Review by Booklist Review
Writer and organizer Prince Shakur came of age in a country and an era steeped in hostility against people like him: queer, Black, son of Jamaican immigrants. This memoir chronicles Shakur's Ohio upbringing, his struggles to be accepted by his family and friends as a gay man, his intellectual awakening via writers like James Baldwin and Malcolm X, and his grappling with personal, historical, and family trauma. As he travels from the Midwest to Jamaica to Paris to Standing Rock, Shakur faces racism and homophobia from family, friends, and fellow activists; yet his sense of his own values and of who he hopes to be in the world is unshaken. The story of his organizing work is deeply intertwined with his efforts to understand the losses of numerous father figures. Shakur's father was murdered, while his beloved stepfather was arrested and imprisoned when the author was just a child. Clear-eyed and unsentimental, When They Tell You to Be Good is an insightful, beautifully written memoir of family and identity.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In this electric debut, essayist and organizer Shakur turns an unflinching eye to the realities of growing up queer and Black amid the racialized violence and political backlash of recent decades. Coming-of-age as the son of Jamaican immigrants in Ohio in the early aughts, Shakur was haunted by his father's absence and wounded by familial homophobia. While college brought opportunities for political action and fellowship forged by common values, Shakur details that it also stoked a more painful awareness of social injustice. "If America could not deliver me what I deserved as a young and curious Black person," writes Shakur. "I deserved to try to find it where I could and not be overpowered by the kind of son or citizen I needed to be." Recounting travels that take him from Costa Rica to the Philippines, as well as Ferguson, Mo., and Standing Rock, in the Dakotas, to protest, Shakur traces the perspective he gained while untangling the cords of trauma brought by microaggressions he weathered along the way. What emerges is a moving portrait of the artist as a young activist, powered by Shakur's captivating prose, "the plywood, nails, and sails that sent me off into a world of my own making." The result is a searing account of self-discovery in the face of structural oppression. (Oct.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Through a nonlinear recounting of his own childhood memories, travels, and political work, Hurston/Wright Crossover Award winner Shakur tells a much larger story of what it means to be queer and Black, prods at the definition of family, and investigates his experiences in grassroots organizing with fervor. As a Jamaican American immigrant, Shakur grapples with intergenerational trauma brought on by colonialism and patriarchy and examines the profound effects on his family and self. The way he interrogates his experiences at Standing Rock and organizing Black Lives Matter protests serves as both self-reflection and sociopolitical commentary. The memoir also skillfully depicts complex familial dynamics, particularly Shakur's relationship with his mother, with gut-wrenching transparency. Ultimately, upending family secrets in this memoir allows the author to reckon with his identity, in stylistically stunning and impactful prose. VERDICT Shakur delivers an evocative, intimate, and also analytical exploration of self and various political landscapes. This beautifully written memoir is an absolute must-read.--Grace Caternolo
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A Jamaican poet and activist debuts with an unflinching memoir. "To be Black is to weather pain," writes Shakur. "To use some of the same devices used against us in the plantation fields. Our families must break some part of us to make us less breakable when the world, hungry for Black flesh, tries to break us too." By age 15, the author had already lost five close male relatives to murder, and he dedicates much of the book to reckoning with their violence ("the men of my family and of the Afro-Caribbean diaspora are products of masculinities crafted by an unjust society") and chronicling the forging of his own path. Facing relentless homophobia, he recognized early that being gay meant that he must be prepared to die. He found solace in writing, where he channeled his wounds, and he became an activist in the aftermath of the death of Michael Brown in 2014. Protesting in Ferguson, he realized, "If we fought together, then our Blackness could mean far more than what we had been told it was our entire lives." Like early adulthood itself, some of the text lacks a coherent structure. The author writes about his extensive travels during and after college, during which he experienced prejudice like he often did at home. Born in 1994, Shakur attempts to create in-the-moment art in relation to his traumas, but the narrative would have benefitted from further reflection. In the standout sections, focusing on his childhood, he demonstrates that he has enough distance from the events to create more nuanced perspectives. In reconciling the anguish he experienced after an uncle was killed by police, Shakur writes, "the lesson is not about our ability to fantasize about self-actualization. The lesson is, instead, what we are willing to face to actualize the deepest and hidden parts of ourselves." A scorching, nonlinear journey through a Black man's search for self. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
