In the Hemmings family, white supremacist attitudes are as deep-rooted as the potatoes their ancestors once used to dig up.
Title: Dig
Author: A.S. King
ISBN: 978-1101994917
Publisher: Dutton Books for Young Readers
Publication date: 2019
Genre(s): Surrealist, contemporary
Available format(s): Print, audio. I reviewed the print version.
Awards, honors, notable mentions: 2020 Printz Award winner
Reading level/interest level: Age 14 and up, according to Amazon
Summary: Though their ancestors were poor farmers, Marla and Gottfried Hemmings are now extremely rich (and getting old), but they refuse to share any of their wealth with their children or grandchildren, believing it's for their own good. Dig explores how this selfish decision affects the lives of their family members, especially the younger generation.
The five young, white teenagers are referred to with nicknames like “The Shoveler,” and “CanIHelpYou?” and are mostly growing up separately, but their stories intersect in unexpected ways as they confront the family’s tainted legacy of racism, prejudice, privilege, and dysfunction. Everything comes to a head at the Hemmings’ disastrous and explosive Easter dinner, but the teens may find something more hopeful in its wake.
About the author: A.S. King has written several novels for teens and has won the prestigious Printz award twice, as well as the Edwards award for her lasting contribution to youth literature.
Her works are known for being surreal and genre-defying, as well as their exploration of social issues. King also writes middle-grade books under the name Amy Saring King, which contain similar social and political themes, including Attack of the Black Rectangles, a story about censorship. King is a faculty member in the MFA program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts and lives in Pennsylvania (King, n.d.).
Critical review: Have you ever finished a book and thought to yourself, “I don’t know what I just read, but I think I loved it?”
That’s how I feel about this one. The first quarter of the book, in which readers are introduced to the cast of characters, is slow and undoubtedly weird, but I found myself growing attached to their quirks and narration style. The young characters are, in some ways, aware of their white privilege and are desperate to break away from it, in other ways, they are still naive and still learning. The book as a whole is a really thoughtful meditation on systemic oppression, racism, colonialism, toxic masculinity and more evils.
This story isn’t billed as a horror or thriller, but information is fed to the reader in bits and pieces, resulting in a thread of suspense that pulled me further and further into the story up until the big Easter dinner. I thought it was extremely clever and skilled writing, on King’s part!
Related programming ideas: This is a tough one since I’ve been trying to avoid tried-and-true programs on this blog and attempting to propose more innovative ones, but I really do think the most obvious program for this book would be a book club. It’s just so weird that it begs to be discussed!
Brief booktalk: In the Hemmings family, white supremacist attitudes are as deep-rooted as the potatoes their ancestors once used to dig up. But the youngest members of the family might be the ones to finally break through it and band together to build a better, safer, kinder legacy.
Potential challenges: This book depicts underage drinking and drug use, theft, violence, domestic violence, verbal abuse, among other things, but I have a feeling that this book is more likely to be challenged for its depiction of the ills of whiteness.
Reason for inclusion: This is a sharp-eyed (and sharp-tongued!) takedown of white fragility and I think would be especially important for readers who feel much like our main characters.
Check this out: A conversation between A.S. King, now a favorite author, and Ariel Bissett, a longtime favorite Booktuber of mine!
References:
King, A.S. (n.d.). About. https://www.as-king.com/about
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