After Tupac and D Foster (review)

The unnamed narrator of this coming-of-age tale is twelve years old and safely ensconced in her Queens neighborhood when a new girl shows up and makes the narrator and her best friend, Neeka, see things in a new light. Calling herself D Foster because she has grown up in foster care, the new girl comes to represent for the other two some part of themselves that they've never quite understood—the part that wants to wander, the part that feels like there is a world out there beyond their block that might also be a home. The three girls connect through double dutch, hanging out, and Tupac Shakur, with whom D identifies at a deep level. Because of D and Tupac, the girls begin to wonder what their Big Purpose is, and Shakur becomes a sort of beacon around which the entire neighborhood, mothers included, takes soundings with regard to their future. D floats in and out of their lives—lives that are already full of family highs and lows, like Neeka's brother's scholarship to Georgetown, the narrator's absent father, and Neeka's other brother's incarceration—yet both girls feel as though D fills in their gaps while preserving her own secrets. Like Woodson's most recent Feathers (BCCB 4/07), this is light on plot points and heavy on a kind of self-reflection tinged with melancholy; this narrator and the friends and folks in her neighborhood, however, are much more grounded and realistic in both context and language. The narrator's thoughts on D's place in her life—part best friend, part enigma—offer an insightful reminder of the way we find bits of ourselves in others, and the way our identities are a tapestry of the people and places we love, even if we don't entirely understand them.