Book #228 of 2020:
If You Come Softly by Jacqueline Woodson (If You Come Softly #1)
Here’s a book like Bridge to Terabithia that’s almost impossible to discuss without spoilers, especially given the content warning that many prospective readers might appreciate. It’s a love story between two fifteen-year-olds, one a black boy and one a white Jewish girl, and it culminates with him being shot to death by officers who mistake him for a suspect they’re pursuing. We don’t spend a whole lot of time in the aftermath of that act, which creates a lack of closure that’s realistic for sudden violence but perhaps less satisfying in a work of fiction. It’s a short novel overall, and there are plenty of truncated plot threads that could have benefitted from having more space to wind down and resolve.
So I have mixed feelings about the project, but I do have to commend author Jacqueline Woodson for boldly tackling racism and police shootings in a title for young people first published in 1998. (It’s also possible that some of my concerns are addressed in her 2004 sequel.) I may have rolled my eyes when the teens fall for one another at first sight, but each is well-drawn as a character, and their writer is adept at presenting the microaggressions experienced by interracial couples and the tensions that can still exist in families who espouse openmindedness.
I just can’t shake the feeling that I would like all this better if it weren’t a tragedy, and I question whether giving the narrative that shape serves to perpetuate an ideology that relationships like mine are fated for unhappy endings.
★★★☆☆
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