This is an excellent book. This is what good fiction does - help you understand a world, a time, a life vastly different from yours by providing you a window to peer into the lives of others.

Excellent ensemble of well-developed characters, an immersive narrative style, well-paced: all these elements only add to an excellent story, personalizing an arc of events we've seen splayed over news cycles all too often, and adding more power to it. And that was important for me, getting a glimpse of the personal stories here, to go along with the academic arguments against police brutality, systemic oppression, protest, resistance. The editorial decision (I presume) to not delve deep into these pedantic arguments serve this book well. It's the reinforcement of the idea of community and how they deal with everyday assaults that drives this book home for me.

Highly recommended.