The following version of the compilation was used to create this study guide: Zoboi, Ibi; Baptiste, Tracey; Booth, Coe; Clayton, Dhonielle; Colbert, Brandy; Coles, Jay; Giles, Lamar; Henderson, Leah; Ireland, Justina; Johnson, Varian; Magoon, Kekla; Onyebuchi, Tochi; Reynolds, Jason; Stone, Nic; Tamani, Liara; Watson, Renée; Williams-Garcia, Rita. Black Enough. Balzer + Bray, January 8, 2019. Kindle.

The stories contained in the compilation Black Enough by various authors discuss the lives of young, Black Americans. In the “Introduction,” Ibi Zoboi, the editor, gives her reader a list of questions she asked the young people she invited to contribute to her book: “What are the cultural threads that connect Black people all over the world to Africa? How have we tried to maintain certain traditions as part of our identity? And as teenagers, do we even care?” (xiii). She asked them to think about their own ideas of being Black as they embraced or rebelled against the ideas that they had been taught were part of their culture.

Several of the stories in this compilation deal with sexual identity. “Out of the Silence,” “Wild Horses, Wild Hearts,” and “Kissing Sarah Smart,” all deal with teens who either try to hide they are homosexual or get tired of hiding and decide to embrace their sexual identity. The story “Half a Moon” deals with both themes of a broken family and wealth disparity as Raven connects with her half-sister from her father’s second marriage. In “Warning: Color May Fade,” Nivia asserts herself as the better artist even when a former friend takes advantage of racism to try to win their school’s prestigious art award.

“Samson and the Delilahs,” “Hackathon Summers,” “Into the Starlight,” and the “(R)Evolution of Nigeria Jones” are coming-of-age stories that feature teens who step beyond what their parents expect of them to make their own decisions about the world in which they live. “Oreo” speaks to misunderstandings between Black families living in different areas of the country as to what being Black means. The story “Whoa!” portrays an encounter between a slave in the mid-nineteenth century and a twenty-first-century teen who learns how much the lives of Blacks have changed in the past two centuries.