Adanna is just like a lot of girls going through school. She’s striving to get high grades, please her demanding parents and adjust to her dual heritage as an Igbo girl in a high school that seems to be predominantly white.
Like the girl in “Slay” by Brittney Morris, Adanna finds herself shifting into a different mode when she’s around white people. She lowers the volume on the pounding African rhythms for fear whites will peer nervously at her when she’s driving through their neighborhood. She adopts a more erudite vocabulary. Her voice goes up an octave. She goes by the name of Sophie because a teacher couldn’t pronounce her Igbo name correctly.
However, white people aren’t the only ones she tries to placate. We get broad hints of the societal pressure her parents put her under because of her absent sibling Sam—a relation nobody speaks about and whose mysterious departure hits Adanna when she least expects it.
So we’re sucked into this enigma as well. What happened to Sam? Why did he leave? Why is this topic forbidden? We know Adanna is going to have some hard choices to make it future and her missing brother is tangled up in it.
This is a typical YA novel with certain singular cultural aspects thrown into it. For fans of YA filled with racially diverse casts, this is something different to try.
Like the girl in “Slay” by Brittney Morris, Adanna finds herself shifting into a different mode when she’s around white people. She lowers the volume on the pounding African rhythms for fear whites will peer nervously at her when she’s driving through their neighborhood. She adopts a more erudite vocabulary. Her voice goes up an octave. She goes by the name of Sophie because a teacher couldn’t pronounce her Igbo name correctly.
However, white people aren’t the only ones she tries to placate. We get broad hints of the societal pressure her parents put her under because of her absent sibling Sam—a relation nobody speaks about and whose mysterious departure hits Adanna when she least expects it.
So we’re sucked into this enigma as well. What happened to Sam? Why did he leave? Why is this topic forbidden? We know Adanna is going to have some hard choices to make it future and her missing brother is tangled up in it.
This is a typical YA novel with certain singular cultural aspects thrown into it. For fans of YA filled with racially diverse casts, this is something different to try.