True True

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Average customer rating 4 (4 comments)

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"...everywhere make it abundantly clear the colonizers have returned." * This was good! I liked the characters, especially Gil, and the overall progression of the story. Gil was a breath of fresh air. He knows exactly who he is and what he wants to do with his life, and he removes himself from the comfort of his last year at high school with friends in order to attend a prep school to better prepare for college.The author did an incredible job rooting Gil in his community and then dropping him into Augusten Prep like a fish out of water. Hooper's writing in general was really good.

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True, True follows Gil, a 17-year-old Black student as he starts his senior year at an elite, mostly white prep school in Manhattan, commuting in from his Caribbean neighborhood in Brooklyn. Gil is dealing with a lot. His father is in Jamaica trying to work on immigration documents to be able to live in the US and his Granma has early-stage dementia. Gil is excited about the academic opportunities at Augustin Prep, especially the school's well-funded robotics team. He is blindsided when he is taunted with a racist slur and attacked by three of the school's football players. He discovers that institutionalized racism runs deep at the school when he is the only one suspended. Gil organizes with the other black students who have also encountered everything from microaggressions to overt racism. He becomes overwhelmed juggling this fight with his academics, old friends from Brooklyn, new friends, and family commitments and must learn to prioritize and communicate better with those he cares about. Gil is a likeable character who feels very real, because he sometimes makes poor choices. He grows considerably throughout the course of the story. True True is often difficult to read because of the appalling racism encountered by Gil and the other students of color. True True is a well-written, immersive, relevant and powerful YA contemporary novel.

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Gil, a Black teen, transfers from his Brooklyn high school to a primarily white Manhattan prep school for senior year. After an incident with a racist student results in Gil being suspended, he enlists other Black students to wage war against the racist school administration, students, and parents in an effort to finally be heard. Can Gil balance his home life and school life while fighting this battle? TRUE TRUE was an emotionally charged YA novel that kept me turning pages. I felt angry throughout much of the book as I followed Gil’s journey as he, his friends, and classmates regularly dealt with racism. I wanted so badly for them to be successful in having their voices heard as no one should be treated that way. The character development for Gil was great. I enjoyed seeing how he evolved. He had flaws that created challenges, but he learned things about himself as he grew. I liked how Gil’s reading of Sun Tzu’s ‘The Art of War’ was wrapped into the plot. The author did a great job of addressing some important topics such as racism and education systems. Overall, the characters and the plot felt realistic. Though targeted for a young adult audience, TRUE TRUE could be enjoyed by a wider age range of readers. I really liked TRUE TRUE and would highly recommend it. It was a great debut novel. I look forward to reading future works from the author. Thank you to Nancy Paulsen Books for the giveaway ARC.

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The book did an excellent job addressing the ways racism manifests not only as outright attacks and slurs, but also in microaggressions, in unequal opportunities, in ways that can be enmeshed in other forms of discrimination, and most of all in the systems that condone and support these behaviors. The character of Gil was very compelling. Despite his resolve to face his situation like a general going to war, he still reads realistically like a kid forced to deal with too much all at once. The way his problems pile up - not just discrimination in school, but his grandmother's Alzheimer's, the separation from his father, and the growing distance between him and his friends - and his anger, frustration, and feelings of isolation ramp up was painful but real. I was expecting more resolution on certain plot threads and conflicts between characters. Throughout the middle of the book, it is a source of conflict Gil's life that he's struggling to maintain relationships and balance his time between Augustin and his family and friends in his neighborhood while also fighting the racism he's subjected to at Augustin. However, by the end of the book, it seemed like the narrative itself sidelined certain characters and conflicts between them that felt unsatisfying given their earlier importance. It wasn't a major issue, for me, but it left the ending feeling a little off, a little incomplete.