collected
About 8 h · at 30 minutes a day, about 16 days
Estimated from the page count of this edition. Dense books can take longer than the estimate.
In 1936, Mexican American teenager Naomi Vargas leaves San Antonio for New London, Texas, accompanying her younger half siblings to live with their white father, Henry. In the segregated oil town, she meets Wash Fuller, a Black teenager who befriends the children. Naomi and Wash begin a secret relationship, finding privacy in the woods beyond a community whose racial boundaries make their love dangerous. The historical backdrop is the 1937 New London school explosion.
Tender passages alternate with sustained dread in this YA historical novel. Shifting viewpoints include a collective voice of racist white students, so the town’s hostility enters the narration directly. It includes racial brutality, sexual intimacy between teenagers and sexual abuse.
Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).
Established
Strong racial brutality, sexual abuse and sexual content, including intimacy between teenagers, accompany the central relationship. The town’s racism also enters the narration through a collective voice of hostile white students.
Not really. Naomi and Wash’s secret relationship has tender passages, but those alternate with sustained dread. The segregated town makes their love dangerous, and the tone is dark, melancholic and tense.
Somewhat. The nonlinear structure and shifting viewpoints require attention, including when racist white students speak as a collective voice. The prose is atmospheric, descriptive and lyrical, with a moderate pace.
Racism shapes both Naomi and Wash’s relationship and the way the story is told. Their romance crosses the town’s racial boundaries, while the white students’ collective narration brings the community’s hostility directly into the telling.
400 pages in the Holiday House 2019 paperback edition.
Holiday House · 2019 · Paperback. ISBN 9780823445035.
About 8 hours at 50 pages an hour, based on the 400-page Holiday House edition. Dense books can take longer.
Ashley Hope Pérez is an American author whose young adult fiction places teenagers within pressures exerted by family, race, and community. Her novels combine close attention to character and relationships with plots shaped by violence and social constraint. Out of Darkness uses lyrical, atmospheric description and a wider cast to set the love between a Mexican American girl and an African American boy against segregation and the 1937 New London school explosion. The Knife and the Butterfly turns from historical disaster to two Houston gang members, drawing on a real death. Pérez’s research also considers the ethical implications of how narratives are told, read, mediated, and interpreted.
