For Black Girls Like Me

by Mariama J. Lockington

Overview

I am a girl but most days I feel like a question mark.

Makeda June Kirkland is eleven years old, adopted, and black. Her parents and big sister are white, and even though she loves her family very much, Makeda often feels left out. When Makeda's family moves from Maryland to New Mexico, she leaves behind her best friend, Lena— the only other adopted black girl she knows— for a new life. In New Mexico, everything is different. At home, Makeda’s sister is too cool to hang out with her anymore and at school, she can’t seem to find one real friend.

Through it all, Makeda can’t help but wonder: What would it feel like to grow up with a family that looks like me?

Through singing, dreaming, and writing secret messages back and forth with Lena, Makeda might just carve a small place for herself in the world.

In this lyrical coming-of-age story about family, sisterhood, music, race, and identity, Mariama J. Lockington draws on some of the emotional truths from her own experiences growing up with an adoptive white family. For Black Girls Like Me is for anyone who has ever asked themselves: How do you figure out where you are going if you don’t know where you came from?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780374308049
Publisher:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date:	07/30/2019
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	659,111
Product dimensions:	5.38(w) x 8.25(h) x (d)
Age Range:	9 - 11 Years

About the Author

Mariama J. Lockington is an adoptee, writer, and nonprofit educator. She has been telling stories and making her own books since the second grade, when she wore short-alls and flower leggings every day to school. Her work has appeared in a number of magazines and journals, including Buzzfeed News Reader, and she is the author of the poetry chapbook The Lucky Daughter. Mariama holds a Masters in Education from Lesley University and Masters in Fine Arts in Poetry from San Francisco State University. She lives in Lexington, KY with her partner and dapple haired dachshund, Henry.

Editorial Reviews

★ 05/20/2019

In this outstanding middle grade debut (told without commas in a mix of narration, letters, and poetry), Lockington (The Lucky Daughter for adults) introduces budding poet Makeda Kirkland, 11, a black girl adopted by a white family. Her cellist father and former violin prodigy mother move their family from Baltimore to Albuquerque, forcing Keda to leave behind her best friend, Lena, the only other black girl she knows with a mixed adoptive family like her own. While struggling to cope with racism at school, Keda, along with big sister Eve, is left to care for their increasingly erratic mother after their father goes on tour abroad. Keda’s persistent dreams of her birth mother and a family with skin that looks like hers collide with the unsettling reality of her mother’s mental illness and the frightening possibility that the only mother she’s ever known could be lost. With intimate authenticity, she explores how fierce but “colorblind” familial love can result in erasure and sensitively delineates the pain of facing casual racism, as well as the disconcerting experience of being the child of a mentally ill parent. Age 8–12. (July)

Publishers Weekly

*A Junior Library Guild Selection!*

"An outstanding middle grade debut . . . With intimate authenticity, she explores how fierce but “colorblind” familial love can result in erasure and sensitively delineates the pain of facing casual racism, as well as the disconcerting experience of being the child of a mentally ill parent." —Publishers Weekly, starred review

"In this #OwnVoices middle-grade debut, Lockington captures the joy and angst of transracial adoption . . . an authentic and intimate portrayal . . . this is a necessary read for girls struggling with identity and purpose within their families, as well as a powerful coming-of-age story of Black womanhood." —Booklist, starred review

"For Black Girls Like Me is the book I needed as a young girl. My heart ached for Makeda in the difficult moments and swelled as she slowly learned to use her voice. This is a beautiful, necessary book." —Brandy Colbert, author of Finding Yvonne and Little & Lion

"Lockington's debut is a revelation. Her voice is a much-needed addition in a field that is far too sparse on #ownvoices stories, and this story in particular is one that only lived experience could bring to life. The language is delicious. Keda's story is searing and essential. I can't wait for everyone to read this." —Tracey Baptiste, New York Times bestselling author of The Jumbies series

"I don't think I've ever read a more moving rendering of the complex dynamics of growing up as a young, black transracially adopted woman today. Debut novelist Mariama Lockington, herself a young black transracial adoptee, nails the experience of being 'loved and lonely at the same time.' She somehow manages to do this while exploring family mental illness, sibling relationships, moving schools and geographies, and the messiness of pre-adolescence. This is a gorgeous new voice that we desperately need in this time of overly-simplistic stories of race, family, and childhood in popular culture." —Shannon Gibney, author of the Minnesota Book Award-winning YA novel, See No Color

“Achingly honest, and so well-observed, FOR BLACK GIRLS LIKE ME is like the most haunting blues song: lyrically rendered, heartbreaking, a wail of a novel that will offer young people and adults alike hope in the fact that we are not alone in our pain.” National Book Award Winner of THE POET X, Elizabeth Acevedo

From the Publisher

2019-05-12
A transracial adoptee navigates a new school, a mentally ill parent, and questions about her identity.

Eleven-year-old Keda, who is black and was adopted as an infant, has just moved to Albuquerque with her parents and older sister, Eve, leaving her best friend (and fellow black adoptee), Lena, behind. At school and around town, Keda knows she sticks out like a sore thumb next to her white family. When her musician father leaves for a world tour, Keda and Eve are left with their mother, whose undiagnosed, unmanaged bipolar disorder is spiraling out of control. The portrayal of their mother's disability is moving, but stylistic choices make the novel a difficult one to navigate, particularly for a middle-grade audience. Letters between Lena and Keda (both handwritten and in the form of Tumblr posts) and sporadic free-verse chapters break up Keda's first-person account, but the latter have an arbitrary rather than organic feel. On a sentence level, Lockington has such an aversion to commas that dialogue tags appear not to be attached to the speech they reference; asides, addresses, and appositives feel jumbled inside sentences; and list items aren't separated. An overreliance on sentence fragments causes them to lose any dramatic effect. From a characterization standpoint, aside from family members, too many others come across as straw men, walking onstage to hurl a racist slur and then vanishing from the narrative.

The myriad themes explored are compelling, but the execution gets in the way. (Fiction. 8-12)

Kirkus Reviews

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