Arriving at his fifth school in as many years, a diplomat’s son, Osei Kokote, knows he needs an ally if he is to survive his first day so he’s lucky to hit it off with Dee, the most popular girl in school. But one student can’t stand to witness this budding relationship: Ian decides to destroy the friendship between the black boy and the golden girl. By the end of the day, the school and its key players – teachers and pupils alike – will never be the same again.
The tragedy of Othello is transposed to a 1970’s suburban Washington schoolyard, where kids fall in and out of love with each other before lunchtime, and practice a casual racism picked up from their parents and teachers. Peeking over the shoulders of four 11 year olds Osei, Dee, Ian, and his reluctant girlfriend Mimi, Tracy Chevalier’s powerful drama of friends torn apart by jealousy, bullying and betrayal will leave you reeling.
In the nicest possible way this has been a difficult book to read, finish etc.. The overall feeling of the book leaned heavily towards dark, oppressive and threatening. This book covers a single day, where friendships can be transitory, bullies can manipulate those who appear to be weaker, and where the adults are as casually racist as the kids.
Osei, from Ghana and the son/youngest child of a diplomat, is now used to being the new boy where ever he goes, and more specifically, the black boy in otherwise exclusively white neighbourhoods.
Osei arrives at his new school, makes an instant connection with Dee, who clearly seeks a father figure from one of her male teachers. This puts the previous social order in jeopardy, as there is now an unknown quantity in a group of people who have otherwise grown up together.
There are plenty of cliques in the school, including the boys who play softball, and the girls who do skip rope.
Ian is the one who is the bully, who likes to control the school yard. He pretends to like O, but realises it’s more interesting if he sets everyone off against each other, even over the smallest pretences, such as a pencil case and some strawberries. Meanwhile O’s older sister, Sisi, with whom he has previously had a good relationship, is now well into her teens, and has been “radicalised” by the civil rights movement and Black Power, and how “Black is Beautiful”. Therefore he is hitting a new school where he has lost his connection to his closest female confidant, where the last token from her is used as a pawn by Ian to whip up jealousy (no one apart from Osei really understands the significance of the strawberry pencil case).
The story alternates between the group being in class (and the various dynamics of who gets to sit with whom) and the group in the playground. Ian, in the Iago role, doesn’t like the dynamic shift, especially in favour of someone new, who is black as well. Feelings are escalated, power plays are invoked, the naive get used and this all culminates in a devastating event in the playground, where lives are literally broken.
As I said, this was a tough book to read, and it got harder nearer the end, when you could palpably feel something is going to happen, and you fear how that will manifest. A good “alternative” read to the Shakespeare story, which some people can struggle with.
Writing about books 