Kirkus
Starred Review
September 2017
Originally
published in four separate volumes, this graphic novel introduces the
outspoken college-student revolutionary Naima Pepper and her friends.
Naima
is a mixed-race, half-black, half-white, student struggling to
reconcile the inequalities that she sees on the campus of the fictional
Ronald Reagan University and in the surrounding neighborhoods of
Oakland, California. She decides to start an online anti-gentrification
movement, Mydiaspora.com, envisioning it as a social networking space
for black people to congregate when they tire of “white folks.” To raise
funds, Naima and her friends decide to throw a concert. Naima and her
best friend, Renee, go on a quest to organize support for the concert,
including a humorous meeting in which they try to entice a white,
dreadlock-wearing hipster couple to contribute solar panels. Following
this, Naima is in need of a senior internship to graduate. When she
can’t find an internship that suits a revolutionary, her fairy godmother
(who looks like Fannie Lou Hamer) creates one as a “racial interpreter”
that finds Naima answering stereotypical questions asked by white
people about black people. The novel hosts a multicultural cast of
college students who engage politically, blending satire and history for
a recipe of topics millennials don’t shy from. Sporting a tank top with
the word “Ally” written above a photo of John Brown, perched on top of
the literal soap box she preaches from, Naima Pepper is a force to be
reckoned with.
Readers will be smitten with Naima, and they will hope for more of her. (Graphic novel. 14-adult)
