Hi all–I’m excited to get you talking about your books. There were some great blog posts today and I don’t want to spend too long at the top of class doing anything other than getting you going.

Overall, you’re all doing a great job drawing out big issues:

• mental health
• police violence
• racism in/and interracial relationships
• the long tail of colonial violence and control
• the adolescent experience to this age of changing schools/social environments

So much is enmeshed in these texts and you guys do a great job addressing these from different angels . There are also big questions about care here from a few different angles. We see these care questions in Diaz, who weaves the Baby Lollipops story with the relationship between Diaz and her mother, between Diaz and the much older Chris, and between Diaz and her mostly absent father.

Laymon and Talusan also engage this idea of what care means, as often in social contexts with his peers as in family contexts with his mother. Rosalio’s blog about Jabari is a great example of that. And of course in Fairest, Meredith Talusan has to reorient herself to a new country and a new culture, namely the elite campus of Harvard. Reading Fairest alongside Laymon and Diaz, it’s easy to wonder if Nanay Coro’s hope for the US as a place where life was “better” is misplaced.