The story has a YA dystopian feel, but the setting is one that can easily be imagined with a world divided into haves (Mainland people) and have-nots (Gutter people). The Gutter people are born into debt that they spend their lives trying to pay down, to earn their freedom and get out from under the Mainlanders' restrictive and controlling system.
The first third of the book captivated me. Readers are introduced to Elimina as she enters Livingstone Academy - a place where she is forced to live and learn basic work skills with the intention that she will be sold to the highest bidder, working for decades to pay off her debt and earn her freedom. Similarities between Canadian Indigenous residential schools and slavery are clear, and during this part of the book the pacing is high, and the world building is skillfully and vividly set for Elimina and the reader.
The book progresses into the next part of Elimina's struggle, but I found the pacing and tension to slow a bit and the ending felt somewhat rushed. I was left wanting to know more about this world and parts of the story that were touched on. It is my hope that Richardson has a follow-up book to address these great story lines.
Overall, this is an engaging dystopian, YA coming-of-age story filled with a strong main character and themes of privilege, injustice, and slavery. Its connection to modern-day racism and classism is easy to note and sometimes hard to read, but this is also a story about resilience, strength, friendship and hope that will give readers much to discuss. I've heard whispers that this book is already being planned into high school curriculum here in Ontario and I think it is the perfect book to encourage discussion on issues of inequality, racism and colonialism. The issues raised clearly mirror those which continue to influence the lives of so many people in North America.
My Rating: 4 stars
Author: Jael Richardson
Genre: Dystopian, Young Adult, BIPOC, Canadian
Type and Source: Trade Paperback, Personal Copy
Pages: 320
Publisher: HarperAvenue
First Published: January 26, 2021
Opening Lines: When i drew pictures of Mother and me, I used
Peach for her and Chestnut for myself. "Why is your skin named
after somethings soft and sweet and mine is something hard and bitter?"
Book Description from GoodReads: A fierce and illuminating debut from FOLD founder Jael Richardson about a young woman who must find the courage to determine her own future and secure her freedom
Set in an imagined world in which the most vulnerable are forced to buy their freedom by working off their debt to society, Gutter Child uncovers a nation divided into the privileged Mainland and the policed Gutter. In this world, Elimina Dubois is one of only 100 babies taken from the Gutter and raised in the land of opportunity as part of a social experiment led by the Mainland government.
But when her Mainland mother dies, Elimina finds herself all alone, a teenager forced into an unfamiliar life of servitude, unsure of who she is and where she belongs. Elimina is sent to an academy with new rules and expectations where she befriends Gutter children who are making their own way through the Gutter System in whatever ways they know how. When Elimina’s life takes another unexpected turn, she will discover that what she needs more than anything may not be the freedom she longs for after all.
Richardson’s Gutter Child reveals one young woman’s journey through a fractured world of heartbreaking disadvantages and shocking injustices. Elimina is a modern heroine in an altered but all too recognizable reality who must find the strength within herself to forge her future and defy a system that tries to shape her destiny.
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ReplyDeleteWhat is the part 3 of the book about?
ReplyDelete