From School Library Journal
Grade 8 Up–China, 14, has learned to be a devoted mother after an episode of "messing around" with her best friend, Trip, resulted in her pregnancy two years earlier. Growing up in the same African-American Houston neighborhood as the characters who peopled Williams's earlier novels, China has never had an easy life, but when her daughter unexpectedly dies, she refuses to rely on any counsel except her own in coping with her heartbreak. Since her mother died years earlier, China has lived with Uncle Simon, who is wheelchair bound. When she insists upon taking a job at a strip club to pay off the baby's funeral bill, he chooses to keep their home life peaceful rather than attempting to control her actions and risk alienating her. Trip stands by her even when she denigrates his mother, refusing to accept her efforts to push him away. Williams is a master of character development and genuinely realized emotional growth. Her plotting almost boils over with big problems, but China is so compelling and engaging in her responses to situations that readers will care more about cheering her along than about the author's operatic predilections. The end of China's story isn't neat and complete, but is nonetheless satisfying. Teens with a taste for books by Connie Porter and Rita Williams-Garcia will want to get to know this teen.
–Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley Public Library, CA
Gr. 10-12. As in
When Kambia Elaine Flew in from Neptune 2000) and its sequel
Shayla's Double Brown Baby Blues (2001), Williams' latest work tells a grim, unsparing story of young people in a gritty neighborhood. When her two-year-old daughter dies suddenly, 14-year-old orphan China pours her guilt and heartbreak into a lavish funeral she can't afford. To pay the enormous cost, China finds work checking coats at a strip club (permissible since her guardian has changed her legal status from a minor to an adult). China endures strong harassment (explicitly described) in exchange for the large tips until she finally understands the "gutting" costs of her decisions. Too many contrivances weaken the rambling plot (a closing conspiracy is particularly distracting), China's motivations are not well developed, and graphic scenes in the club veer toward the gratuitous. Still, what will capture and hold mature teens are the strong, colloquial voices of China and her friends; the raw, honest details of China's world; and the provocative questions: Is the separation between childhood and adulthood about more than just the loss of innocence?
Gillian EngbergCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
