nerd teacher [books] reviewed Yankee Girl by Mary Ann Rodman
Interesting, but it's more geared for white audiences.
3 stars
This book was, for the most part, fairly interesting. I think, especially for white children, it might be useful as a book that helps them recognise how what they're doing is racist (even though they may not mean for it to be): the complicity they have when they don't speak up for a person of colour being bullied, how they're conditioned to want to 'fit in' (as everyone is) and the negative social rules that can come with that, how people who are harassed/tormented/bullied might feel in such a situation.
But it also can be useful to help them recognise the actions of their peers, what's happening in society, why we do what we do. It was very much a novel focused on how children maintain the racial boundaries without recognising what the morally correct options are and how people who look different from them are equally as human and …
This book was, for the most part, fairly interesting. I think, especially for white children, it might be useful as a book that helps them recognise how what they're doing is racist (even though they may not mean for it to be): the complicity they have when they don't speak up for a person of colour being bullied, how they're conditioned to want to 'fit in' (as everyone is) and the negative social rules that can come with that, how people who are harassed/tormented/bullied might feel in such a situation.
But it also can be useful to help them recognise the actions of their peers, what's happening in society, why we do what we do. It was very much a novel focused on how children maintain the racial boundaries without recognising what the morally correct options are and how people who look different from them are equally as human and deserving of such treatment.
That said, I think that's also why I found this to be lacking. There was a huge amount of time where you're meant to feel bad for the main character, and I found those moments frustrating. The sympathy was almost always placed on the white girl whose thoughts often amounted to "I know I shouldn't, but I'm going to anyway" or "I know I should say something, but I'm going to be quiet." It was very rare that fully realised sympathy was given to the singular Black girl in a forcefully integrated school; you saw the torment, but you only saw the glimmers of remorse/regret from the white protagonist in those moments. It really felt quite lacking in the direct emotional response to Valerie. Even the death of her father was turned into a glimpse at her but a full look at "how brave" a white child was for going to the funeral.
The author said that this was the world she grew up in and how she wished she would've responded, but I still felt like Valerie wasn't an entirely realised character. (And even if she was intentionally left to be unrealised to the protagonist, there wasn't nearly enough of her questioning how she knew nothing about Valerie. It was a lot of her pointing out that Valerie kept to herself, etc.)