Book: The Voting Booth
Author: Brandy Colbert
Publication: July 7th, 2020
Rating: 4 stars
Synopsis
This book is about an election day filled with voting drama, boyfriend drama, family drama and cat drama. Marva is an African American girl who has spent the past two years doing everything she can to make the people around her care about important issues, most notably, about voting. Duke, a biracial boy from a different school, meets Marva at a polling location that turns out not to be where he’s supposed to be voting at. Marva insists that they need to figure out Duke’s real polling place and so the eventful journey begins.
My thoughts
Let’s get straight to the point and start with the main characters. Marva. In the beginning she really got on my nerves with her aggressive non-stop lecturing and she really felt like a caricature of a young activist. But as I got to know her better and heard about her life, I no longer felt like how she acted was so far-fetched. Marva goes to an all-white private high school (apart from her and seven other kids) and she has a white boyfriend as well. At one point she tells Duke about her interactions at her scool and describes them as her not really interacting with the others that much but how they’re always showing how cool they are with her dating Alec and that she’s not really that different from them at all. In one flashback, Marva describes how she spent a 4th of July celebrating with Alec’s family and she had to explain to them why she doesn’t really celebrate it but instead celebrates Juneteenth (that none of them had ever heard about).
”He’s suddenly concerned about voting in a two-party system.” I snort, ”White guy?” Marva’s eyes fly open. ”How did you know?” ”Because Black and Brown people don’t have that kind of luxury.”
So yeah, it’s no wonder that she feels like she has to be extra loud about issues the Black community and other marginalized communities are facing. I mean, she’s practically being told that she has no skin color. And while it might feel nice not to be treated any differently by the people she has to go to school with, there is still an inordinate amount of injustices both in the legislation as well as just in the culture that can’t be fixed if people keep denying that there even are different kinds of people in their community. Anyway, I have to say that I’m one of those people that didn’t know what Juneteenth was until this summer, but I’m not American, so there’s my excuse.
”Celebrating July 4th wasn’t a priority for me. My parents and I had just celebrated Juneteenth with some of their friends. Something I hadn’t even mentioned to Alec because I had a strong feeling he didn’t know what it was. And sometimes I got tired of explaining my blackness.”
As a side note, that last sentence there is something I’ve been seeing a lot in social media this summer. Why is the onus on the marginalized group to educate and explain? It’s not like Google doesn’t exist. It’s not like there aren’t books about this subject, both non-fiction and fiction (like this book for example), that can educate people. It’s not like people aren’t writing about these things in blogs and papers. It’s all there if you just bother to look for it. Don’t ask marginalized people to educate you unless you’ve exhausted all other sources of information and still have trouble understanding. Just don’t, because they need their time and energy to try to survive in a world that says that they’re no longer ”officially” oppressed but still treats them like they are three fifths of a person (and not for the purposes of representation in the US Congress).
”...but your problems are different from other people’s. You have the resources to help make their lives better and it doesn’t cost you much except actually putting other people’s needs ahead of yours. Not all the time, just sometimes.”
Anyway, back to the characters. Duke goes to a public school and has a very different social life from Marva. He seems to really care about all the things Marva cares about as well, but in a way more subdued way. He comes across as a happy-ish boy on the surface but sad and slightly shy on the inside and he is still clearly trying to come to terms with the loss in his family. While he has not had to deal with the same things as Marva has, the subject of activism is not unheard of in his household.
””What is wrong with people? We’re either too black or not black enough.” ”Try being only half black.” I say with a short laugh. ”I’m never what people think I should be.””
I’m not a huge fan of books that happen in just one day, at least not in romances since I hate insta-love, and I always remain sceptical of whether there truly is enough that can happen in a day to fill a whole book. But yeah, somehow the author has managed to pack 300 pages full of stuff that all seems relevant. And the lovestory here is also very plausible and cute-ish.
As a lovestory I’d give this three stars, but the whole subject matter really elevates this in my eyes. Especially the way that serious issues are handled. This book touches on subjects like abortion, gun violence, protesting, police brutality, Juneteenth, racism and perhaps the most relevant of all, voter suppression. None of these subjects are really preached about, they are just things that Marva and Duke come across during that day or in their flashbacks. The voter suppression is described by closing down polling locations and not having any means to get to the new location, by making people vote on their lunch breaks and not having enough time to wait in line and by running out of ballots and having to wait for more to be sent. The feeling in the polling locations is one of anger, fatigue and defeat. But while these are all major issues, they don’t make the whole book feel depressing or angsty. It still retains it’s hope for a better tommorow.
”It almost feels like an empty vote if not everyone gets the chance to cast theirs too.”
One of the only few times that I got emotional while reading this book were the ”cop talks” that both Marva and Duke had with their families when they were younger. This is a fact of life that really broke my heart the first time I learned of it. Living in Finland, no one in my social circle has ever had any trouble with the police and I do trust our police force. One part might be because I’m a woman and just don’t face as much prejudice as Black men do. Also, I’m a homebody and there aren’t really that many situations where I would even have to interact with the police. But while things here might be good(at least in my experience), I am quite aware of the situation across the pond and it always makes me a bit hesitant when it comes to the matter of traveling to the States. I’ve been there a couple of times and while nothing has happened to me personally, a couple years back just walking alone with my blonde niece in Disneyland made me a bit nervous.
”The first time I was in a car that got pulled over my brother said we were lucky because the cop didn’t make him get out and he wasn’t violent. But I was with him when he got stopped again two more times. And I’ve been pulled over. And some people aren’t so lucky, you know. Some people don’t even make in out of a routine traffic stop.”
Sorry about all this political ranting, but this book just really made me stop and think. A thought provoking book disguised as a YA lovestory. That’s exactly what this was.
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