On the Come Up by Angie Thomas

Star rating: 5/5

Angie Thomas' second novel explores racial discrimination, poverty, and gang violence from the lens of a young girl who uses rap as a source of meaning-making and self-expression. 

Summary:

Bri is an aspiring rapper, and a damn good one. Her father, known as Lawless, was a well-known rapper who was murdered by gangbangers just as his career was taking off. Bri is struggling to balance following in her father's footsteps while also wanting to have her own identity. Meanwhile, her mom has lost her job, and the family is already behind on bills. Meanwhile, the security guards and administration at her predominantly-white school continue to target her for being black. Meanwhile, the gang that killed her father has threatened her... 

On the Come Up is a raw, heart-wrenching novel that depicts the harsh reality that black individuals in this country face, and the difficult decisions they often must make to survive in a white-supremacist society. 

Review:

This book is so unbelievably important. If you want to be able to even begin to understand the struggles that black youth face in our country, read On the Come Up. It may be classified as fiction, but it's not, not really, because these are real events that happen every day. Bri is a sixteen-year-old girl who has had to grow up far too fast, and has to make decisions that no young girl should have to make, to help her family survive. She is cruelly and violently apprehended by school security, because she was suspected of selling drugs, when she was really selling candy. Candy. Her cling to any innocence she has is perfectly depicted right there, and it is stripped from her the moment she is pinned to the ground, handcuffed, and called a hoodlum. Over candy. This is just one atrocity of many that she faces, that black and brown youth in the United States face daily, being suspended and expelled from school at astronomically higher rates than white youth. Her mother, when confronting the school administration, says it perfectly, "You are setting my child up to fail." The system is failing kids every day. 

This is a novel about racism, poverty, violence, and pain, but it is also a novel about hope, strength, determination, love, and family. It is heartbreaking and beautiful, and it needs to be read.