Concrete Rose
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4.0 • 3 Ratings
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
The son of a drug king, seventeen-year-old Maverick Carter is negotiating life in Garden Heights as he balances school, slinging dope, and working two jobs while his dad is in prison. He’s got it all under control – until, that is, Mav finds out he’s a father. Suddenly he has a baby, Seven, who depends on him for everything. Loyalty, revenge and responsibility threaten to tear Mav apart, especially after the brutal murder of a loved one. So when Mav is offered the chance to go straight, it's an opportunity – in a world where he’s expected to amount to nothing – to prove he’s different and figure out for himself what it really means to be a man.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this prequel to The Hate U Give, Thomas delves into the upbringing of Maverick Carter, the father of THUG's protagonist, Starr. Mav is one of the subordinates ("li'l homies") of neighborhood gang the King Lords and the son of one of the gang's incarcerated OGs. At 17, Mav and his hotheaded best friend, King both responsible for recruiting and initiating new members and dealing weed for the King Lords have begun slinging harder drugs on the side, under the gang leaders' noses. Risking hard time like his father or death like King's dad by leading a double life, Mav soon finds himself in over his head when he discovers he's fathered a child by King's off-and-on girlfriend, who promptly abandons the baby to his care. Convincingly detailing the journey of a young Black man growing into fatherhood, Thomas brings her trademark wit, nostalgic love of the 1990s and all things R&B and hip-hop, and her penchant for heartfelt characterization to this first-person exploration of Maverick Carter's coming-of-age. Through its portrayal of loss and upheaval, this story acts as a tender love letter to a close Black family and community one that isn't without problems but is always full of love. Ages 14 up.
Customer Reviews
Coming up roses
4.5 stars
Author
African-American from Jackson, Mississippi. Former teen rapper with a BFA in Creative Writing from Belhaven University and what she describes as an unofficial degree in Hip Hop. I believe she can still rap if called upon. Her debut novel, The Hate U Give (2017), appeared after a highly competitive auction between 13 publishing houses and was made into a feature film in 2018. THUG (The Hate U Give. Get it?) was the best book I read in 2018, and is still the best thing I have read about contemporary race relations in the USA, closely followed by Ms Thomas's sophomore effort, On The Come Up (2019). Both were coming of age stories centred on 16-year-old African-American girls: Starr and Bri. This, Ms Thomas's highly anticipated third novel, is a prequel to The Hate U Give. It tells the story of Starr's father Maverick, when he was 17 in the late 90's.
Summary
There have been numerous reports linking Ms Thomas's work with Black Lives Matter. In fact, her primary inspiration was, and continues to be, the legendary rapper/ghetto poet Tupac Shakur. Among Tupac's many tattoos was "Thug Life," which stood for “The Hate U Give Little Infants F**ks Everybody." Concrete Rose takes its name from his poem, "The rose that grew in concrete."
Did you hear about the rose that grew
from a crack in the concrete?
Proving nature's law is wrong it
learned to walk with out having feet.
Funny it seems, but by keeping its dreams,
it learned to breathe fresh air.
Long live the rose that grew from concrete
when no one else ever cared.
Those lines sum up Maverick's journey from boyhood to manhood in the hood better than any I could write.
Writing
Pacy, well structured, with brilliant dialogue, although it might take some white folk a while to get used to AAVE (African-American Vernacular English).
Bottom line
While Ms T deals sensitively with the many pressures and dilemmas that face young black men in the USA, I think she handles young female protagonists more convincingly. Given that the author is female, I find this unsurprising, although I'm sure I'm upsetting someone's wokeness somehow by saying so.