Mary: Dear Martin is the 2017 debut of Nic Stone, who has since had a pretty successful career in YA lit. Stone is about to release Dear Justyce, the sequel to Dear Martin, and I’m personally really hyped about it. 

Dear Martin follows Justyce McAllister as he’s mistakenly arrested—violently—then left with a lot of confusion and emotion over the arrest. Justyce undertakes a personal growth project by writing letters to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (the titular Martin). Through his letters, he investigates racial prejudice in his Georgia prep school, as well as the country at large. 

I don’t want to say what I most want to say just yet because, well, it’s a pretty big spoiler. The book takes a turn partway through and becomes kind of intense. So consider this a ~spoiler warning.~

I picked up this novel for my 10th grade classroom and fell in love with it. What did you think, Emily? 

Emily: I really enjoyed it too. This is one I’ve been meaning to read for a while because I’ve seen Nic Stone in person before. She was on a panel with Angie Thomas when I went to the Mississippi Book Festival. And I also follow her posts and videos on Instagram. She just seems like a cool person, and I like that she seems to be writing from a place of being a mother of Black boys, and wanting to write books for them. A lot of YA seems geared towards girl readers, which is something we’ve talked about before with Not So Pure and Simple.

Mary: Right. YA books for boys seem pretty...generic a lot of the time. I’m thinking specifically about Chris Crutcher (who, hey, I don’t hate. I used Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes in my dissertation), who writes books about sports. Boys love those sports books!, publishers seem to say. So a lot of sports books get published, but that leaves a hole in what’s available for teen boys. Do all teen boys love sports? No. Do all teen girls love romance? Also no. *Sigh* I guess I shouldn’t get TOO into YA publishing and my thoughts on that, but Dear Martin and Not So Pure and Simple seem to be approaching books marketed towards boys differently. Neither of these books is really about sports, and both of them tackle pretty big societal issues, while still remaining funny and endearing. 

I felt very invested in the friendship between Manny and Justyce, because I think friendships between boys are kind of stigmatized in a weird way. Justyce and Manny just have a really nice friendship, which makes Manny’s death in the second half of the book really hard. I read this book in one sitting, and I’m not ashamed to say that I cried a bit. It’s pretty emotional, in a cathartic way. I hate to jump right into this big event in the novel, but what did you think about it, Emily? It felt sudden and shocking to me, but I guess that’s what it would feel like in real life, too. 

Emily: I really didn’t know it was coming. I wonder how many people read this book at this point and know already that Manny is going to die halfway through. I had no idea. The altercation with the cop at the beginning seemed like enough of an inciting incident. This was just stacking tragedy on top of tragedy. But that’s the whole point of the book. It’s not just one incident. As a Black man, you don’t have to deal with people responding to your Blackness just the one time. It happens over and over again throughout your life. And that’s what Justyce is waking up to in this book. It’s really heartbreaking, but this is reality for a lot of Americans. 

Mary: I think you really said it well. Books often follow a pattern, and Justyce’s arrest is definitely enough to get him thinking about race. From there, he discusses race in his debate class with his mentor of sorts, Doc. In a lot of YA books, that would have been that. Maybe there’d be a debate team competition or something at the end, but that’s it. But Nic Stone pulls one on us and kills a character mid-novel, and it just...really works in a sad way. You’re absolutely right that people confronting Blackness isn’t a one time thing. It’s not like people get one intense experience with race. It’s a part of life for a lot of Americans, as you said. Even more so, the book takes it a step farther and does all this halfway. So we get Justyce going to have dinner with Manny’s parents and really feeling the absence of his best friend, all the while questioning how racism is a systemic problem in America. 

The real beauty of what Nic Stone does, I think, is through Manny—both through his life and his death. During debate class, Manny ends up casually siding with some students (notably, white students) who say that the Civil Rights movement was successful and that equality has been reached. Anyone watching the news knows that’s not true, but Manny feels like he needs to side with these guys anyway, even though he himself is a POC. This happens more than I’d like to think.

Emily: I will say that I have seen it happen in my classroom when I was teaching college (in GEORGIA, no less… this book also takes place in Georgia, just saying). One incident I’ll never forget that this book reminded me of: After class one day, a white student was showing a YouTube video to a couple of his friends. One of them was a Black student. I can’t remember exactly what the video was about, but I do remember that the YouTuber (whoever he or she was) was making jokes that stereotyped Black people. I felt really uncomfortable being there and watching all of this go down, and I could kind of tell the Black student was uncomfortable too. But it was like he didn’t want to say anything and make his white friends feel uncomfortable. He was putting their comfort level before his own. 

I kind of feel strange speaking on this because, again, disclaimer that I always give when we talk about race: I’m really white. Like so pale I glow in the dark. So I can’t speak to what it’s like to be a Black person other than what I’ve witnessed and how I can feel empathy as a human being witnessing the experiences of another human being. But it does feel like a lot of Black people feel pressured to put the comfort of white people above their own comfort. And that seems to be something this book is pointing out too, especially with how Manny deals with his friends and tries to brush off the racist things they’re doing. Justyce does this too, but his tolerance—especially after his run-in with the cop—is much lower. 

Mary: This issue of POC putting white people’s feelings above their own is just such a big theme in the novel, and WOW, it’s emotionally devastating at times in a way that I haven’t experienced in a YA book in a long time. I think that when I’m reading YA, I often categorize it based on how good I think it is, not just in terms of how much I enjoy it but how well it’s written or how thoughtful it is. Dear Martin seems incredibly well informed, thoughtful, realistic, and emotional, and I think Nic Stone deserves applause for that. This is honestly just a great book, and I really enjoyed reading it. I also have a few students reading it and they’re enjoying it, too! So it’s Actual Teen™ approved. 

I am reminded, though (via Emily in PRIVATE TEXT), that I rated this book 3 stars on Goodreads when I first finished it. I’m obviously feeling much differently about it now, and I think I’m going to bump up my score to at least a 4. I think that when I first read it, Manny’s eagerness to please his white friends rubbed me the wrong way, and some of the debate class sections seemed a little rehearsed? Unrealistic? I’m not sure. Overall, after letting it marinate, I think I’m going to bump it up to a 4, both here and officially on Goodreads. 

Emily: Okay, I want to talk about the debate a little bit, and about “Doc” in general. Because this was the main reason I’m giving this book a 4 and not a 5. When I was reading the debate, I kept thinking like a teacher. And I felt like Doc wasn’t really doing a great job facilitating a debate that educated anyone. It felt like it was getting into Facebook political argument territory, and he didn’t really do anything to respond to that or pull it in a different direction. As a teacher, I often like to let my students hash things out and figure out difficult topics on their own. However, when the debate goes into personal attacks and pointing out things about specific people’s lives as argument points, I have a problem with that.

I also thought Doc as a character was a little weak. Especially towards the end, his dialogue got super preachy. It seemed like he was Nic Stone injecting herself into the story and telling these characters what they needed to hear to make the moral decisions they needed to make to move them forward. And yeah, that felt unrealistic and not very fun to read. Justyce is a smart kid. He got into Yale. I feel like he could have made these conclusions himself without an adult jumping in to bail him out. It was difficult for me though, because that was really the only thing that bothered me. But it was frustrating. And those parts didn’t have the same energy as the rest of the book.

Mary: Maybe we’re particularly thinking about Doc this way because WE are both Docs in our own right and wouldn’t run our classrooms this way. I can’t imagine let students make personal attacks at each other and just being like, Well calm down, guys! Someone would end up getting written up. I totally agree that the debate team parts were the only parts that felt off to me, and I can’t really blame Nic Stone for speaking through Doc, if that’s what she was intending to do. I’m sure that she has a lot of thoughts on social justice (I know I do) and if given a platform to discuss issues with young people, why not take it? I’m really curious to see if the Actual Teens™ reading this book in my class feel the same way about those sections. 

Emily: Yes, I want a follow up. I want to know what your kids think. We can call it “Actual YA’s YA Book Club.” Cause I don’t think women in their 30s are YA anymore. Sorry.

Mary: YA at heart. Lol.

Emily: Okay true. Anyway, if you read this book and you want to read more like it, check out my Book Riot post about books like Dear Martin. SHAMELESS PLUG. I have no shame.

Mary: Never feel shame! 

Next time on YA Book Club, we’ll be talking about Incendiary by Zoraida Córdova. As per my usual, I haven’t read much about the novel, but I bought it because it promises to be a fantasy novel inspired by the Spanish Inquisition, AKA a fantasy novel not inspired by JRR Tolkien. I’m pretty pumped to see what it’s like. Join us next month, and read along with us!