As informative and overwhelming as it has been filling our brains with anti-racism nonfiction over the last three months, I’ve seen dozens of posts asking white and non-Black allies to read simply “normal” Black literature. This is a very straightforward, albeit small, way to normalize Black culture in our world of white supremacy. We don’t only want to read about the ways that Black people are oppressed and how to fight the system, but we can actually fight it by simply reading a regular novel about a Black person living their life. Naturally, I dove right into my favorite genre to start the search for a good read—coming-of-age debut young adult novels—where I found the powerful and heartbreaking gem that is Color Me In by Natasha Díaz for August’s truelane book club pick.
In a word, Díaz’s writing is enchanting. Nevaeh Levitz is a high school sophomore whose parents, a Jewish father and a Black mother, have recently split on definitively un-amicable terms. Nevaeh is white presenting, which means she has light skin and appears by a visual account to be a white person in most communities. This affords her a ton of privilege that she doesn’t understand, which her Black female cousins on her mother’s side are swift to point out when she moves to Harlem. No longer in the wealthy white neighborhood of her comfortable childhood, Díaz skillfully takes us through Nevaeh’s identity search for whether her Blackness can fit with her whiteness, and if she can find a way to be proud of both cultures.
When reading good fiction, you never need to question whether your protagonist is a real person or not—they are real enough on the page and their experiences affect you similarly. In Color Me In, it was clear right away that Díaz was drawing on personal experience throughout, and I was not surprised in the end acknowledgements to find it was autobiographical fiction. Unpacking the memories of a life you put away long ago couldn’t have been easy, and Díaz crafted the story beautifully.
Dancing with the electric colors of New York City on hot summer nights, dozens of dynamic characters from every walk of life, a magical first love that goes exactly the way you want it to and plenty of high school and social media drama, this is a novel that is full of spice and life while taking you to places of loss, heartbreak, and fear. The lows are low, but they teach you lessons along the way—including the importance of continuing to work towards closing our nation’s prolonged chapter on racial injustice.