HMM okay, so like a lot of people probably I got interested in the Greenwood massacre after watching the Watchmen (ha) series on HBO. I also read [b:The Burning: The Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921|54860485|The Burning The Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921|Tim Madigan|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1607323562l/54860485._SY75_.jpg|85600050] last year so I feel reasonably well-informed about the history presented here, and I think it really is such a horribly compelling moment in history and so illustrative of how fucked-up white privilege has been (and continues to be) in the US.

That said I did not like...love this book? The pacing felt off to me and the two narrators both felt more like capital-s Symbols than people. Isaiah's devotion to DuBois vs Angel's devotion to Booker T. Washington ended up making me feel like I was watching a high school student skit demonstrating the differences between two major Black thought leaders. I simultaneously felt like there wasn't enough character development and also like it took too long to get to the action? It just didn't really work for me as a reader. I also was not at all surprised when I got to the ending and Pink's afterword mentions that she had wanted to write a low-conflict book about two Black kids in love without being affected by racism and then later she learned about Greenwood and retroactively applied that idea to the historical setting? And I think I would have rather read either that book OR something that had initially been conceived of as being about Greenwood, but this felt a little weirdly cobbled together.

THAT SAID:
- It's an undeniably interesting historical event and for teen readers who might not have heard about it before, that will carry more appeal
- Always great to have more #OwnVoices Black romances
- Would be really useful as a classroom read especially in conjunction with a history curriculum

But ultimately not really my personal jam as a reader.