This is a good entry book if you're just starting to learn how to be anti-racist. Joseph covers a lot of aspects of racism and the forms it takes today, but he approaches it in a conversational way that's easy to digest. I found his interjections and asides to be distracting even though I was there for all the 90s/00s references, and I loved the experience he shared at the end to show how prevalent anti-Blackness is and what being an accomplice means. I hope that people curious about learning more and becoming allies read this and are inspired to become accomplices in the future.

I really loved this book! It was a bit slow to start, but I was captivated throughout. Full disclosure: the setting is near my hometown and also where I went to university during the same time period of the novel. I loved all the mentions of places and buildings around town. That aside this is a good mystery that I only partly solved, and I loved all the culture woven into the story. I may listen to the audio so I can hear the correct pronunciation of all the Annishinaabe language scattered throughout the book.

I was thrilled when I heard about this #ownvoices novel, and I'm thrilled it lived up to expectations. I'm so happy for Boulley's success and hope she has more to come. Apparently, the Obama's production company is developing this into a Netflix series, and I hope they film in the Sault since the location is an integral piece of the story, and they'd better use Indigenous actors.

This was funny and also horrifying and uncomfortable to read as a white person who's been oblivious and ignorant for so long, but I definitely recommend it because these are all stories white people need to hear. There are many great anti-racism books for people open to learning, but this book offers story after story of the everyday racism that Black people encounter and navigate every day. Everyday racism that white people do not recognize and will continue to perpetuate unless we start to listen and learn.

I appreciate Amber and Lacey taking the time and energy to recount and revisit all this trauma. I hope that it's not in vain and that many like myself will be impacted by their book and do better going forward.

This is a good book to start with if you're just getting started on being anti-racist. It's a 4 star book if it's the first book you've picked up. If you've already been working toward being anti-racist, this is a 3 star book because it doesn't really cover anything new. Better to move on to Ijeoma Oluo's So You Want to Talk About Race for a more in-depth education.

I appreciate Rebecca Carroll sharing her journey as she navigated growing up a Black woman in rural, white New Hampshire in a white family that didn't "see color" and as she navigated a complicated relationship with her white birth mother, who was emotionally and mentally abusive, and as she discovered and embraced her Blackness.

I cheered every time she made connections with Black peers and mentors as she sought out Black culture and found what was missing in her childhood.

That’s where I wanted to get, I thought, that resolute confidence and self-awareness that comes with being black, owning it, and willfully denouncing white supremacy. In the same way that Elijah had taught me there was more than one way to be black, Michael taught me, and more important made me feel, that who I was was black enough.

I felt awful for her in most of her interactions with her birth mother and with her childhood peers as she craved acceptance for who she is but was failed by everyone who couldn't see the real her. Adoptee voices are so important in changing the narrative of adoption, and I'm a better parent having read this.

It wasn’t just that my siblings and parents didn’t see me; it was that they didn’t see race or think about blackness, mine or anyone else’s, and I felt like I deserved that, at the very least. To be adopted into a white family that did not see or care or think about my blackness or my experience navigating a racist country had always felt lonely and isolating, endlessly confusing, but now it just felt cruel.