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[marzipan-pig.livejournal.com]

Who Am I Without Him?: Short Stories About Girls and the Boys in Their Lives Sharon Flake

I picked this up in the library today and didn't expect much from it (it seemed too fluffy to me from the cover). It turned out to be really great - a series of stories about relationships between young (middle school/high school) adults, most African-American, and mostly (though not all) from a girl's point of view.

Many of the stories had disturbing scenes (one in particular stuck with me more than I would have liked) though each story was written in its own style. My favorite was some kind of wacky class assignment that I couldn't imagine ever being approved, where the class is paired off into male/female couples and an observer, and then asked to work through various relationship issues over a few-week period of time.

This was a quick read and I enjoyed it, though the focus on / assumption of the importance of romantic relationships would have been almost incomprehensible to me as a nerdy white suburban pre/teenager, and I think I would have conflated that with the overall gritty urban settings more than is really warranted.