Melanie's Children's and Young Adult's Literature Page
From the Notebooks of Melanin Sun
Home | Inclusive Literature | Author Studies | Asian Pacific American Literature | Native American Literature | Hispanic American Literature | African American Literature | Fiction, Fantasy and Young Adult | Audiobook | Historical Fiction | Nonfiction | Poetry | Traditional Literature | Picture Books | International Literature

melanin_sun.gif

 
 
Woodson, Jacqueline. 1995. FROM THE NOTEBOOKS OF MELANIN SUN. New York: Blue Sky Press. ISBN: 0-590-45880-9.

From the Notebooks of Melanin Sun is a powerful novel about change. Melanin Sun is a teenage boy who is fairly comfortable with his life. He loves his mother, has close friends, a tight neighborhood, and a girl he likes. When his mother starts acting funny, Mel gets a little worried about what lame man she will be bringing home to meet him. When it turns out that Melanin Sun’s mother is in love with a woman, and a white woman at that, his world is turned upside-down.

Woodson sugar-coats nothing as the drama of life unfolds for Melanin Sun. He is incredibly angry at his mother and the reader will flinch when he tells her, “Don’t touch me!…Don’t ever touch me again!” Mel begins to question everything he knows about his relationship with his mother, while at the same time he longs for the closeness that they had. He wonders about his own sexual feelings and worries about people finding out and rejecting him. Indeed, when his friend Sean airs out the situation, it seems as bad as he thought. Sean doesn’t come around any more and Melanin Sun figures that no one wants anything to do with him. Thankfully, his friend Ralph’s mom makes light of the situation and he comes around. Melanin tentatively gives his mom’s girlfriend Kristin a chance, and finds that she and his mother have some things in common.

Woodson does not hold back on the anger in this book. Melanin Sun is very angry at his mother and it is at times hard to read. Another big issue is race. Mel becomes fixated on the fact that she is a white woman and it causes the reader to wonder if this is not something familiar to fall back on. Race is something that Mel deals with whether he wants to or not, but homosexuality is not something he has dealt with before. Publishers Weekly says, “Through Melanin’s voice, Woodson frankly expresses the resentment and confusion of an adolescent desperately struggling to reestablish normalcy.” The fact is that life is not likely to remain comfortable, and Melanin Sun works through the situation that he has to try to reconcile it to what he thought was his life before. Although sometimes tough to read, From the Notebooks of Melanin Sun force readers to ask questions and try to reach answers on their own.

1995. Review of From the Notebooks of Melanin Sun in Publishers Weekly.

jacqueline_woodson.gif