When your 12 year old tells you they love a book and it is a must-read, you stop whatever you are doing and read that book. And, as with We Deserve Monuments, the debut novel from Jas Hammonds, you often find a book you now love too. Here is what they had to say about it:
‘We Deserve Monuments by Jas Hammonds is a must read for anyone young and queer, following the love story of two girls and the buried history of racism in the small town of Bardell. My dad even d it. I couldn’t stop reading it and when I had to for school or whatever I was still thinking about it the whole time. It is really good!’
We Deserve Monuments follows Avery, a queer, biracial teen, and her family returning to a small, Southern town when they learn the grandmother has cancer. It is a story about a family amidst racism and generational trauma, but it is also a love story and perhaps the most impressive aspect of the novel is that Hammonds manages to balance both and portray them with equal excellence. Yet, this is also a story about friendships, with Avery bonding with her Black neighbor Simone and Jade, the daughter of a wealthy white family with an unsolved murder in its recent history, and navigating her blossoming love with Simone in a deeply conservative town where being both Black and queer puts your life in jeopardy. This is a YA debut that will touch the hearts of readers of any age, being a multigenerational tale that elegantly addresses each family member in a way that, as Jas Hammonds says in an interview with NPR, is ‘, "Gilmore Girls," but make it Black and gay.’

Setting is a key part of We Deserve Monuments, as spilled blood and the echoes of trauma never seem to dissipate a sense of place. The small town of Bardell, where ‘every corner [holds] a story,’ is a well crafted setting that rural readers will find to be rather authentic and quite lovingly portrayed. It is a troubled city where racism is as deep and numerous as the potholes and MAGA bumper stickers, yet there is a sense of irony that Avery finds more acceptance here as a queer, biracial teen, than she did amongst her peers back in DC. The choice of DC as Avery’s “home” is key, making a strong argument that the spectacle of politics that has become the sitcom of social media is not an authentic representation of the livelihoods of people actually living in the communities being argued over. Hammonds is deliberate in wanting to ‘showcase that queer people exist everywhere. We exist, and we not only exist, we thrive everywhere. And that includes small rural towns, especially down in the Deep South.’ Avery and Simone have a date in a secret underground club, showing safe spaces for communities of queer and Black people exist everywhere, which is quite lovely. Especially as spaces this are often threatened.

‘ I cried because I felt guilty. And helpless. And lonely and frustrated and angry. I cried because I couldn’t tell if everything was changing or nothing was.’

There are several mysteries at the heart of this novel—a major one being the unsolved murder of Jade’s mother—that serve as an excellent catalyst for the events to unfold and for the trio of friends to go digging into the past. What they find is horrifying and plays into themes of generational trauma and the terrors of racism, all of which begins to slowly unravel the looming mysteries about Avery’s family. Her mother and grandmother are on poor terms, to put it gently, and the absence of her grandfather as well as the decades-longs frustrations between the mom and Mama Letty are an enormous elephant in the room for much of the book. Mama Letty is rather caustic, and Avery’s initial attempts to approach her are met with mocking and disdain, but Avery know that if her family is to every come to a sense of healing these are secrets that must be uncovered and confronted.
‘If I was going to get to know Mama Letty, I was going to have to be the one to crack through her prickly exterior. She had to shed her loneliness, one layer at a time. Maybe I would be perfect for the job since I was dealing with my own version of loneliness after my breakup.’
Hammonds works wonders juggling the multiple characters and addressing both past and present, with the fallout between Avery’s mother with her Mama Letty as well as her former best-friend neighbor (also Simone’s mother) telling as much of a story as anything else. Something I enjoyed immensely here is the way this is less plot-driven and more a character study of women coping with trauma, familial struggles, and young love in a world that is far more apt to inflict harm than offer space to heal. The interracial tensions that linger across the decades show how much racism has left a festering wound across society and that we must become the sutures to stave off further bloodloss and begin the difficult process of healing. But Hammonds offers excellent role models, such as the mother who managed to stop the cycle of trauma and abuse (though her struggles show this is not an easy task despite being a necessary one), Avery who aims to uncover and assuage the pain while blossoming into a world of queer love, Simone who is discovering her sexuality and finding space to do so productively, or even Jade who bridges racial divides and stands up for her friends for their sake instead of as a weapon against the racism of her family legacy.

Beyond just enjoying reading a book recommended to me by my own kid, I d reading about people of their generation experiencing a lot of things that in ways my kid sees them. Such as the mentions of Covid and how frustrating and, well, rather traumatic the back-and-forth from in-person to slapdash online learning was while also having to navigate a global problem bewildered that the adults who are supposed to be in charge and protect them couldn’t even decide if they wanted to try and be productive or pretend it wasn’t real for edgy clout. It was a perspective from that year that I can’t have experience not having been a teenager in school and it was a good way to think about what they were going through from their own perspective and help them see how to cope with it all and remember there are people who care, who help, and even when they feel an outsider to know they can find a community for them. As Hammonds says in the NPR interview:
‘There's an ongoing theme about giving yourself grace. If teens read this book and if they take anything away, I hope it's that. I hope that it's, you know, there's a power in community and asking for help and, you know, asking to be seen and being witnessed and just really knowing that you don't have to go through this world alone. And that people - there are people out there who will love you and uplift your whole self. That was just really important to me for - especially for young people.’
I’m glad we could share this book and have good heart to heart conversations about it.

Ours is a complex world full of past and present hurts that bruise and bewilder us all. We Deserve Monuments is a gorgeous and intricate narrative about reaching out across divides, seeking towards empathy, understanding and healing. It can be a bit slow for a YA, which I enjoyed, but the many twists and revelations will keep you turning pages, even if just to bask in Jas Hammonds lovely prose. This is a marvelous book full of heart.
5/5

‘We had everything we needed now to become a whole, complete family—time, proximity, bodies hugging the dinner table every night.’lgbtq racism sapphic ...more234 s Bookishrealm2,497 5,823

Sometimes there are books that are written that seem to capture our hearts and souls. Every year, I usually find a handful books that do that to me; however, I've never read one so early in the year. This book has so much meaning to me. It's beautiful, gut-wrenching filled with happiness, sadness, pain, relief, compassion, anger, hatred, and more. Jas Hammonds wrote their ass off in this one and I can't wait to see what they produce in the future.

We Deserve Momuments is so many things at once, but at it's core it is a story that follows 17-year old Avery as she travels back to Bardell, Georgia with her mother and father to help take care of her terminally ill grandmother. While there, Avery learns so much about her family, it's highs and lows and most of all its secrets. She also meets two other characters, Jade and Simone, who create an even more complex meaning behind the words friendship and love. It is in Bardell that Avery learns about love, loss, heartbreak, and finding peace and closure.

What Worked: EVERY FUCKING THING. Nothing about this book was a miss. And it is quite rare that I say that. From Hammond's beautiful and poetic writing, to the intricacy of the plot development, to the robust character development, everything was crafted in way that made me want more and more of the story. Coming from a family that has had it's own fair share of secrets as well as generational abuse, I connected to Avery's need to fix her family. Unfortunately, for a good portion of the book she doesn't understand that there are some things in life that one just can't "get over." The relationship between her mother and grandmother was more complex than she could have ever expected and both needed to find their own way to both healing and forgiving. Black women are often characterized with a certain amount of strength that doesn't allow them to be vulnerable. We are so strong that we can "take anything." Hammonds broke that narrative. Avery saw her mother as this successful, powerful, Black woman and didn't understand how much pain and suffering she carried. It took this meeting between the three generations to comprehend how much of shield she'd held up her entire life. Avery has potential to ruffle a few feathers for readers because as a teenager she believes she understands it all, that she knows it all (didn't we all think this at some point haha). But Hammonds takes their time with Avery, molding her into a place of understanding, compassion, and sensitivity. By the end of the book, I loved Avery and her family they were my own.

There were also some interesting and thorough points about Blackness and it's intersection with queerness. While I can't discuss all of it in detail due to spoilers, it was amazing to see the varied generational and cultural perspectives on what it meant not only to be Black, but also queer in a small town that was readily known for it's bigotry. Avery's experiences in being out while living in DC vary greatly from her counterparts in this book and it's something that she has to reckon with and grow to understand.

One of my favorite parts of this book outside of the writing was the ever evolving relationships. I LOVED that Avery met Jade and Simone and they formed this tight knit friendship. The closeness that begins to exist between Simone and Avery does change the dynamic, but I'm glad that it did. There is something to be said about accurate portrayal of teen relationships in books and this one does it right. I've seen people criticize the relationships between Avery and Simone to the relationships that Avery has with her family and I disagree with all of those thoughts. AVERY IS A TEENAGER. SIMONE IS A TEENAGER. JADE IS A TEENAGER. THIS IS A BOOK FOR TEENAGERS. As an adult reader, it must be clear that we have a life of experience that teenagers do not. They fall in love quick, make decisions without much thought, and think that the universe revolves around them. THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO. That's what teenagers do and my goodness do we get to see that beauty in this book. These characters and their relationships grow. They begin to understand each other. They begin to forgive each other. And most of all, they begin to truly love each other.

If I could personally write a thank you letter and give it to Jas Hammonds myself, I would. At the time of writing this review, my own grandmother is dying of a terminal illness and my family isn't exactly in the best place. The feeling of being seen in a book that wasn't even written for me both breaks and mends my aching heart. With writing that flows so smoothly and feels pure poetry, I'm not sure I've come across a book as beautiful as this. It's quotable, it's memorable, it's everything that I needed in this moment of my life. So, thank you Jas for giving me a book that I didn't even realize I needed. That is the power of good book and a damn good writer. If you haven't considered checking out this book, you're missing out. It is easily going to be one of my favorites of 2023.audiobook black-books books-read-in-2023 ...more204 s1 comment emma2,126 67.4k

returning to my first love (ya contemporaries)

this book is A LOT. these poor teens are going through it all: coming out, mourning, coming of age, rumors about hired hitmen, racism, homophobia, so much death.

they are also putting themselves and each other and their parents through even more. the fringe characters here are a little over the top, and so are a lot of the actions themselves, but i'm also adjusting this for the being-a-grownup-reading-about-teenagers tax. when you're 17, leaving your dying grandmother alone at home until the wee hours maybe is nbd.

even if right now it's ...oh my god. can you guys please be nice to each other and maybe send your mom a text?!

bottom line: reading YA as an adult is equal parts fun, nostalgic, and nightmarishly frightening.

3.53-and-a-half-stars authors-of-color contemporary ...more152 s6 comments Lex Kent1,683 9,284

4.50 Stars. An excellent YA novel with all the feels. As a huge YA fan this was one of my most anticipated books of the year. I had a feeling this book would be a tough read, but I had no idea I would be ugly crying for half of the book. If you are going to read this book, then I highly recommend keeping a box of tissues next to you. There are a lot of TWs for the book including racism, homophobia, murder, cancer and that is not a full list. As tough as this book was to read at times, and as much trauma it deals with, underneath it was these stories of love and life that made you feel, and it gave you hope that these characters could get past some of their pain in time. And it kept you reading and reading because you just had to find out.

I really enjoyed almost everything in the whole book, I think my only complaint, and why I didn’t give this a full 5 stars, is that I felt the book started a little slow. I kept picking the book up and putting it down, over and over. It really took me a while to find my reading groove. Once the book picks up, about a quarter in, the story changes and I could not put the book back down. It had its hooks in me and I had the tissues in my hand for the rest of the night.

There is a very light sapphic romance. What is there romance-wise is very sweet and cute, but one character is just deciding her sexuality, so it is really light. There is also a light mystery in the book, but I would say that the mystery is a little bigger than the romance was, but it is not the biggest part of the book yet still a very interesting part. My mystery loving brain was proud to have figured it out before it was revealed because it was not easy to guess, and I really enjoyed the twists and turns.

In the end I would absolutely recommend this queer contemporary YA, especially if you enjoy more emotional stories. The fact that this is Hammonds’, debut book and their writing is this good already makes me really excited to imagine what they could have instore for us next.

An ARC was given to me for an honest review.
2022-favorites contemporary debut-in-2022 ...more112 s Rosh (On a partial break till June 2)1,832 2,816

In a Nutshell: I can see why the YA audience will go gaga over this. I can also see why some adults will love this. But mine, yet again, is an outlier review. Sigh.

Story Synopsis:
Seventeen-year-old Avery is moving with her parents from Washington to Bardell, Georgia, in order to take care of her terminally ill maternal grandmother, Mama Letty. She isn’t happy about the sudden move, especially when her mother doesn’t even have a good relationship with Letty. Moreover, there is some past secret that they refuse to talk about. As Avery settles into her new school and makes new friends, more secrets come tumbling out, and Avery is left wondering if resolving past issues is more important than maintaining present relationships.
The book comes to us in the first person perspective of Avery.


Where the book worked for me:

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