American Street: A National Book Award Finalist―A Powerful YA Novel about a Haitian Teen, Family Secrets, and the Cost of the American Dream

I just fell in love with this novel! I felt like I clicked with this novel from the beginning. It wasn’t slow for me to get into, I was immediately engaged. Fabiola is such a compelling MC and narrator and I was so intrigued by what she would do next and by what the other characters would do. There are just so many things about this story that I loved. I loved that although Fabiola has newly immigrated to the US from Haiti she still remains firmly connected to her roots. She’s still spiritually connected to Haiti and her ancestors. The story contains magical realism that is described through Fabiola’s spiritual connection to the gods. Her lwas, spiritual songs, and stories play a prominent role in the story and we see how they guide Fabiola in the decisions she makes. I like that she remained steadfast in her spiritual devotion and her love for Haiti because of that added dimension to her American experience. The American story is one of assimilation so I loved that Fabiola rejected that and remained true to her origins. I also loved almost all of the characters in the book (Dray is extremely problematic, to say the least). All of the characters in this story are so dynamic and they have so much dimension and complexity. Even Dray, who’s a clear antagonist, is written with depth and dimension. Fabiola’s relationships with the characters are complicated and nuanced and you just want to keep learning more about them. I liked that the author portrayed the complex relationship Fabiola has with her family. She loved them and they love her but they frequently have this conflict or friction that they have to work through. But despite the conflict within their family, they still ride or die for each other. I also loved Kasim’s character (sigh😔). He respected Fabiola and you could tell that he genuinely cared about her. I felt like their relationship just conveyed the innocence and beauty that comes with experiencing your first love. Even writing about him and their relationship makes me emotional. The formation of the relationship felt so organic and genuine, so I just really loved him as a character. I really enjoyed Ibi Zoboi’s writing. Her writing kept me intrigued and in suspense. There’s one part where Fabiola is learning about the character Bad Leg, and I thought that part was so mind-blowing and cleverly written. The story also contained dramatic irony so that contributed to the suspense I felt. I also loved the magical realism in the book. It was used to cleverly and also felt organic because it was tied to Fabiola’s spirituality. Lastly, I want to explain why I appreciate this book. I just felt so touched by this book because it felt like it was written as an ode to black girls. This book was written for all black girls across the diaspora and socioeconomic lines. Even though Fabiola and her cousins' experience wasn’t a direct reflection of my own, I still felt so connected to them and I related to them. I feel like this story is the definition of Black Girl Magic. It’s for all black girls; the rich girls, the poor girls, the girls with the hoop earrings, the girls with fresh Jordan’s, the nerdy girls, the anime girls, and more. This story just did such a good job showing that black girls are multi-dimensional and we have so much range and diversity. I feel like this story was written with so much love and appreciation for black girls everywhere in the world, I just loved it. Another important message the novel had was that black girls are resilient. We are emotional and complicated but we are also resilient and we make beauty out of the limited options we are given. This is the very essence of Black Girl Magic. The novel also makes exemplifies how the immigrant experience is the American experience. America is a country of many cultures and traditions existing at once. It’s how people navigate the balance of their origins with their new environment that defines their American experience. I just loved this book! It made me happy, it made me emotional, it made me cry. Not very often to do books elicit an emotional response from me but this one did. I highly recommend this book, especially to fellow black girls. This book also contains themes that are really relevant to the events that happening today concerning BLM protests. I will add a trigger warning that the book describes police brutality and gun violence so this may be triggering for some readers. Otherwise, I encourage everyone to read this book and to get into the feels!

Whoa....I resumed this book today and literally finished it today. So fast paced, so much action! I truly enjoyed this novel considering I did not expect this book to do well. American Street is about Fabiola Toussaint who immigrates to America with her mother from Haiti, but upon arrival, her mother is detained at customs, leaving Fabiola to navigate a new country and culture on her own with some help from her cousins and aunt. The theme of this story is based on Fabiola trying to make sense of what happened to her mom and then trying to find a way for her mother to join her. As she begins to settle into her new environment, she meets and falls in love with a young guy named Kasim Anderson. Anderson will teach her about her new world and also serve to temporarily fill the void that Fabiola only desires for her mother. So many events occur that keep the storyline interesting and moving, but I must say, it is also sad. Honestly, I experienced many emotions while reading this book, and when I finished it, I still had all the characters I met in my mind. I finished this book in two sittings, though I did take a break because of work. I gave this book 4 stars on GoodReads, but it is technically 4.5 out of 5.0. Zoboi did a great job writing this book. Our main character, Fabiola Toussaint, is well developed and the theme is real and will resonate with many readers who have foreign blood in them. I enjoyed this book and definitely recommend it.

A beautifully written book that combines Haitian Vodou, spirituality and Creole culture with contemporary American way of life. This novel is a fantastic blend of fear, hope, crime, love, abuse, poor judgements, faith, life choices and more. All that leads to a bittersweet ending. Fabiola is an US born Haitian teenager who lived most of her life in Haiti together with her mother. When the two of them are attempting to return to the US to secure a better life, Fabiola’s mother is being detained by US immigration. Throughout the story we learn of the reason why that happened. Fabiola lives with her aunt Jo and three cousins in Detroit. While trying to adjust to the new country, she constantly misses her mother and tries her best to have her released, so that the two of them can have a better future. Slowly however she realizes that United States may not be the paradise on Earth which she dreamt of, and that life in Detroit has own difficulties. Her family, although hard for her not to love, have own problems and make questionable and not always the right choices in life. “The rock in the water does not know the pain of the rock in the sun”. When it becomes obvious that nobody is able to help Fabiola’s mother, she turns deeper to her Haitian Vodou faith, which blends fantastically in the story and adds it a new edge, which I did not find in another book. All characters are well developed, some are more likeable than others. Some are very easy to dislike. But they all make the story full. I absolutely loved this novel and will remember it for a long time. It deserves the spot on the shelf for books to be read again in the future.

Verdict: a must-add for high school libraries and a heartbreaking account of immigration and the pursuit of the American dream from a rare cultural perspective. I will be shouting this book from the rooftops. Due to language and drug references, I concur with the grades 9-12 recommendation from Booklist and School Library Journal. Ibi Zoboi’s new novel, “American Street” is a gritty and haunting tale of a Haitian teenage immigrant, Fabiola Toussaint, who is separated from her mother when her mother is detained by immigration officials at the airport upon reaching America. Fabiola is then left alone to travel to meet her aunt and cousins in Detroit, where she is met with a harsh and unexpected view of the Unites States on the corner of American Street and Joy Road. In the family’s house on Detroit’s west side, Fabiola struggles to maintain her connection to the Haitian vodou of her heritage while striving to fit in and make a life of her own. Fabiola’s relationships with her cousins, new friends and love interest are strikingly poignant and raw, leaving her vulnerable to heartbreak and pain while she attempts to reunite with her mother. I read this book at full speed, not wanting to miss a single word while simultaneously racing to discover the conclusion to the story. I highlighted about 50 different selections that I wanted to return to and ponder, and was struck at how timely this novel is at this time of political strife regarding immigration and racial tensions. Zoboi herself is a Haitian immigrant, although she came to America when she was four years old rather than a teen as Fabiola did. A wonderful author’s note in the book shares her motivation for writing this story and the connection with the shooting of Trayvon Martin in 2012, along with a rich backstory on the cultural Haitian heritage woven throughout the book. Review published originally on my Goodreads and Instagram (@theloudlibrarylady) (Disclaimer: I received an advance reader copy of this book through Edelweiss ~ all opinions are my own)

Wow! This was a beautiful, dark, heart-wrenching narrative about American culture, drug culture, immigration and assimilation and so much more. Fabiola is gentle on one hand and a fierce warrior on the other. She fades into the background of her outgoing cousins, yet seems to have instincts and bravery that they lack. This story moves quickly and sucks you in with mini-mysteries and a thread of romance, yet in the end it’s a commentary on the odd juxtaposition of America—-land of opportunity yet also land of gritty truths. Wonderful. Sophisticated. Recommend for readers 8th grade and up.

Arriving in Michigan after nearly an entire lifetime in Haiti was always going to be a hard transition, but when teenage Fabiola’s mother is detained by immigration on their initial arrival to the country in New Jersey, things feel nearly impossible for her. Her Aunt Jo has long been a major source of financial support for the mother and daughter, but it’s only after Fabiola arrives in the small house in Detroit that her mother’s sister shares with her three daughters that she starts to wonder just how all that money was made. Aunt Jo seems to spend most of her time resting, her oldest cousin Chantal goes to community college, and twins Princess and Primadonna are in the same private high school Fabiola begins attending. As Fabiola sets up a vodou altar in the room she shares with Chantal and prays to the deities to help her mother, she becomes aware of more unsettling things around the house…why is Chantal, a very bright high achiever, not enrolled in one of the prestigious four-year universities she dreamed of? Why does Donna (and indeed, her entire family) tolerate the abuse of her long-time boyfriend Dray? It’s through Dray, though, that she meets Kasim, who is kind-hearted and courts her sweetly. When a cop approaches Fabiola as part of an investigation into tainted drugs that killed a white girl in the city’s tony suburbs, offering to connect her with her mother in return for helping connect Dray to the crime, it seems like a perfect opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. But things that seem too good to be true, it’s usually because they are. As a Michigander and even a native Detroiter (though my mom and I left the city when I was three), I really appreciated the work Ibi Zoboi did to develop the setting, it felt very rooted in the real place, including a trip to a Coney Island. She also provides a fascinating glimpse into the belief system of Haitian vodou, which is of course quite different than what is stereotyped as “voodoo”. But this book may be the clearest sign yet that I just need to go through the remaining young adult lit on my to-be-read list with a fine-tooth comb and purge most of it, because despite the fact that it’s reasonably well-executed, I just could not really get into it. I found Fabiola a frustratingly shallow character. We begin the book with her distress over her separation from her mother, which is sympathetically rendered and I expected to be the central plot element of the narrative. But it seems to fade into the background quickly as she gets oriented in her new social environment, makes friends, and falls in love, and ends up feeling manufactured to answer the question of why a Haitian immigrant teenager would think to cooperate with cops rather than the emotional core of the story. She also seems surprisingly incurious about her cousins, learning virtually nothing about Chantal despite sharing a room with her until she needs to for plot purposes. Her relationships with everything, including love interest Kasim, are poorly developed. The actual prose is the high point, Zoboi’s writing is lovely. The plot was hampered, for me, by a late turn into magical realism in a way that I’d thought the narrative had previously left pleasingly ambiguous. I likely would have found this much more resonant as an actual teenager, but as someone who has grown up to become the sort of reader I am as an adult, it didn’t quite work. I can’t recommend it for a general readership, but a someone in the correct age bracket looking for stories about immigration would likely get a lot out of it.

Ibi Zoboi's debut novel is a gripping, heart-bending tale about immigration and the illusion of the American dream. The author explores the dimensions of familial bonds, first loves, intimate partner violence, and so much more. Zoboi's writing calls to mind the early work of Edwidge Danticat, not only in its concern for the interior lives of Haitian-descended peoples, but also in its Vodou influenced imagery and the lyricism of its prose. However, while the novel's characters are intriguing and well-rounded, I didn't find them affecting.The most emotionally stirring parts of the novel are perhaps the soliloquies between the chapters. In those places, each major character gives the reader a glimpse into their respective thoughts, histories, emotions, and motivations. The novel is written in the first person from Fabiola's point of view, but even she does not seem to emotionally endear herself to readers. For all of the novel's tragedy and beauty, it is this emotional distance which renders its story and characters a bit flatter than I'd hoped for them to be. Nonetheless, the novel is a daring and necessary text.

This is a must read!! As America confronts the issue of immigration allowed and allowed nots here is a story that bears witness to the story of a young woman's journey into her birth land that is also her migrated to land. It is a sweet mixture of joy love and pain and triumphs. This book celebrates the life of Global AFRIKAN/HayitianCaribbean/American life, you feel like you not only follow the characters but embody their lives, which in truth is part of the respect of honoring life of all humanity. EACH LIFE HAS ITS OWN STORY TO SHARE and I personally enjoyed this life story with the hope that we will hear from many of the characters again in future books. I HOPE "I am your back" meet again, in Heru-tic style.

I loved reading this story. This was my first time reading Ibi Zoboi's work and I am now a fan for life. Loved this! Very heart-warming, funny and eye opening. A story that needed to be told.

Someone else mentioned that this story ends where "The Hate U Give" picks up, and I honestly think that's the best way to describe it. It's a great story. I still think about it sometimes. Really powerful.