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3.5/5
Non-Fiction
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Rating: 4.5/5
Pages: 384
Started: 5 May 2024
Finished: 6 May 2023
Summary:
Avery doesn't want to leave DC. Her friends, her college prospects, her life, are all rooted in the city. But when her family gets word that her grandmother Mama Letty is dying of cancer, she has no choice but to agree to spend one semester in a small town in rural Georgia. As a queer Black teen, Avery is prepared for the racism and homophobia woven into the town's fabric.
She is not expecting to meet her two best friends, one of them a girl she can't help but start to fall for. Nor is she expecting to uncover so many secrets about Mama Letty's past, her grandfather, and the violently racist history whose echoes can still be felt even as Mama Letty's cancer progresses.
Thoughts:
This was such a heartbreaking and gorgeous book. I read the whole thing in one sitting and was fully crying by the end, which is practically the highest praise I can give a novel. The writing was great, immersive and distinctly YA without being overly simplistic or trope-y. The characters were also fascinating; Avery was a complex and cool character, and the way she responded to her family's historical trauma and the vitriol of her grandmother with horror and sympathy but without taking personal insult was really cool. Hammonds' portrayal of Mama Letty, which didn't excuse her abusive parenting but also presented her as a complex and sympathetic character whose death was extremely tragic, was also so impressive.
This book was a touching and immersive story in its own right, and also an admirably complex examination of the intersection of family, race, gender, sexuality, and history. Though many characters did or felt awful things, most weren't villainized, and the complexity of the world events and world views being shown in the book was dissonant without feeling chaotic or wrong. We Deserve Monuments is a beautiful book that I would highly recommend to anyone.