Title: What's Mine and YoursAuthor: Naima Coster
Published by: Grand Central Publishing on Mar. 2, 2021
Genres: General Fiction
Pages: 341
Format: Hardcover
Source: Grand Central Publishing
Book Rating: 8/10
From the author of Halsey Street, a sweeping novel of legacy, identity, the American family-and the ways that race affects even our most intimate relationships.
A community in the Piedmont of North Carolina rises in outrage as a county initiative draws students from the largely Black east side of town into predominantly white high schools on the west. For two students, Gee and Noelle, the integration sets off a chain of events that will tie their two families together in unexpected ways over the span of the next twenty years.
On one side of the integration debate is Jade, Gee’s steely, ambitious mother. In the aftermath of a harrowing loss, she is determined to give her son the tools he’ll need to survive in America as a sensitive, anxious, young Black man. On the other side is Noelle’s headstrong mother, Lacey May, a white woman who refuses to see her half-Latina daughters as anything but white. She strives to protect them as she couldn’t protect herself from the influence of their charming but unreliable father, Robbie.
When Gee and Noelle join the school play meant to bridge the divide between new and old students, their paths collide, and their two seemingly disconnected families begin to form deeply knotted, messy ties that will shape the trajectory of their adult lives. And their mothers-each determined to see her child inherit a better life-will make choices that will haunt them for decades to come.
As love is built and lost, and the past never too far behind, What’s Mine and Yours is an expansive, vibrant tapestry that moves between the years, from the foothills of North Carolina, to Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Paris. It explores the unique organism that is every family: what breaks them apart and how they come back together.
Review:
Graceful, thought-provoking, and moving!
What’s Mine and Yours is a beautifully written, affecting tale that takes you back and forth in time and immerses you into the lives of two single-mother families as they grapple with all the secrets, wounds, smiles, tears, strength, discontent, and compassion that life seems to have handed them.
The prose is effortless and rich. The characters are authentic, angry, and raw. And the story is a touching, coming-of-age tale about life, loss, love, grief, forgiveness, familial drama, friendship, race, discrimination, marital discord, courage, hope, socioeconomic disparities, and the complex dynamics that exist between family members.
Overall, What’s Mine and Yours is an insightful, nuanced, multi-generational family saga by Coster that reminds us that life is complicated, messy, challenging, short, heartbreaking, as well as all those other special moments and lovely times that happen in-between.
This book is available now.
Pick up a copy from your favourite retailer or from one of the following links.
Thank you to Grand Central Publishing for providing me with a copy in exchange for an honest review.
About Naima Coster
Naima Coster is the author of Halsey Street, and a finalist for the 2018 Kirkus Prize for Fiction. Naima's stories and essays have appeared in the New York Times, Kweli, the Paris Review Daily, Catapult, the Rumpus, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University, as well as degrees from Fordham University and Yale. She has taught writing for over a decade, in community settings, youth programs, and universities. She lives in Brooklyn with her family.
Photo courtesy of grandcentalpublishing.com
