There’s so much richness to be found in this book, from history to personal revelation. Hanif Andurraqib is the editor, which makes sense if you’ve read his work—long meandering essays that cover a lot of topics. Shaker’s work follows that style, starting with the personal, but then taking readers on a long walk elsewhere. The commentary on Jamaican history and police brutality are so important. However, as a reader this writing style is hard for me to always follow, particularly when each chapter is lacking a central theme. Readers who enjoy this kind of long form essay will still love this book.

Real Rating: 4.5* of five, rounded up

Introspection is part and parcel of getting old. But, and this is relatively new to my consciousness, that's because it's part and parcel of the Othering that US/capitalist society perpetuates, perpetrates even, daily. Old people are Othered, queer people are Othered, Black people, Asian people, female people: All are Othered by the depressing, repressive regime of normalizing cis-white male-straightness.

I'm sure that condition suits some people, but it gives me the shuddering horrors. Sounds more like something Cthulhu uses to torment victims than a desirable identity.

Author Shakur decides, early on, that "...if I was going to be lost and swallowed alive out in the world, then I’d at least get something for myself out of it," and he definitely makes good on that promise to himself. He is a generous soul and shares pieces of his journey to living authentically as an out, gay Jamaican-American man. He sees through structures at twenty-seven that took me another decade to understand as designed systems of repression, so of course I'm jealous as well as impressed. In about equal measure.

His mother, the one who chose his father, doesn't really know what to do about her wild, ungovernable son. Of course she sees his dad in him and, as the man was murdered for being his own resistant, wild self, she's got to be scared witless for her baby boy. His gayness seems to her an unnecessary provocation of the people who already hate her son for being. Being Black, being Jamaican, just (when you boil away the froth) being is his unatonable sin, his unwittingly committed crime.

The issues between mother and son don't stop; they are my own favorite moments in the book. After all, I'm old, and I'm thinking about the awful patterns of my own family that I've repeated ad infinitum. Reckoning with family damage will always command my attention. But Author Shakur, decades behind my age and out front of my life experience, is going through his travails for hisownself. That meant I got more of his politics than I, ideally, would've had. Not that I disagree with him! Just that I can already see where this truck is headed and am, therefore, not confident he'll get off voluntarily.
<blockquote>I realized that taking our history seriously and the fact that we are a part of shaping it is important. If we don’t engage with and protect our history, it will be mutilated or erased.</blockquote>
Very true, Author Shakur; but your mother's "don't be gay when you're here" is, in spite of being the antithesis of this truthful moment, excellent survival advice. While the two aren't from the same passage in the book, both represent the passage of Author Prince Shakur from angry kid to dangerously committed-to-action young adult.

What makes this first-ever book from Editor Hanif Abdurraqib less than a five-star read for me is the very thing that makes it a pleasure to read: The digressive and conversational writing of a talented young man. A bit of pruning of dangling participants, mentioned once and never again; a few smoothings of filler description when talking about places he's been to set a scene for us; minor, and understandable lapses from a tyro team. (Authors aren't always the most helpful editors...they already know where their fellow creator is headed, where we-the-readers don't always.)

I'll make a prediction: We will, if we are lucky, hear more from Author Prince Shakur. And it will get better and better. When it starts out this good, that's a wonderful future to look for.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC of this book. This was not an easy read by any means. The pages held a lot of pain and brutal truths about what it means to be Black and queer in the world. The writing was at times disjointed but so beautiful.

Thank you, Tin House, for allowing me to read When They Tell You To Be Good early!

This memoir hit me directly in the feelings. Such raw and moving writing. I sobbed.