American Street ( Cameron)

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 American Street by Ibi Zoboi is a great book that tells the story of Fabiola Toussaint. The book details Fabiola's transition to life in Detroit and all the pros and cons that come with life in America. The book is really good on a technical level and is a great read and something I would recommend  other adolescent readers pick up when they have the chance. However, I didn't really connect with this book the same way that I did with the previous book.  I can't really explain why, I just didn't get that spark so to speak, but I can say that there are definitely topics in the book that many can relate too even if they don't share directly with the conflicts the characters are involved in. The big conflict being Fabiola's decision to speak to the Detective about Dray and the eventual conclusion it leads to by the end of the book. The big conflict relates to the book's themes about loyalty. Fabiola's personal conflict is in regard to her mother and how they were separated at the beginning. Fabiola develops new relationships with her cousins and with other characters like Kasim and Dray. Fabiola relying more with her loyalty to her Mom decides to "snitch" on Dray in order to maybe get to see or even free her mother. This of course leads to an unfortunate death. Despite me not connecting with the novel, this theme is very compelling, and the conflict about this theme is presented in an unfortunately realistic way and conflict I can see some readers resonating with. 

Comments

  1. Josh HolmesSeptember 19, 2022 at 8:57 AM

    I agree that I didn't get that spark either, but the book was still interesting to read. I also agree that the theme is compelling, as it deals with many very serious issues that everyone needs to be aware of

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  2. Samantha ReinhardtSeptember 19, 2022 at 10:35 PM

    I wonder if part of why you might not connect with the book as much as with the last one is because it's more of a "window" than a "mirror" (to use the terms from class). This is what I found for myself personally. After all, we're reading about Fabiola's experience as a young female person of color immigrating to the city of Detroit (which is much different than where we live). Beyond this, Fabiola is placed into a very specific situation due to her circumstance in which she must make a very intense decision that is literally life and death. I think that the situation and the gravity of the choice Fabiola must make is what made her less relatable to me more than anything else.

    This is in contrast to "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian"-- while Arnold's story also serves as a window into the experience of Native Americans in our society, there is a bigger focus on being the "new kid" at a school, struggling with finding who he is, and dealing with more "mundane" everyday life as a student as compared to Fabiola's intense and fast-paced experience when she gets to Detroit. Although Arnold's decision is a very important one, that has life-or-death implications in its own way, the way that his story unfolds and centers on his development throughout a school year is likely a more relatable experience for me and you than what Fabiola has gone through in the span of a few short months after immigrating to a new place.

    For me, it was easier to find parts of myself within Arnold's story as someone who lived in a very small, impoverished town growing up and had to be the "new kid" several times throughout my life and specifically at the age when Arnold decided to go to Reardan.

    While Fabiola absolutely struggles with her sense of self as an adolescent, being in a completely new place to her and going to a new school, and while as her identity as an adolescent immigrant is paramount to her story as someone who is navigating an unknown new landscape in a big city with a lot of complicated and dangerous street politics, her story does not put her specifically adolescent struggles as front-and-center as "Diary" does for Arnold, in my opinion.

    The focus of "American Street" is on its plot and creating a sense of urgency surrounding Fabiola's one central decision that she must make, which we hurry towards throughout the novel. We must draw more nuanced and implied conclusions regarding Fabiola's sense of self and how her adolescence relates to her actions from the story as compared to Arnold, who much more explicitly states how he is feeling about himself and his surroundings (or rather, he draws it) and whose actions we can much more easily connect to certain aspects of his adolescent identity. Fabiola doesn't do the same self-examination of her actions that Arnold does constantly about himself throughout his story. Arnold's story is more reflective, Fabiola's story is more about her actions.

    I completely agree that these stories that we find to be more of a "window" are just as important to read as the ones we find to be more of a "mirror" because, after all, other people might find Fabiola to be more of a mirror than a window, and vice versa for Arnold! It's so essential to expanding our understanding of the lived experiences of others to read about those experiences--and Fabiola's story is a great example of a story that increases awareness about a large variety of important struggles that others face in their lives.

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