Posted at Shelf Inflicted I couldn’t resist the title. When I was little, my mom used to give me my own mug with a little bit of Café Bustelo and a lot of sugar. It made me feel pretty grown up that I was drinking coffee with my parents. My grandmother would look at me disapprovingly and say, “coffee will make you black.” Well, obviously it wasn’t working, so I would hand my empty mug back to my mom and ask for a refill. Then she would tell me that too much coffee is no good for you. But if it makes me black, how can that be a bad thing? I was tired of being white. Most of the white kids in my neighborhood were Jewish and came from far wealthier families than my own. The Puerto Rican kids all spoke Spanish and were various shades of brown. Though my dad was born in Puerto Rico, he had a very pale complexion. My mom, on the other hand, has that rich brown shade I so desired. Looking more like my dad than my mom made it difficult for me to fit in. My closest friend was Jewish, but I enjoyed hanging out with the black girls. They were the best at Double Dutch jump rope and tried to teach klutzy me, but all I ever got to be was a turner. My friend Penny sometimes asked me to braid her hair. Oh, what fun! It was so unexpectedly fine and easy to style. Some days, she would wear it loose with a plastic headband. Other days she would come to school in cornrows with colorful beads on the ends. Penny stuck up for me when a couple of girls harassed me on the school bus. I loved her colorful clothes and no-nonsense attitude. Whenever I was with her, no one would mess with me. One day I wanted to bring her home. My mom said it was OK, since my dad was working and wouldn’t be home until evening. While Penny was visiting, my dad shows up unexpectedly and spouts racial invective, causing poor Penny to run out of the apartment in tears. That was the end of our friendship. She eventually moved out of the neighborhood and so did I. After Penny, I developed a crush on Joanne Chesimard when I saw her on TV passionately speaking about revolution. She was beautiful, eloquent, and wanted to change the world. I wanted to be just like her when I grew up and refused to believe she had anything to do with bank robberies and killing police officers. Life is a series of disappointments, but black is beautiful.All big cities have similarities. Even though Jean Stevenson “Stevie” grew up in Chicago, many of her experiences triggered sweet and painful childhood memories of growing up in the Bronx. This is not only a story about the problems of growing up and gaining independence. There is a lot here about family relationships, friendships, race relations, the feminist movement, standards of beauty, discovering one’s sexuality, and the turmoil of life in the 1960’s. Stevie sometimes hangs out with the wrong crowd. She defies her mother’s attempts to make her “white” by resisting hair straighteners and skin lighteners. Stevie just wants to be herself and embraces her life with passion. This was a funny, moving and heartwarming story about growing up. I’m looking forward to Stevie’s college years in the sequel, Ain't Gonna Be the Same Fool Twice.
ASK: Why does the mother not like her own race? Did you go through any of the conflicts you put in your story?CONNECT: I can conect with Stevie's brother, David, because he did things that I did when I was his age. For example, he joined a club because of a girl he thought was cute. I joined chorus when i was in middle school because all the girls were cute. He gets embarrassed by his family, and sometimes i get embarrassed by mine. His mom is always staying on him and his family about the way they speak, my aunt stays on me about how i speak.INTERPRET:EVALUATE:I would rate the book a "B". Although it was a good book, it was a little to graphic. The author made alot of references to sex. Other than that the book was good. I would recommend this book to an adult audience because of the sex refrences.TITLE: I think the title was just there to be there. "Coffe will make you black" is a saying that was used back in the sixties and seventies. That is the time period this book took place.TONE: The tone was overall happy. There was alot of playfull dialouge between the characters. For example "Wow, I knew Yusef Brown was cool, but I ain't know he was this cool! Wow, Stevie, I knew you was square, but I aint know you was this square"( pg. 94).THEME: The overall message of this story is to be yourself no matter what anybody tells you. Dont let anyone take advantage of you. If the people you call your friends can't accept you for who you are then they are not your real friends.DICTION: The author uses alot of slang and profanity in her book. I can tell that her books takes back in the 60s and 70s. She also uses the word aint alot too. For example, "Look, I ain't the said it, Carla the one said it." She uses alot of incorrect english too. I can tell that the most of the characters in her book were uneducated or didnt care about proper english too much.IMAGERY: My first metaphor is "Chile, good black don't crack". The character is describing her smooth skin to cracked skin. Coffee will make you black is a personafication. Coffee can't make a human being blackSHIFTS: The books attitude changes with the main characters age. The older she gets, the more attitude she has. The author considered the points of view of different characters all throughout her book.SUMMARY: This book is about the situations a girl goes through growing up in the 60s and 70s.CONFLICT: There are alot of person vs person conflicts in the book. The main character gets into a fight, she gets beaten with a belt by her mom a couple of times, and Stevie's friend almost fought Stevie's boyfriend, just to name a few conflicts.
Do You like book Coffee Will Make You Black (2007)?
This rating is more like a 3.8 or 3.9. Extremely good, intriguing read. I couldn't put it down most of the time. The protagonist, Stevie's, experience with the rage and changing of the times was realistic.I also related to Stevie and her life probably more than I have related to any other main character in a book. Struggling to find real friends, handle your family, accept your race, become a girl all the guys want. All the while growing into yourself as a self-aware female. Lots of fear, confusion, annoyance; but somehow you find a way to enjoy the ride.So why (only) a [high] 3? Well I'm not necessarily sure if this will be a memorable book, even if I call it one of my faves. Also, I realized at the end of the book that, overall, character development was pretty lacking for Stevie. She went through all the standard phases, but it never really showed in the book that she became anymore knowledgable on the nuisances she handled. I'd also be lying if I said I didn't find the ending lackluster. Complete, yes, but boring as well. And who knows, maybe I'm just a little bitter at seeing the annoyances of my life retold in the book. Still, I really enjoyed reading the book very much. I'd definitely read something else from the author.
—Alisha
This was a good one. A couple of places have this book classified as LGBT teen fiction, but I don't think I'd go that far. Honestly, it sounded more like your standard teen fiction. The LGBT issue was raised now and then, but it certainly wasn't a focal point IMO. Maybe that's just because I had periods in my life where I was just as sexually confused and questioning like Stevie, so I didn't even notice all the gayness.A lot about Stevie's childhood reminded me of my own. Her desire to fit in often clashed with her desire to remain herself. There's so much about Stevie's life that has to do with the times she was living in, but also a great deal are things that young women still face today. I'm eager to read the sequel, that this book so beautifully set me up for. I got this book from a swapping website, which usually means I put it back on my list of books to be swapped and pass it along. I think I'll hang onto this one. It was a quick read, and I'm sure there will be some more people in my life who would get some joy out of reading this one.
—Tianna
Firstly, I have no idea what this book about. The title definitely catched my attention. I was hoping that this book gonna brought me for some racial issues. Well, it is. But, there were things that disturbed me as well. Mama, are you a virgin?"That's the first line in this book. It kinda surprised me, because the question came from twelve years old Jean "Stevie" Stevenson. And to add more surprises, at least in my opinion, there were so many convos in this book which around sex things and most of it came from preteens. Most of Stevie and Carla (especially Carla) talked about is how to had a boyfriend and get laid. I realized that this is the part of the culture which way different with mine. But still, it made me nervous (I have a two and a half y.o daughter, which I imagined to have this kind of conversation with her, someday).The other things that pretty disturbed me is Stevie's parents. Her Daddy is a janitor in a hospital and her Mama is a bank teller. I don't like how her Mama disrespected her husband and I also don't like how a mother portrayed here. In this book, Stevie and her mother kinda have a love-hate relationship. I love the innocent in Stevie's questions to her Mama, but I dislike how her Mama answered. Probably, open mind conversation (especially about sex thing) still forbidden in that time. To be honest, most of YA I've read recently portrayed a mother in the pathetic ways. How a mother could be so mean, hard to understood their children, forced them to be what she liked without considering what the kids wanna do and other things like that, which made a mother is kinda a bad witch. To be honest, I really don't get it.The racial things wrapped the whole book through the convos. Even though the racist scenes undescribed literally, I could felt in every convos how frustrating the black people about how the white people threat them (the setting of this book is around 1967-1969). I felt the enthusiasm as the effect of Martin Luther King's speech and also the sad and anger when he'd assasinated. This book gave us those kind of emotions.I also finally know that black people slang is interesting. Black folks on Illinois prairie call parties "sets". And if you dressed up, we called it "jumpin' cleans" or "gettin' clean". And like I told you before, white folks, "hoogies". If you're dating a white person, we refer to you as "hunting Greyhound" or simply "riding the bus"I could imagined the way Grandma Dickens swing her words and I think it's amazing.And...the biggest thing of all....nobody told me that this book has sequel (and as the bonus from the publisher, the 40 pages of Ain't Gonna Be the Same Fool Twice: A Novel promised me a good material!).Book source: NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for letting me read such a good book!
—Darnia
