Tangleroot / Kalela Williams / Book Review

TANGLEROOT

Noni Reid has grown up in her mother's shadow. Dr. Radiance Castine, renowned scholar of Black literature, is a force to be reckoned with. Which is why Noni is ready to escape to college this fall, where she'll finally be free to pursue her own interests and find her own path.

But first, she'll have to make it through this summer. And she won't be working the exclusive fashion internship she had lined up. Instead, she'll be spending the summer in rural Virginia as her mother prepares to start her first year as president of the prestigious Stonepost College--a college that their ancestor, an enslaved man named Cuffee Fortune, founded. At least according to Dr. Castine's research. The locals aren't so sure about that.

Noni doesn't want anything to do with Stonepost or Cuffee Fortune or Virginia. But she finds herself caught up nonetheless in the morbid artifacts left behind in the old plantation house they've moved into. And as she slowly begins peeling back the layers of history, Noni realizes she's more connected to this place than she thought. Even if this place doesn't want to have her.

THOUGHTS

This book was a delightful surprise. It really grew on me with every page. It isn't my usual type of read, but it was so well-crafted in the way the characters and the histories unfolded that I found myself utterly engrossed.

PROS

Non-Traditional	I really appreciate a book that proposes an untraditional path forward for a young adult. In a culture that has pushed college as the only way to success--and a four-year college of the best kind you can afford, at that--I appreciate this book centering a girl who doesn't have the most stellar grades in high school. A girl who has artistic dreams more than academic dreams. A girl who goes to community college (albeit against her will) to start working toward a degree--and working toward a transfer, when the time is right. I appreciate that this book embraces a girl who has to settle into a new place and learn who she wants to be, how she wants to live without pushing her into some preset mold from the get-go. She's living at home. She's figuring out her own path. She's growing into herself. She has dreams and aspirations, and she learns to have a voice to speak what she wants and how she wants it. And that makes this book perfectly YA (even if she is, well, a full adult the entire book).
Major Ick	This charming Southern town is swamped in veiled (and sometimes not-so-veiled) racism, and it is skin-crawlingly gross. Yet at the same time, as someone who has lived in a border state, I can hear these same snide comments and picture these same pointed looks so very, very clearly--said but unsaid, with just enough not spoken for plausible deniability. And when the historic record brings up political recordings laced with hate speech in the not-so-distant past, well, everything feels... unsafe. In a way that the author very much intends. It's palpable. And it's frightening.
Great Conversations	This is not a book that steers away from messy conversations. In fact, this is a book that dives right into controversy and presents solid arguments. I really appreciated all the nuance this book brings, and I love the way Kalela Williams digs into topics like minstrels and blackface. There's a difference between glorifying a racist past and teaching about it. Williams makes a compelling argument through her characters for, well, not ignoring the past (especially when that messy past involves actual Black history). Just because it is uncomfortable to talk about--just because people (and, let's be honest, by "people" I mean white populations) don't want to reckon with past wrongdoing--doesn't mean that this history should get erased. Teaching about something isn't necessarily celebrating the fact that it existed. But teaching about uncomfortable Black history is also not the same as venerating Confederate heroes--venerating oppressive enslaver forces. Williams advocates for diving into messy and complicated history but distinguishes teaching and learning from hero-worshiping terrible wrongdoing.

CONS

Part of what Noni is learning to reckon with in this book is, of course, her own unconscious biases when it comes to the South, to rural towns, to educational opportunity and inequality. And I appreciate that. But at the same time, there are things that Noni lets slip that just shocked me. Not that she thought them (because she's a flawed character, in a way that makes her compelling). But, like, that she said some of these things out loud. I know she's young, but have you really made it to 18 without the ability to, you know, not say the quiet part out loud?	Out Loud?
I know that this is all a setup to allow Noni to grow and come into her own. This book is, after all, a coming-of-age story at it's core. But boy were some of her mother's decisions hard to stomach! Noni needed a serious talking-to (see the con above), but derailing what Noni has set up for her life feels wrong, definitely not something her mother should do. Plus her mother's constant belittling of Noni's interests, hopes, and aspirations felt... too much. I know why it had to happen for the story, but it was hard to read, hard to justify.	Atrocious Parenting
The section endings were really quite abrupt, and it gave me something like whiplash. I was left reeling not because of revelations but because it just felt like there wasn't ever a proper conclusion to a section. And looking at the book overall, the neat wrapping up of every storyline at the end, well, it just doesn't feel right. It felts too idealistic for a book this jolting, which just added to my overall disorientation. Don't get me wrong. I adored this book. But the reading experience was a bit hectic.	Whiplash

Rating

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
8/10

Those who adored tracking down old family history in Hannah Reynolds's The Summer of Lost Letters will love diving into this messy family tree. Those who appreciated the brutal reality of Mason Stokes's All the Truth I Can Stand will love that this author embraces this dark and messy history.

Details Publisher: Feiwel & Friends Date: October 15, 2024 Series: N/A Add to Goodreads Buy it HERE

Note: I was provided with an ARC by the publisher through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions here are my own.