Dear Martin by Nic Stone is a fantastic book; and one of the few that has been able to make me cry openly while reading it. As such, before you think to use it in a classroom setting make sure you and your class are in for an emotional rollercoaster that deals with privilege, perspective, death, and the meaning of life (and be sure to keep some tissues handy!)
Dear Martin follows the story of Justyce McAllister. An incredibly smart young black male attending a prestigious, and expensive, private high school. Unlike most of the other people at the school, Justyce is there on a scholarship. He lives in the dorms on campus, and travels to visit his mother in what one can interpret to be a pretty rough neighbourhood. Although neither he nor the author ever come out and directly explain it. He has no father to speak of in the story, but often speaks of other male role models as father figures instead.
In the first scene we are introduced to Justyce as he recieves a call from a concerned friend about his ex girlfriends intoxicated state and her insistence of driving herself home. Justyce busses and walks miles to reach her in order to prevent her from driving drunk. However, in doing so unknowingly attracts the attention of a police officer who follows him because he ‘looked suspicious’, due to wearing his hood up (a hoodie from his private school with the logo on it) and walking at night. And, as more implied, basically because he’s walking while black.
While the friends ex-girlfriend seems to fight wanting to get into the car with him, he plunks her in the back seat only to be arrested by the cop for ‘attempting to steal the car’. Even despite his protests, the protests of the ex girlfriends father and his mother (all of whom are black) it takes the friends lawyer-parent coming down before they take the handcuffs off and let him go without charges. The amazing thing with Nic Stone’s writing of this scene is that he’s able to get across the absolute fear and anger of someone wrongfully arrested, and then tap back into it regularly throughout the rest of the book with only a few words, so that we understand this incident is never fully forgotten and influences Justyce’s decisions and attitudes going forward.
As the story progresses we see Justyce as well as his best friend and one of the few other black characters in the school Manny, interact with the various ‘levels’ of white privilage shown by their friends and their two very different reactions to what is going on. You can feel their confusion over what is a ‘joke’ verses what is ‘subtle racism’ and how to react to it. Justyce decides to write letters to Martin King Jr in an attempt to be more like him and follow his teachings, and through this medium we are also offered a more in depth look at his struggle to express his feelings and emotions. We also see Justyce start to have feelings for a white Jewish girl in his debate club, and his struggle with friends and especially his mother due to their mixed race coupling.
All in all, Justyce has it hard!
However, things take a turn for the worse about 3/4 of the way into the story; Manny has decided to start stepping up more and telling friends when jokes aren’t funny (after an altercation where a white friend tries to exploit the two boys in order to ‘get into a black girl’s pants’ at a party causes Justyce and Manny to fight over that line between racism and jokes) and in doing so ends up punching another boy. The boys parents then, despite the years of friendship between the teens, try to charge him with assault. Manny and Justyce go for a drive to cool off. However, after exchanging words at a red light with a white older male who screams obscenities at them for having their music too loud, both are shot and Manny is killed. Now we follow Justyce as he deals with his friends death, the trial of the cop who killed him, and his own fear of being killed for something as simple as listening to loud music.
A warning if you use this book in a classroom: I had to put it down to cry after Manny’s death.
This is an extremely heavy topic and book.
Know your audience, and know your principal before using this book in a classroom, especially if its grade 8. The reading level seems to be about a 7-8 level, and it’s a great starting point to feeling empathy for others. I especially picked up on this as I am an adult white female, and this is about a young black male’s life experiences. However, while the scene itself is not graphic, the murder of a teenage boy might be very disturbing to others in a classroom. As well the book touches on underage drinking/excessive drinking, sex, dating, friendships, gangs and more while mainly tackling racism, PTSD like after effects of trauma, and emotions. As such I will tag this book at grade 8 or higher, with class read aloud so that these themes can be discussed in a safe and controlled environment.
Easily 5/5 starts from me as well!
Until next time my lovely readers!
If you liked this book, check out some of my other reviews on my blog including my series on Black Authors! Or reach out on Facebook and Instagram to shoot me a message!