It was a pretty fun read, about a young African American girl growing up on Chicago's Southside during the 60's. It wasn't great, and at times heavy handed, in discussing the narrator's family and their relationship to the civil rights and Black Power movements. However, lots of funny bits about growing up in the 60's, so I enjoyed it overall. ( )

between 1.5 and 2 stars. i wanted to like this, and i do for what she was trying to do. there is so much she wants to say here, and get across. the points she's making - about racism and gender and class and sexuality and homophobia and growing up and maybe even about religion - are important and good. but maybe she's trying to do too much. and her writing is not good. i mean, it's not terrible either, but it's just not good. there were some fun parts, though.

i was interested to see how long the tone deaf "not all white people" retort has been in circulation. (sigh.) ( )

I struggled with what to write about this book because so many things were going on that I feel like I would need a flowchart to explain how everything was connected. So many things popped up while reading this book for me and I a lot of different memories running through my brain about my own family.

I thought that this book by April Sinclair was brilliant. Overall, I loved this book. There were some minor issues that I had, but not enough to rate the book below five stars.

I emphasized with the main character Jean (known as Stevie) throughout this entire book. Stevie wants to be part of the cool girls at her school. She is at times frustrated with her mother who she sees as having no friends and life and only seems to be around to make Stevie do chores and for her to talk "white". Stevie is doing a delicate balancing act of having friends and trying not to do or say anything to alienate them, while also trying to still be involved with things that she wants to.

The other characters in the story, such as Stevie's father, and her brother's don't seem to be written as richly as Stevie, her mother, and her grandmother.

Additionally, the book being broken up into parts showing Stevie at middle school and then high school and we get to see her becoming aware that she may not be like the other girls she has grown up with. Included with that we get to see her reactions to the Civil Rights and Black Power movements in Chicago at the time was very informative. Seeing Stevie struggle to fit in with the cool group to having an epiphany that if her friends don't like that she may be a certain way, that they were not good friends after all was great to see.

I thought that the writing was very crisp though at times it was odd to read Stevie's thoughts (written perfectly) but then trying to decipher what someone was saying since Ms. Sinclair wrote the words as they would sound if pronounced sometimes.

The setting of Chicago in winter, summer, spring felt very real to me. You can tell that the author actually lived or at least visited this city since everything she wrote in the story rang true.

I did not grow up in the 1960s in Chicago like the main character Stevie did. However, I did grow up with a close knit family that had some of the same discussions that Stevie's family did about race. I remember hearing about the paper bag test when I was growing up. And I totally eavesdropped all of the time and heard people discussing "good hair".

I can also speak to the double-edged sword of being too light or too dark in the black community. Being too light was not great since you were accused of trying to look white, and being too dark was not great since you were told you were too black. The same issue would emerge if you talked correctly since you were told you were trying to sound "white" or putting on airs.

I now want to read Ain't Gonna be the Same Fool Twice, the sequel to Coffee Will Make you Black in order to see what happened with Stevie. ( )

An interesting look at the life of a black girl in the mid-1960s America, and how she dealt with everyone else's expectations of her. Learning what was really important to her along the way. ( )

(I was provided with a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review)
OKAY WOW
This book was so good. It's a coming of age story from the point of a black girl in the 1960's. I was hooked from the very fist page at the line "Mama, are you a virgin?". The book covers everything from skin tone to sexuality to having "bad" hair. This is the best book I've read in a long time, and I highly recommend it to people of all ages. ( )