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Maybe someday
40
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
40/100Critics
40/100Scholars
Author:
Kendra Allen
Publisher:
Ecco
Date:
August 9, 2022
A memoir about the alternately exultant and harrowing trip growing up as a Black child desperate to create a clear reality for herself in this country.
What The Reviewers Say
There are no tropes or platitudes here; Allen exhibits the same assertiveness and transparency that she showed in her previous books.
Allen bestows a fresh literary voice on this memoir filled with humor, honesty, and thought-provoking truth.
... reads like a stream of consciousness work of her child-self, grasping at concepts just beyond her understanding but processing them as best she can as she grows. She reacts to the adults around her and describes traumatic events from her childhood in ways that a child would, making the reader not quite recognize what has happened until the realization drops suddenly. The point-blank observations of her younger self cut to the core with their honesty. The memoir is not told chronologically but builds circularly, revealing more of the writer and her background from different angles. It’s a penetrating look at life with divorce, sexual assault, crushes, family strife, and school drama all factoring in. The conversational tone, with poetic cadences, help the reader quickly engage and understand the writer’s background and culture.
... wholly original and unsparing.
