Blanche’s Book Club: ‘On the Come Up’.

Happy Sunday! I haven’t been blogging on the weekends lately, but I was looking at all of my ideas for upcoming blog posts and there’s just too many to fit in Monday-Friday, so here I am.

I am currently in the midst of that pre-vacation scramble where I’m trying to get loads of work done, but also get the apartment clean, and pack, and all the things… so I stayed up really late last night working, and on top of that, realized we were losing an hour,

Today, my plan is to just eat coffee beans. But really, I’m going to a Create & Cultivate event that has all-female panels, talking about digital media and overall creating things. I’m pretty excited, even though it’s a 9-hour event that I reaaaaallllly should be working through. But hey, this is the type of stuff that’s important if I’m going to grow as a solopreneur. It’s a wise time investment.

I still had time to finish Blanche’s Book Club’s latest read though (while I got my hair done), so let’s get into it! It was “On the Come Up” by Angie Thomas. Here is the book’s description:

Sixteen-year-old Bri wants to be one of the greatest rappers of all time. Or at least win her first battle. As the daughter of an underground hip hop legend who died right before he hit big, Bri’s got massive shoes to fill.

But it’s hard to get your come up when you’re labeled a hoodlum at school, and your fridge at home is empty after your mom loses her job. So Bri pours her anger and frustration into her first song, which goes viral…for all the wrong reasons.

Bri soon finds herself at the center of a controversy, portrayed by the media as more menace than MC. But with an eviction notice staring her family down, Bri doesn’t just want to make it—she has to. Even if it means becoming the very thing the public has made her out to be.

Insightful, unflinching, and full of heart, On the Come Up is an ode to hip hop from one of the most influential literary voices of a generation. It is the story of fighting for your dreams, even as the odds are stacked against you; and about how, especially for young black people, freedom of speech isn’t always free.

Angie Thomas also wrote “The Hate U Give“, which I loved, so I’ve had this book on my library list since hearing about it. While the characters Bri and Star were similar in some aspects, they are definitely different and they handle themselves completely differently.

I saw an interview with Thomas on “The Daily Show” and she said she purposefully made the characters different to show that not all black people are the same. She also said it was really difficult for her to get a book deal because publishers weren’t sold on black peoples’ stories.

I’m so glad we have access to these characters and these stories! Even though they’re fictional, they’re based in something true, and it gives me further insight into a world I’m very much still learning.