Assigned reading for MLIS 7421: Multicultural Youth Literature.

“We fold our immigrant selves into this veneer of what we think is African American girlhood. The result is more jagged than smooth. This tension between our inherited identities and our newly adopted selves filters into our relationships with other girls and the boys we love, and how we interact with the broken places around us.”

I had really high hopes for American Street because it’s an incredibly important topic that I would love to see explored more frequently in YA contemporary, especially from own-voices authors like Ibi Zoboi! That reason was more than enough to justify boosting this up to a 4-star rating, in my opinion, because there were just so many powerful quotes (like the one I chose for the block above). As someone who was born and raised in the US and has the privileges of being a US-born white woman, this story definitely helped me see even more ways that my little bubble of privilege has kept me from recognizing how hard and stressful immigrating to the US must be for anyone, but especially people of color.

All of that aside, I didn’t enjoy the actual writing of this book very much, sadly. I didn’t love the narrative voice as a whole and I thought the plot kept losing itself. It would focus on one major plot point for a few chapters, and then another wrench would get thrown in, and it would totally pivot. I think that can work well if it’s done in moderation, but there were just so many topics covered that none of them were given the time or exploration they deserved on their own, in my opinion.