Truth Is
A Novel in Verse
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Finalist for the 2025 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature
From the critically acclaimed author of All the Fighting Parts comes an empowering and defiant novel in verse in which a teen poet grapples with an unplanned pregnancy and determines what happens to her body in a world that wants to take the choice away from her.
Seventeen-year-old Truth Bangura wants nothing more than to know a life beyond her hometown. Writing and performing is her only solace in a life overwhelmed by a drifting relationship with her best friend, an emotionally turbulent home environment, and the reality that her below average grades make her true dream—escaping her mother’s grasp after graduation—uncertain.
When Truth learns she’s pregnant by her ex-boyfriend, she makes one decision she’s finally sure about: an abortion.
Determined to move forward, Truth turns to the pages in her notebook with the support of her slam poetry team—including the poet with a voice smooth as summer jazz, who’s been catching her eye during practice.
At an open mic night, Truth finally gains the courage to perform a piece that dives into her rocky relationship with her mother–and reveals the choice she never told her. But when a video of Truth’s performance is posted online and starts going viral, her decision quickly becomes everyone’s business–including her mother’s.
Told through searing free-verse, journal entries, and interspersed fill-in-the-blank poetry prompts, Hannah V. Sawyerr’s Truth Is reminds us there is always a choice. There is always hope. And there is always a way forward.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Fittingly written in free verse, this heartfelt YA novel is a celebration of poetry, community, and standing by your own choices. Truth is a senior in high school when she discovers she’s pregnant, and she becomes resolute about seeking the abortion pill. But when she works the experience into her regular poetry slam performance and the moment unexpectedly goes viral, Truth has to reckon with how everyone else in her life feels about her choice. Needless to say, between losing her best friend and dealing with her verbally abusive mom—an immigrant from Sierra Leone who’s long felt that her own dreams were cut short by her pregnancy with Truth—that reckoning isn’t easy. But impressively, Truth has the maturity and intelligence to seek support from the people who’ll give it to her, and it’s a joy to watch her use it to build the future she wants for herself. The writing prompts included throughout make this a true ode to the beauty of inspiration.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
When considering how her unplanned pregnancy with her ex-boyfriend will affect her future, 17-year-old Truth Bangura knows only that she longs for "more options than the ones I've been given." While Truth doesn't know exactly what she plans to do post-graduation, she knows that she doesn't want to become a teen mom like her own mother, who decided to raise Truth rather than pursue law school. Disregarding her underestimating teachers' and her mother's advice, Truth earns a spot on Philadelphia's citywide slam poetry team and secretly applies to college. Though Truth's decision to have an abortion leads to missed slam practices and strains her relationships, she finds solace in writing and performing poems that speak her personal truth—until her secrets become public knowledge in a viral video clip. As she reevaluates existing dynamics, new bonds—with a love interest and her estranged father—embolden Truth to have faith in her writing and herself. Sawyerr (All My Fighting Parts) combines fast-paced, unwavering verse poems with text messages, social media transcripts, and more in this stunning portrait of a teen in transition that earns all the snaps. Truth's mother is Sierra Leonean. Writing prompts conclude. Ages 14–up.
