Black Brother, Black Brother: A Book Review

Hello Everyone!

I have just finished reading this awesome book called Black Brother Black Brother by Jewell Parker Rhodes. This book absolutely blew me away, and that’s something that doesn’t happen often. This book is from the list of The Battle Of The Books. It’s about a boy named Donte, a twelve-year-old biracial kid whose father is Norwegian American and his mother is African American. But his skin color is more like his mother’s and his brothers’ skin color is more like his father’s. He is one of the only very few black kids at his new private white middle school and is bullied all the time. Donte wishes he were invisible. His white brother Trey is treated very differently from Donte. With a bully named Alan (King) he has an incident and is framed and later arrested and suspended. In my opinion, I think that getting arrested for something so trivial was inappropriate. During this period, he joined the boys and girls fencing club run by a famous former Olympic fencer. Donte realizes that he has a mentor in his life who can lead him on the right path. With his help, Donte was able to get into a fencing team and learn to be proud of his identity. This incident at school made Donte realize injustice and prejudice against black kids. In this crisis, his mother who is a lawyer decides to support him and files a case against this incident at school.  What will happen to Donte? Will he be able to go back to school like other kids? What will happen to the bully? 

This book covers important themes like racial injustice, discrimination, bullying, colorism, and self-identification. 

If you want to read this book, you can get a copy at your local library, or on Amazon or you can get it on Sora, (a website where you can listen to audiobooks or read online).