Review: Guardian by Julius Lester
Guardian
by Julius Lester
Julius Lester is one of the most lyrical authors writing for children today. His writing has a very poetic quality; it is very descriptive without becoming flowery and he doesn't rely on embellishment for its own sake. He chooses his words very carefully, and they are very evocative of the characters' emotions.
Lester also respects the intelligence of the young, and is not afraid to bring the horrors of reality to his literature. In his latest book, Guardian, a fourteen-year-old Southern boy named Ansel is forced to confront the racism in his town, within his family, and deep inside himself when he is forced to make a decision between the truth and the will of his father. It's a short novella, barely 100 pages, covering a week in Ansel's life. It is very tight and compact; I can't really talk about the plot without giving away a major spoiler.
At the end of the book Lester talks about the history of lynching in the South, a specter that has hovered over his life since childhood in the South. The book is written from the perspective of a white boy on the verge of adulthood, an angle Lester had wanted to tackle for quite some time. As he said in a 1970 letter, “White writers are so dishonest. Seldom have they written what they could have and should have, which is, the white side of racism. I'd like to see a children's novel about a little white boy who goes with his father to a lynching.”
The book is disturbing. It's dark and touches an ugly side of humanity that most of us prefer not to even think about. So I have to admit, I would be careful about when I would let a child read this book, because I'd have to be sure he or she was capable of understanding the injustice and horror. But once I was sure they could handle it, I would make sure the kid read this book, because it is only through facing the demons in our society that we can exorcise them completely.
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