What is Shemar and Tavarrius?

Nic Stone uses the fictional Shemar Carson and Tavarrius Jenkins to represent the many instances of police violence against young black men in the news every month. In an interview with book blogger Sharon Levin, Nic Stone explains that she did not want to tread on the private grief and suffering of the families of real victims. However, she also wanted to pay tribute to real-life tragedies behind her novel: “the daily life of a seventeen-year-old African American boy in the thick of his senior year of high school. Trayvon Martin was seventeen. Jordan Davis was seventeen. Mike Brown was eighteen and killed eight days after graduating from high school. And before their deaths, these boys were just… boys.” In the novel, Shemar and Tavarrius are the fictional counterparts for this long list of ordinary young men killed in extraordinary and unjust circumstances. Although neither character appears in the book, their stories unfold in the background, proving that Justyce’s situation is not an outlier but part of a larger problem of systemic injustice and racial profiling.