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Ibi ZoboiA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Background
“Half a Moon” by Renée Watson
“Black Enough” by Varian Johnson
“Warning: Color May Fade” by Leah Henderson
“Black. Nerd. Problems.” by Lamar Giles
“Out of the Silence” by Kekla Magoon
“The Ingredients” by Jason Reynolds
“Oreo” by Brandy Colbert
“Samson and the Delilahs” by Tochi Onyebuchi
“Stop Playing” by Liara Tamani
“Wild Horses, Wild Hearts” by Jay Coles
“Whoa!” by Rita Williams-Garcia
“Gravity” by Tracey Baptiste
“The Trouble With Drowning” by Dhonielle Clayton
“Kissing Sarah Smart” by Justina Ireland
“Hackathon Summers” by Coe Booth
“Into the Starlight” by Nic Stone
“The (R)evolution of Nigeria Jones” by Ibi Zoboi
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Ibi Zoboi, the editor of the collection Black Enough: Stories of Being Young and Black in America, is a Haitian-American young-adult author. Her works range in scope from Afrofuturism and magical realism to historical literature focused on Haiti and the urban United States. Her writing explores the concept of identity—as a Haitian, an immigrant, and an American—and what it means to belong for people of color. She remembers first turning to writing and poetry as a way to express herself and feel seen, as she was marginalized when first coming to the United States as a young girl.
As she explains in her introduction to the text, the hope of the collection is to explore the differing, nuanced lives of people of color. Her hope is that “Black Enough will encourage all Black teens to be their free, uninhibited selves without the constraints of being Black, too Black, or not Black enough. They will simply be enough just as they are” (xii). The stories explore teenage lives and the impact that their skin color, their families’ expectations, money or lack thereof, their sexuality, and more have on their identity—and the struggle to express that identity with the social constraints around them.
By Ibi Zoboi