Genesis Begins Again is a middle grade novel that tackles huge problems like colorism, addiction, and friendship in middle school.
It.Is.Breathtaking.
As someone who aims to write middle grade, I’d love to know how Ms. Williams takes on such huge and consequential topics and yet makes the reader want to keep turning the page. Maybe it’s the incredibly strong voice of the main character, Genesis, who you can’t help but root for. She is engaging, funny, and at times hard-headed. Moreover, the plot is interesting. It’s just a finely told story when all is said and done.
Genesis is a middle school girl whose father’s drinking problem leads to eviction notices regularly. She moves around and struggles to make friends. The heart wrenching truth of the novel is that Genesis longs to understand him. To connect with him. To make him love her.
Her life begins to change when they move from Detroit to the fancy suburb of Farmington Hills. As the story progresses, she learns more about her family history, and she tries to piece together the motivations of various family members. She also meets a good teacher who mentors her, and new friends who appreciate her for who she is. But of course the specter of her father’s addiction is never far from her mind, and she knows it can be stripped away from her at any minute.
Genesis undergoes a journey of self-discovery, in which she must learn to love herself. Williams deftly ties all of the strands of the novel together into a unifying theme. It’s a book for middle grade kids that offers a window into how systemic racism, poured out unrelentingly over generations, can lead to internalized racism. How these attitudes can often go unquestioned and unchallenged. And how kids can learn to love themselves.
I would imagine it’s a huge challenge for an author to describe the ills and effects of a society built on white supremacy for middle grade readers (without it sounding like a sermon,) but Williams does just that. She is truthful about things that adults are often unwilling to discuss, and she writes an engaging novel built around an unforgettable character.
I hope every school librarian picks up this book and puts it into the hands of children. It’s just wonderful.
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