Bronx Masquerade by Nikki Grimes

Sometimes I feel like a shelter for lost books. They appear in stacks on my desks or in boxes left outside my door. Sometimes people tell me excuses: "I bought this, but I can't find time to read it" or "Someone gave it to me, but it's not really my thing." As if the excuse matters or is needed. Sometimes there is no note at all and I'm left to wonder if this orphaned book is now mine or is someone missing it? I get a small but sizable percentage of my collection this way.

I got Bronx Masquerade through Lydia's shelter for lost and abandoned books. I'd never heard of it before though Nikki Grimes is a familiar children's book author. Apparently, despite my ignorance of it, Bronx Masquerade created a bit of sensation when it came out and is even taught as a class text in places. It appeared on my desk as part of a stack that Nathan put up for adoption.

The format is a mix of short, personal first person commentary and poetry. The story is that a group of kids in a Bronx high school all fall into the idea of open mike poetry after one kid writes a poem about Langston Hughes. There are eighteen kids in the class, they are not all friends with each other, and they all have something to say through their poetry. Each of the poems expresses some sort of inner truth or personal observation and the through the first person essays we get to hear some of the reactions of the other students to the poems/ideas.

Over the course of the semester, the students begin to revise their opinions of each other and become more sensitive to each other's experiences. The Open Mike phenomenon spreads in popularity until a local paper comes out cover them.

There is something about this book that feels raw and thrown together. The ideas don't always meld together or flow well from one to the next. In a way, it looks like what a teacher would cobble together as a class project from student poetry and reflections. That is possibly part of it's strength. The lack of polish lends verisimilitude. 

 I didn't find this a transcendent experience, but it did give me a lot to think about.