Dear Martin

So many mixed feelings. Story is fine, message is okay, but I think the setting and some of the characterisations does it a disservice.

I don't think the setting of the hyper-wealthy and Ivy League-bound world is something that feels like it resonates nearly as well; it would've been better served by staying in a "good public school" with upper middle class white kids as the dominant population (the ones who are the most likely to complain about affirmative action keeping them down, especially as they believe they're owed something to become super wealthy but aren't given the same privileges as private academy kids from the hyper-wealthy). Instead, we're given kids where it's like, "Well, no shit they say that because they've been saying it openly to everyone's faces for years." At least in the "good public school," even if overt racism is done... you get the space to do the less cartoonish racism that is really kind of expected to be said in these elitist areas. The "good public school" often presents itself as progressive, which helps to obfuscate its actual beliefs.

As a note, I'm kind of noticing a pattern in Stone's works where a lot of her characters are the hyper-achieving sort who are placed in these highly prestigious places that are difficult for most people to enter.

Contextually, based on the inspiration for the story (which came out of the murder of Lucy McBath's son, Jordan Davis), I get why it would make sense that they are positioned in some very high-achieving and prestigious settings. But I don't know that the messaging achieves its goal as well there, especially when it comes to the positioning of the 'high achievers' against the 'gangbangers'.

Part of my reasoning for this is that we know how the disgustingly wealthy got their money, and we know that a disproportionate amount of them hold multiple bigoted thoughts; we know that these super wealthy folks exploit people all the time, even if they're marginalised themselves. The character of Mr Julian, who's the father of the slain boy Manny, is a vice president at a financial corporation. He talks about the disrespect he gets from the white people he's hired (which is believable—I don't doubt that this happens), but... what about all the people that his financial firm has walked all over to make the money it has? What about all the people that he no doubt exploited in the course of his work, including other Black people, to get the kind of numbers the book implies he's done? I think this kind of class-ignorant analysis in this story doesn't really work. I mean, I guess it does in terms of "it doesn't matter whose kid you are, you're still a Black boy at the end of the day," but the class differences between the son of a wealthy (ex-)vice president of a financial corporation and the son of a single mom "from the 'hood"... aren't really explored in any meaningful depth. It would've been better to keep Justyce in the same class bracket as the folks around him, decreasing the muddling of the theme.

I also find it a bit frustrating that a lot of the police-related issues for the main characters get tied up with nice bows that lead to some weird logic. At the beginning, Justyce is arrested while trying to help his drunk ex-girlfriend; the racist cop that profiled him (Castillo) is killed a week later by the gangbanger cousin (Quan) of his rich best friend, Manny. Then, while driving around listening to loud music, Justyce and Manny are shot at by an off-duty cop (Tison) after Manny refuses to turn the music down and tells Tison to fuck off; Manny is murdered while Justyce is left in critical condition. Justyce then meets with Quan (who shot the cop who arrested Justyce at the beginning), they have a talk about what Quan "supposedly" did (the story indicates that, yes, he did do it). Justyce learns from Quan that Tison saw what happened to Castillo because they were partners and were together that night.

Which then makes Justyce do the 'cycle of violence' or 'cycle of trauma' nonsense: Tison saw his partner get shot by a Black gangbanger, so of course he's going to think the worse of Black boys as a whole. How could he otherwise? So his racism is supported because he happened to have been a witness to the murder of his partner by some Black kids? Weird.

Then, after Tison's mistrial, we hear that he's been murdered in prison. Every cop that harmed someone directly involved in the story is dead by the end. I have no problem with this, but I find that it doesn't make the story that satisfying because they start to feel like set dressing that muddles the theme, especially as Justyce's whole deal is his "Be Like Martin" experiment (which, other than a few letters sprinkled between chapters, he... doesn't really engage with that much). There's no real discussion about nonviolent action vs direct violent action (which is something I'd expect, considering what everyone knows about MLK's actions when he was alive). When they're positioned against each other, it's the "well-meaning wealthy Black adults who made something of themselves" (nonviolence) against "the gangbangers" (violence). Justyce, as "the poor Black kid who was lucky enough to get a scholarship to an elite private academy," is treading between both worlds (but we know which world is more correct because of how the 'gangbangers' behave). There's no real discussion about consequences and what that could or should look like... It just feels like a lot of what could make the moral more interesting was... left at the door in order for Justyce to take the obvious direction while his questioning remains limited (even when he "almost" joins a gang that the audience knows he's not going to join).

And instead, we get moments of "Black people are prejudice against white people," particularly when discussing Justyce's mom (who doesn't want him dating white girls, even Jewish white girls); the narrative even compares his mom (whose fear is understandable, even if her behaviours may feel absurd) to the police officer who profiled and arrested Justyce ("she's no better than," we're told).

There's even a bit where Justyce chooses to talk to the cops after his high school graduation, when what he should've done is ask for a lawyer to be present and say nothing (which he could've done! and should've done! his girlfriend's mom is a fucking lawyer). This book doesn't even know where it stands on policing and talking to cops to make them less suspicious of you (and the latter should just be 'do not').