Christina Hammonds Reed - The Black Kids

Rookie Season: Debuts | Week 67º

Oct 03, 2024

Extra seasoning for your everyday food for thought

Genre: Historical Fiction, Young Adult

“He tells me that wasn’t the first time he’s had a cop pull a gun on him, and it probably won’t be the last.”
— Christina Hammonds Reed

“Can we all just get along? Can we stop making it horrible for the older people and the kids?”
- Rodney King, 1992

Back Cover (Simon & Schuster):

“LOS ANGELES, 1992—Ashley Bennett and her friends are living the charmed life. It’s the end of senior year and they’re spending more time at the beach than in the classroom. Ashley’s not always so sure she actually likes her friend’s these days, but they’ve been besties since kindergarten. Everything changes one afternoon in April, when four LAPD officers are acquitted after beating a black man named Rodney King half to death. Suddenly, Ashley’s not just one of the girls. She’s one of ‘the black kids.’ As violent protests engulf LA and the city burns, Ashley tries to continue on with life as normal. Even as her self-destructive sister gets dangerously involved in the riots. Even as the model black family facade her parents have built starts to crumble. Even as her best friends help spread a rumor that could completely derail the future of her classmate and fellow black kid, LaShawn Johnson. Her world splintering around her, Ashley, along with the rest of LA, is left to question, who is the us and who is the them?”

The Black Kids, the 2020 debut by American author Christina Hammonds Reed, is an unforgettable coming-of-age novel that takes a hard and unflinching look at race, class privilege, and violence against the backdrop of the 1992 Los Angeles riots.

Suddenly, Ashley’s not one of the girls any more; she’s one of them: the Black kids, the problem and solution in one weird package. At least that’s how it feels for Ashley, as her model Black family is like that of a unicorn living in the hills of an affluent, all-white suburb.

I mean—she don’t even hang out with the other twelve Black kids at her lily-white high school like that! And to make matters worse, her childhood “besties”—a group of privileged, rich white kids—just don’t seem to get it, or even care, as the city’s growing unrest threatens to boil over to a fever pitch. Yet, as an untold family history steeped in the hellish 1921 Tulsa massacre slowly reveals itself to Ashley and her older sister, Jo, by their “other” side of the family (i.e., Ashley’s cousin, Morgan, and her uncle Ronnie), will these ghosts of the past ultimately force them to choose a side? Can violence from the downtrodden ever be justified? Where does one draw the line?

A fine read on how race still impacts young people in America, both inside and outside the fiery lines of social economics by Los Angeles area native Christina Hammonds Reed (who holds an MFA from USC’s School of Cinematic Arts), The Black Kids was both a New York Times bestseller and a 2021 William C. Morris Award Finalist1—an annual award given to a work of young adult literature by a first-time author writing for teens.

“He should hate me; I honestly don’t understand why he doesn’t, but I’m grateful. Sometimes we love the people we should hate, and we hate the people we love, and we’re topsy-turvy, but it’s like the song my dad likes to put on the record player when he’s had a little too much to drink: ‘It’s a thin line between love and hate.’”
— Christina Hammonds Reed, The Black Kids

Did You Know?

Did you know that there really is a thin line between love and hate, as “all human beings are 99.9 percent identical2 in their genetic makeup?”

Tell Me More . . .

Most of our DNA determines that we are human, rather than determining how we are different from another person. Therefore, it is not surprising that the DNA of any two human beings is 99.9 percent identical. In fact, differences in the remaining 0.01 percent do hold important clues about our family history and the causes of disease, as genetics and genomics play important roles in determining our health (alongside other external environmental factors).

Some Food For Thought:

Did you know that shortly after publishing The Black Kids, Christina Hammonds Reed wrote in an article for Elle magazine, “I am lucky in many ways. Amid so many nightmares, a dream of mine is coming true: I wrote a book and it’s getting published this August. All my parents’ sacrifices and dreams are coming to fruition.”3

“But it is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say, tonight, that a riot is the language of the unheard.”4
- Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.