her, in the name of bettering herself -- as if she's not good enough -- and supporting her "at-risk" status, despite the fact that she makes A's and isn't at risk for much of anything - except living in her black neighborhood... and being black. Jade articulates the demeaning nature of so many of the offers and suggestions she receives -- here, honey, we don't want you to miss out on THIS thing which will take you further from your side of the city into where the other half lives obviously better lives. or Hey, Jade, why don't you sign up for THAT thing to help make you a better person, because you're obviously not enough now?

Jade's mentor is a young black woman, and even from her direction comes relentless, well-intentioned pressure. All around Jade are people who think she is a girl who needs saving, a girl in need of a lifeguard to fish her out of where she is, instead of a swimmer in need of someone swimming ahead, whose arms breaking the surf are close enough to see where to safely go. Jade does need a hand, but she's not sure she can trust her mentor's reach... not when the woman's so obviously messing up he own life. I love how Jade keeps her own counsel in this regard - she trusts whom she trusts, not who she's told has her best interests at heart.

This is for the times when York told the Native Americans that he was a negro man, a black man. they didn't believe him. They took dirt, scrubbed his skin, trying to wipe the black off. I can just hear them asking,
What are you?
Where are you from?
Why are you so dark?
What happened to you?

And he would tell them he was a black man, not dirty, not a supernatural being. A black man. But for some reason, they thought this man who had this same dark skin and big frame all his life didn't know his truth.
"You're not black," they said.
"Let me see," they said.
"Does this hurt?" they said, as they tried to scrub his very existence away, erase his experience.

- Watson, p. 191-2, uncorrected proof

One thing I love, additionally, is that Jade finds her own exits -- she NEVER loses her friendships with her cousin and her cohort from school. Despite the fact that they don't see each other often, they text and get together and still are friends. I so appreciate that Watson didn't strip Jade of her friendships in an attempt to make her look tragic, and then give her the clichéd One White Friend so that readers could see and understand that We Can All Just Get Along. And I appreciate that Jade has a falling out with her white friend, until they learn to be friends, until the friend learns to not turn away from what she hears, and until they both understand the importance of communication and sharing and listening, if friendships across races are going to be real and deep. (I don't even have adult relationships with that much potential, and I couldn't help but write myself a little note about This Is How You Do It.)

Secondly, I love how Jade and her crew have their art - whether through words or collage or drawing, they can all do something for themselves, to express themselves, whether they are in a wealthy & well funded district with plenty of opportunities, ...or not. Jade's art centers on what she's thinking, and so we see her respond to finding out the deeper history of Lewis & Clark, and how their story intersects with the history of where Jade lives, and how it eclipses the story of the Native woman, Sacajawea, and the black slave, York, who traveled and explored with them, doing twice the work for none of the respect. When Jade turns her art from her internal landscape into the external world, I love how the author uses her small offerings, together with those of her friends and cohort, to create a gift that changes and brings together a community.

Finally, I love how Jade explores language, how she looks through a wider lens at a greater world longs to go. The Spanish vocabulary words and pronunciation at the beginning of each chapter are wonderful - language and words are a code to get her out of the world she's in and open the door to elsewhere. These are all such relatable things for anyone, and yet they're also a specific flag waving at black readers, saying, "Pssst! The world is bigger than you think. There are new experiences around the corner - and around the globe. Get up, get out, GO." It is a message of hope and of momentum which just cheers me still.

Sometimes I just want to be comfortable in this skin, this body. Want to cock my head back and laugh loud and free, all my teeth showing, and not be told I'm too rowdy, too ghetto. Sometimes I just want to go to school, wearing my hair big like cumulus clouds without getting any special attention, without having to explain why it looks different from the day before. Why it might look different tomorrow. Sometimes I just want to let my tongue speak the way it pleases, let it be untamed and not bound by rules. Want to talk without watchful ears listening to judge me. At school, I turn on a switch, make sure nothing about me is too black.

- Watson, p. 199, uncorrected proof

This just hits me, on multiple levels of grief and longing and agreement -- and I think will hit readers of various ethnicities, sizes, and experiences as deeply and as poignantly as well. As their emotions are engaged and resonate, I expect them to spend some time thinking, and then get up, filled with these perhaps largely unarticulated, inchoate emotions, determined in some small way to do something with them, to change their world.

And that is the power of emotional resonance in an excellent novel.

I received my copy of this book courtesy of the publisher. After February 14, you can find PIECING ME TOGETHER by Renée Watson at an online e-tailer, or at a real life, independent bookstore near you!

The cover is beautiful but makes the book feel juvenile instead of teen. I only made it about halfway through this book before I decided it's really not for me. I think I get what Watson is going for in not telling us another realistic fiction story full of struggle in the ghetto, but everything is too perfect. The rich kids are really the bad ones, everyone from the neighborhood is talented and kind and no one resents her? It doesn't feel real.

What it does feel is didactic. The historical figures like York aren't worked in in a way that makes me think she would actually latch on as an artistic concept, it's literally a repeated school lesson. Same with a lot of the conversation in the book (like Sam being a good friend, where I stopped reading). It feels like Sesame Street.

It isn't a bad book by anymeans, but really not my cup of tea. It feels like the same attitude Jade is trying to rebel against in the book.

This will go live on my blog on Feb. 14. Kellyvision.wordpress.com

Jade has big dreams but she's not sure how to make them come true. She knows she wants to be an artist (she's currently into collages) and she knows she needs a scholarship to go to college. But...how to get from here to there? Enter a mentoring program. (Which is sort of helpful and sort of not).

I loved this book. It's incredibly complicated (Jade is black and attends a mostly white school. Once she started going there, it's affected her relationships with her neighborhood friends. And it's hard to be friends with people at her school because they don't get it, either.

Most people don't consider themselves racist. Racism is for people like Steve Bannon, right? But there are a lot of ways to be racist. Like, for example, assuming Jade is going to shoplift from a store and making her leave a bag when white women all over the same store are still toting theirs.

This novel could start a lot of great conversations. Highly recommended.

An important and unflinching depiction of the experience of contemporary African American teens. At times the narrative was uncomfortable, but it was never dishonest.

~

A timely and powerful story about a teen girl striving for success in a world that too often seems like it's trying to break her.

Jade believes she must get out of her poor neighborhood if she's ever going to succeed. Her mother tells her to take advantage of every opportunity that comes her way. And she has. She accepted a scholarship to a mostly-white private school and even Saturday morning test prep opportunities. But some opportunities feel more demeaning than helpful. Like an invitation to join Women to Women, a mentorship program for "at-risk" girls. Except really, it's for black girls. From "bad" neighborhoods. And just because Maxine, her college-graduate mentor, is black doesn't mean she understands Jade. And maybe there are some things Jade could show these successful women about the real world and finding ways to make a real difference. (via Goodreads)
I received an eARC from the publisher, Bloomsbury US Children's, and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I had this book sitting on my computer for a while, and I sincerely regret not opening the file sooner. First of all, the cover is perfect. Seriously, scroll up and look at it. It's perfect for this novel. Second of all, this book is the embodiment of the #blackgirlmagic tag, and I loved it.

Piecing Me Together is a novel about Jade, an unapologetically black teenager, who is trying to find her voice and place in the world. Jade is brilliant and earned a full ride to a very expensive, very white private school. She's also an amazing collage artist, which I loved, because that's an art form I haven't ever seen in books.

I would like to add a trigger warning for mentions of police brutality. It doesn't happen to any of our characters, but it's mentioned and causes Jade a lot of distress.

I loved that Jade was able to find herself, and change her world so that it was absolutely hers. I loved that she never lost her friendship with Lee Lee, and that Lee Lee was always there to build her back up when she needed it.

I also want to talk about Sam - the only main white character in this story. Her grandmother is openly racist, and neither she nor her grandfather ever challenge it on page.

There's a really great moment near the end of the story that I think a lot of white readers will learn from, on how to respond when you see a friend experience a microaggression. I think the reading experience of Piecing Me Together will also help white folks to understand how it feels when something like that happens. It's something we don't experience as much, and certainly not in the same way.

This book also featured fantastic black women of all sorts, talks about the challenges that black women and families face, and showed a way that teens can be active in social justice programs in their own ways. The ending of this book had me in tears, guys. I won't tell you what happens, but it's fantastic.

This was a five star read for me, and I cannot recommend it any more highly. You can pick up a copy through Amazon, Indiebound or your other favorite bookseller!

Five stars

~

RENÉE WATSON is the acclaimed author of the teen novel, This Side of Home, and two picture books: Harlem's Little Blackbird and A Place Where Hurricanes Happen, which was featured on NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams. Her middle grade novel, What Momma Left Me debuted as an ABA New Voices Pick. She lives in New York City.
Disclaimer: All links to Indiebound and Amazon are affiliate links, which means that if you buy through those links, I will make a small amount of money off of it.

This is rich, multilayered novel that deals with timely themes. I appreciate the way it focuses on different female relationships, each of which has great benefits and also challenges for the main character, rather than having female friendships feel like they take a back seat to romance. A satisfying, relatable story that will entertain readers and give them a lot to think about.

This book truly took my breath away. It’s an artistic masterpiece that may be rethink how I interpret things. I went into this book extremely excited to be reading an ownvoices book with a black MC. And honestly, I couldn't get over how authentic and lyrical this voice sounds.

Our main protagonist, Jade is a student at a mostly white high school, who is living in a suburb of Portland and all she wants to do is succeed and travel and be able to express herself in art. She’s accepted the scholarships that come her way, and applied herself to SAT prep, all the usual. Her single mother and her live in a “bad” or impoverished neighborhood and so her school counselor considers her “at risk” so she suggests a Women to Women mentorship program.

Covering issues of race, discrimination,art, friendship, and feminism this book opens your eyes to different environments and how they affect who lives there. I just honestly can’t get over how wide-spanning this book it, and how much it meant for me to be able to read it!

The female friendships in this story were so solid, that I wanted Jade to come over here and be my friend. Although there are many struggles with communication, at the end Jade learns to speak up for herself so that the others can understand what she’s feeling in response to the things that are happening around her. Happily, I noticed an immediate undertone of feminism, for how Jade act day-to-day and what the mentorship program was teaching her.

Also, there was a lot of components mentioned about identify. I believe that Jade mentions herself a “thick” person, and how she doesn’t see herself represented in media that often. There are fat-positive messages that are in play here, and I could really appreciate that because I know that there’s a need for more of these types of narratives.

I came to truly root for her as a character, I wanted her to be a successful artist that loved making her black art while still helping support her mother. I came to admire her strength in the face of micro-aggression and oppression that she faced on a daily basis. I came to love her creativity and deep insight into the collages and art that she created. Basically, I fell in love with Jade and I feel like she is a character that will stay close in my mind.

There are no words to describe the reading experience of this book, except when you truly step into someone else's shoes and look through their glasses, you feel that type of life-changing empathy that in turn changes you.

**Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinion are my own.**