Genesis Anderson

Genesis is a 13-year-old African American girl who has grown up in the predominantly black neighborhoods of Detroit. She is the only child of Sharon and Emory Anderson, a working-class couple, and the narrator of Williams’s novel. Despite her young age, Genesis has already experienced her fair share of hardships: poverty, alcoholism, and domestic violence. Adding to her family’s grim circumstances are her peers’ bullying and her own internal struggles with her appearance.

The reader enters Genesis’s world at another junction in her life. The voice of a teenager who is afraid to lose face and feels trapped is often difficult to listen to, but is important from the start. In Genesis’s universe, it is always “her” against “them,” those peers whom she reveres and whose bullying she endures. Because of her very dark skin, she has earned many unfortunate nicknames ever since...