Commentary: The Black Kids
The Black Kids, Christina Hammonds Reed’s debut novel, is a coming-of-age tale set in Los Angeles, 1992, immediately before, during, and after the Rodney King protests.
Ashley Bennett is a 17-year-old, living in a wealthy part of LA with her parents and caretaker, Lucia. She attends an elite private high school and is one of the few Black students there. In with some of the popular white girls, Ashley’s days are spent just being a kid, but college and adulthood loom ever-closer. Ashley knows that soon everything will be different. But when the riots begin and LA burns, Ashley is confronted with sudden and disturbing truths that trigger questions about her identity— am I Black enough? Who’s us and them? Who’s we? Where do I fit into all this? Surrounding her are typical high-school dramas— who’s dating who, who hooked up with who, and of course Senior prom— but encroaching closer and closer with each page turn is this predatory system, out to get kids like Ashely and her older sister, Jo. Inescapable. As Ashely bumps up against this system’s tentacles, particularly after a near-death experience with a police officer, she grows closer to her parents, her sister, her estranged uncle and cousin, and the Black kids at her school. As the fires blaze, old family secrets erupt and Ashley sees parts of her history she never knew before— all of it illuminating more clearly the reasons why; why riot? Why so much anger? Why can’t we get along?
Prescient in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and the Derek Chauvin conviction, The Black Kids is an expertly crafted chaperone for teens growing up in periods of large-scale protest, under the thumb of an oppressive police state. I don’t say “guide” because it’s deeply personal; Ashley doesn’t learn how to “revolution”. She’s just living her life, perforated by protest and violence. Rather, the book projects Ashley’s lived experiences, her feelings, dreams, fears, and her actions, acknowledging questions and emotions that come from growing up amidst… well… war. Reed’s book explores Rodney King, Latasha Harlins, the Black history of LA, intersectionality, police brutality, community intervention, the AIDs epidemic, Black Wall Street, media representation of protestors, child abuse, arrests, racism at school, and more.
Although I was not always the biggest fan of Reed’s writing style, she captures beautifully fleeting moments of tenderness between people. Ashley is no saint; she’s a kid and so makes lots of mistakes (as she should). But she also holds herself accountable, faces the consequences of her actions, and builds loving relationships with many different kinds of people. In those relationships, Reeds points to a path forward, maybe not a “solution” or a “fix-it”, but a means of taking care of one another. Without spoilers, at a critical moment in the story, when all feels hopeless and terrifying, it’s the neighbors who intervene. Reed reminds us that one of the few real defenses we have against violent forces is community. At a time when many young people feel everything is lost, it’s important to see a real-life survival tool that is really quite obvious, yet revelatory all the same.