Angel of Greenwood is a beautifully written novel about the horrific Tulsa Massacre of 1921. The story is told in the alternating viewpoints of Angel and Isaiah. Both individuals are dealing with hardships in their lives, but it is obvious that they care for one another deeply. They work together, along with their teacher, to provide books to the poorer areas of their town. Then, they both face the massacre. There was a sweet balance of romance and action in this book.

Thank you to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for an arc in exchange of an honest review.

I'll be honest. This new book caught my eye for everything but it's description. I adore the author's name: Randi Pink. I haven't researched whether it's a pen name or real name, but I figured a story by a chick named Randi Pink has to be worth reading. Next, the cover art is striking! Beautiful brown skin girl with thick natural hair. Bold primary colors of red and blue background with white writing. I correctly assumed the story was historical fiction based on the title. I didn't need to read the description since I was already interested by this point. Advance copy accepted!

Seventeen-year-old Isaiah is the town troublemaker with a secret: he is actually an avid reader and poet. He never leaves home without his journal and is a follower of W.E.B. Du Bois. He believes black people should rise up and claim their place as equals. Sixteen-year-old Angel is known as a goody-goody church girl. She follows Booker T. Washington and believes black people should rise slowly without conflict. The two opposite teenagers are offered a chance to work together on a mobile library.

On May 31, 1921, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, a white mob storms the town in what becomes known as the Greenwood Massacre of 1921. The town is left destroyed and thousands displaced. Isaiah and Angel then realize they aren't each other's enemy and must agree in order to survive. The amount of black history, black literature references and activism methods are what makes this book a good read. The themes explored may open your mind to how others think, regardless of their race. The main message I walked away with is: pride in your community!

Bookhearts, add Angel of Greenwood to your reading lists for Black History Month 2021. Do additional research while reading to get the full context then share it with others. And to the powers that be, please consider adapting Angel of Greenwood on film. It will make a powerful picture!

Happy Early Pub Day, Randi Pink! Angel of Greenwood will be available Tuesday, January 12, 2021.

~LiteraryMarie

I received this as an ARC book. It has been a while since I read a book that affected me they this book did. A story of two coming-of-age kids experiencing love, death, turmoil, and growing up way to fast.
The Tulsa Race Riots are not well known, this book beings it to light from these children’s eyes.
Randi Pink did a fantastic job with this story. It felt real.

Thank you, NetGalley, for the ARC in exchange for review.

Rarely, I read a book and just have a strong desire to meet the author. This is one of those times. How did Randi Pink become so artistic in her language? From Isaiah's poetry to descriptions of history and tragedy, Pink transported me to Greenwood, OK, 1921.

Only recently has the Greenwood massacre come up in our nations history lessons. Why? Why wasn't I learning about this in school 35 years ago? The same reason I didn't get a lot of Black history at that time.

This book about Angel, a super smart girl caring for others' children and her dying father, and Isaiah, a troublemaker hanging out with the wrong friend who knows he needs to change. The two fall in love with each other, not just physically, but challenging each other mentally. Pink was able to weave this love story into family drama and one of the greatest tragedies of our time. It's a must read for middle school and up. All the way up - adults would do well to add this to their libraries.

Angel of Greenwood was a tough read. I came very close to crying more than once.

This book is very character driven. Angel is pretty close to the perfect teenage girl. She believes she's on earth to help people. Isaiah was hard to like. He blames his bad behavior on other people, mainly his best friend, Muggy. Isaiah has been a trouble maker and a bully. But he's also a poet. Isaiah sees Angel dance and falls in love with her. But he's still rude. Seriously, I wanted to smack him so many times.

The book takes place over about a week in 1921. They live in Greenwood which has been called Black Wall Street. The people there owned businesses and were successful. Not everyone, but it was a good place to live. The author's note explains a lot of what happened during that time. Greenwood was burned down by white men (and a few women who looted). Many people died and the town was destroyed. Angel and Isaiah grew closer during this time and she fell in love with him, too. But there were so many other things happening. Angel's dad was dying. There were kids that couldn't go to school, so their teacher asked them both to spend their summers bringing books to them. Angel was always helping at home and didn't really get to do things she wanted. So taking this job was perfect for her.

I'm going to share a few quotes below since this review is a bit hard to write. I really liked this book and the poetry in it.

The book has a lot of darkness. Warnings for bullying, cheating, misogyny, sexism, racism, illness, poverty, fire, looting, talk of burning flesh (human and animal), abuse.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for my review copy. All quotes taken from ARC and may change before final publication.

Quotes:

Angel was the bolt of lightening, and poetry was the conduit, channeling all of that raw energy into tangible words.

Angel wanted to help people, but she also wanted to live a life of her own. Without ghosts and vendettas dropped onto her like blinding raindrops.

Mrs. Turner didn't care one bit if her patrons could or could not pay. More than money, she longed to inject beautiful into forgotten places.

Angel of Greenwood is a book, days after finishing, that I still don't know how to process. Pink is able to take readers on a journey of dread, joy, secrets, and thrills. Tulsa is their community of happiness in a world of strife. A world of injustice. A testament to the fact that the worst things can happen to the best of people. But at the same time, Angel of Greenwood is a love story. Pink uses the background of Tulsa, the currents of danger, to paint a sweeping portrayal of love and forgiveness.

In this Dual POV story, Angel and Isaiah are compassionate and endearing. The ways we need the bravery to be ourselves, to believe we can change. Angel of Greenwood is a story about their lives, their trials and mistakes, their joys and fears. It's a celebration of how one person can impact our life. Readers can feel the mounting tension. Knowing that the powder key is going to explode, but I was swept away in the details of Angel and Isaiah's lives. How we worry about the details of tomorrow, while not realizing it's not guaranteed.

High schooler Angel has the gift of service, always helping a neighbor with her fussy newborn, assisting her mother as she cares for Angel’s dying father, or worshipping with the praise dance team at church. Classmate Isaiah has picked on Angel in the past, always trying to curry favor with socially powerful Muggy, whose family is wealthy and connected. Recently though, Isaiah has been working hard in school, finding himself drawn toward writing poetry and studying the work of W.E.B. DuBois.

When making one of his infrequent visits to Sunday School to please his mother, Isaiah sees Angel dance and revises his opinion of her. Seeing Isaiah’s interest in Angel and hoping to coax him away from Muggy’s influence, their English teacher gives Isaiah and Angel a summer job running a bicycle based bookmobile to get books in the hands of less affluent kids in the community. As they work together and debate the ideas of DuBois and Angel’s favorite, Booker T. Washington, the two grow closer.

It’s 1921 and Isaiah and Angel live in the Greenwood section of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Just as their love is kindled, the whites of Tulsa burn Greenwood and murder many in the community. The major portion of the story focuses on life in Greenwood just before the massacre. Candi brings to life a strong set of characters, deepening the grief of the readers at the violence, disorientation, and loss they experience. EARC from NetGalley.

Set against the backdrop of the 1921 White mob burning of Greenwood (Tulsa), an affluent Black town, and in which they killed an estimated 300 of its residents and left survivors homeless and destitute. The White Tulsa townspeople even deployed a plane to bomb the major church of Greenwood. In this well written YA novel, seventeen-year-old Isaiah, a town troublemaker, and sixteen-year-old Angel, the town goody-goody are falling in love. Each have their troubles but they quickly rise to help save their community. I have said many times, if you are not reading YA, you are missing a lot of great writing.

Set in the backdrop of the Tulsa 1921 Massacre this romance proves to me that love blooms in any place and in any circumstances. Though because I have heard of the massacre while I was reading about their budding romance I was also waiting for the other shoe to drop. But this is a well written and well researched book. I recommend it highly.

"We built our paradise, he'd told Isaiah, and, son, you better believe they'll want it back one day."

Lately, I've been devouring any and everything that has to do with Greenwood so I was super excited to receive an ARC of this. I went into this knowing exactly how the story would end with the bombing of Greenwood but I was pleasantly surprised by the events leading up to the domestic terrorism.

We're following the lives of two of Greenwood's promising young adults; Angel and Isaiah. Angel who believes she was put on this earth to help others, lover of dance and an avid reader, and Isaiah, a secret poet who is caught up being a follower of the town's resident bad boy.

Angel of Greenwood is an examination of friendship, love, tragedy and a must needed history lesson. Despite Angel and Isaiah's contrasting paths, the two are brought together by their English teacher because of their love of books. Angel is a staunch supporter of Booker T. Washington doesn't think the two will be able to work together because Isaiah was a fan of the more militant W.E.B. Dubois. The two quickly realize that their surface-level thoughts about each other were very wrong.

I loved how Randi also included white women's role in the destruction of Greenwood. The erasure of this act of domestic terrorism leaves folks to believe that all of the destruction was done by white men but thanks to research we know that is incorrect.

My only issue was that it was too short. I wanted to know what happened between Angel and Isaiah during the aftermath. I appreciated this fictional look into the lives of the residents of Greenwood. I found myself rooting for every single character, even the resident bad boy. I highly recommend this book to everyone as a chance to not only learn American history but to witness how the residents of Greenwood rose from the ashes to persevere.

Thank you to Netgalley, Randi Pink, and Feiwell and Friends for this ARC that warmed my historical fiction loving heart.

Another book about the history and how dark a turn it can take. I loved the characters and romance in this one. That enough though the world can be a dark place it can also have light. This book will rip out your heart and only put half of it back. It devastated me.

Randi Pink’s Angel of Greenwood is a Young Adult novel that will teach history to teenagers in a palatable way. Although I live in the Tulsa area where the 1921 Greenwood/Tulsa Race Massacre has received widespread attention for several years, it came to national attention only recently when President Trump planned his 2020 Tulsa rally at the time of the massacre’s 99th anniversary.

Opening her novel roughly two weeks before Greenwood was set afire, author Pink acquaints readers with 16-year-old Angel and 17-year-old Isaiah, their families, neighbors, and several members of the Mount Zion church congregation. Called Black Wall Street, Greenwood Avenue and its surrounding residential area were once a prosperous, bustling black neighborhood. In fact, as Pink makes clear, many Greenwood residents achieved a lifestyle few African Americans enjoyed elsewhere.

On the other side of the Frisco railway tracks, however, lay white Tulsa, a city of rising oil industry and wealth, but also a city of workers less affluent than the Greenwood residents. Pink hints at rising tensions between the two communities but focuses largely on Angel and Isaiah. Fellow students at Booker T. Washington High School, the two teens hold opposing political views. A devotee of Booker T. Washington, Angel believes in a work ethic that leads to economic equality, but not in making any political waves. A follower of W. E. B. Du Bois, Washington’s nemesis, Isaiah is a budding revolutionary, believing political and social equality although his self-confidence has not reached the level of his ideology. While Angel is the local “goody-goody” always ready to help others, Isaiah has fallen under the influence of the local bully, Muggy Little, and has a history of making fun of Angel.

When Ms. Ferris, an English teacher, sees the scholarly, poetic side Isaiah hides from most others and especially from Muggy, she offers Angel and Isaiah a summer job transporting books from her personal library to children and adults in the less affluent part of Greenwood. As Angel’s and Isaiah’s eyes open to sides of each other’s personalities that they had not seen before, tensions continue to rise in Greenwood, breaking out on Memorial Day weekend into one of the worst racial massacres in U.S. history.

Randi Pink succeeds at telling both sides of her story: the human story of Greenwood’s people and the tragic events leading up to and resulting from the white invasion of peaceful Greenwood. Interspersing her story with poetry and hymns, with quotations from Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois, she does more than tell a good story of two teens caught up in a moment of history, she also adds cultural and philosophical dimensions to that story. In so doing, she entertains, enriches, and educates her YA audience.

Thanks to NetGalley, Feiwel and Friends/Macmillan, and Randi Pink for an advance copy that this retired teacher also enjoyed.

I probably shouldn't write this review while I'm still crying from reading the book, but there's no reason to try to hide that Angel of Greenwood broke my heart. This is such a necessary, important book - and it will break your heart.

This is the story of 16 year old Angel and 17 year old Isaiah, two Black teens living in the Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1921. Isaiah is a smart, well-read kid who has worked his whole life to hide how smart he is from his best friend, a trouble maker name Muggy. Isaiah has done a good job hiding who he is - a poet who reads W.E.B Du Bois and has dreams of going to college. Angel is the darling of her neighborhood, always stopping to help anyone who needs it, even as her father is dying and her mother is struggling. Angel stays far away from Isaiah whenever possible, because of his reputation and history as a mean kid out to make trouble. Brought together by a wise teacher to help with a book mobile for the kids of Greenwood, Angel and Isaiah get to know each other and realize they underestimated each other.

This book is so many things - a sweet story of two teens who spent years avoiding each other just to discover how much they actually have in common, but it's also a history lesson that many, if not most, people never got in school. As a white woman living in Tulsa, I never heard of the Tulsa Race Massacre until I read about it in graduate school. Young people need books like this, books that tell the story of the people from the Greenwood District.

This was a beautifully written piece of historical fiction that I think will appeal to many of my students. It's a love story between two teenagers who live in Greenwood, a thriving Black community in 1921. Although I loved reading both Angel and Isaiah's points of view, I especially loved Isaiah's. He's a poet at heart, and we as readers don't just know that because we're told so, we get to read some of his poems thoughout the book and get that little extra peek into his heart and mind. I loved how Angel and Isaiah, once they started to get to know each other, discussed books together and got each other to read certain books, and by reading those books they got to understand each other a little better.

Although on the surface, this is a sweet love story between two teenagers, knowing that this is set during the Tulsa Race Massacre, had me on the edge of my seat worried about these two teenagers, and everyone else in their idyllic town. The chapter headings let the reader know how many days left until it happens, and as we got closer and closer, although the romance progressed and it was lovely, I had a pit in my stomach knowing what was about to happen to their town.

This book will work on so many different levels for my students. For those who are already aware of the Tulsa Race Massacre, they may experience it like I did, with that sense of impending dread, knowing the horrors to come. For those who are not aware of the Tulsa Race Massacre, I hope it will prompt them to learn more about it.

Pink definitely does Greenwood justice in her brave and beautiful YA romantic drama.

Thank you for the ARC!

I was able to get an ARC of this book through NetGalley. The majority of this historical fiction book is about Black teenagers being normal kids in the Greenwood neighborhood of Tulsa, Oklahoma in the early 1920's. I loved the descriptions of the neighborhood - not just the yards and the houses but the people as well. The story centers around Angel and Isaiah and Pink does a great job incorporating the writings of W.E.B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington in the book as Angel and Isaiah disagree about which man is correct about how Black people should seek advancement in society. Ultimately though, the idyllic lives in Greenwood are changed forever when a white mob burns their neighborhood. This is a very discussable book that looks at the Tulsa Race Massacre in a way that really humanizes the people of Greenwood and makes this terrible part of history more personal to the reader. Highly recommended for 7th grade and above (including adults).

Angel and Isaiah are characters that will live inside you long after you finish the superb Angel of Greenwood by Randi Pink.

Pink has captured the qualities of adolescence, the way you can feel completely unknown and unseen even to yourself.

The 1921 Race Massacre remains an open wound in Tulsa and Randi Pink's novel Angel of Greenwood is able to do that thing we all want from great fiction, it helps bring us closer together.