The Blueprint

At first I felt like others have done what Rashad set out to do with this book more convincingly but after sitting with it for a while I realized that ultimately I don't think it's a quite fair assesment. Here's the thing, the others I've seen doing similar things focused on adults or teenagers and their coming of age. Here we have an adultified teenager who doesn't let us forget that she is in fact still a child, one that didn't actually get to be a child, she's immature and fumbling around because she is a kid. Rashad invites us to sit with our judgement of Solenne's actions many times by reminding us that she's basically a kid. It's not just a what-if story, it's an invitation to look at your expectations of black girls.

It was also a surprisingly quick read for a 300 pages long book,