A review by marcopoloreads
Anger Is a Gift by Mark Oshiro
5.0
This book was sent to me as a part of the teenreads.com Teen Board for review.
As this is my most anticipated read of the year, I am happy to say it didn’t disappoint. ANGER IS A GIFT is Mark Oshiro’s debut novel follows our main character Moss, who, with a group of his friends, start protesting at their school. The reason for these protests is because there have been many choices the school has made to “protect” its students when it has only made them more furious. These choices include things such as adding metal detectors into school and placing police officers in these schools as well. ANGER IS A GIFT is a story of police brutality, racism, and protesting. It is an extremely detailed, violent, and necessary novel that shows the way people react when forced into hard situations.
First of all, I would like to point out that this novel is filled and filled with diversity, which made this book more enjoyable for me. It had black characters, latinx characters, Muslim characters, ace characters, bi characters, trans characters, etc. There was even a disabled side character that played a big role in the story, which surprised me. What I loved about the diversity though was that it felt very natural the entire novel. Even with this gigantic cast, Mark Oshiro was able to flesh out all of these characters enough to make them feel like real people.
This book has a romance male-male between Moss and another boy, and it’s the cutest thing ever! The two were such a sweet and likable pair that I didn’t mind the romance one bit. In fact, I loved all of the relationships between the characters in this book in general! The friendships, the romances, and family relationships were all things I just adored.
I just loved the entire idea of ANGER IS A GIFT in general. Specifically, I love the how the quote “Anger is a gift” is used throughout the story. It plays on that idea (at least, in my opinion) that in order for change to truly happen we need to be angry about things to the point when we have to do something. ANGER IS A GIFT reminds me a lot of the music video "This Is America" by Childish Gambino, where it follows that theme of ignoring what is truly going on behind the scenes.
As for the writing, I did find that Mark Oshiro tended to write more detail than necessary; there were tons of moments where the writing felt like it needed to shorten a bit more. This was the same for the length of the book in general; it an extremely long contemporary that had a longer plotline than needed. I know there are people who will not end up enjoying this book as much because of the writing, so if you’re someone who cares about writing a lot, know that before going into the story. Also, this book is written in third person, which almost never happens in contemporary novels. I don’t like third person point of view most of the time, but I somehow was able to enjoy it here.
I could go on and on about why I loved ANGER IS A GIFT, but I won’t because that would make this review too long. Once again, I would recommend this to people who are fans of the "This Is America" music video and fans of Jason Reynolds.
As this is my most anticipated read of the year, I am happy to say it didn’t disappoint. ANGER IS A GIFT is Mark Oshiro’s debut novel follows our main character Moss, who, with a group of his friends, start protesting at their school. The reason for these protests is because there have been many choices the school has made to “protect” its students when it has only made them more furious. These choices include things such as adding metal detectors into school and placing police officers in these schools as well. ANGER IS A GIFT is a story of police brutality, racism, and protesting. It is an extremely detailed, violent, and necessary novel that shows the way people react when forced into hard situations.
First of all, I would like to point out that this novel is filled and filled with diversity, which made this book more enjoyable for me. It had black characters, latinx characters, Muslim characters, ace characters, bi characters, trans characters, etc. There was even a disabled side character that played a big role in the story, which surprised me. What I loved about the diversity though was that it felt very natural the entire novel. Even with this gigantic cast, Mark Oshiro was able to flesh out all of these characters enough to make them feel like real people.
This book has a romance male-male between Moss and another boy, and it’s the cutest thing ever! The two were such a sweet and likable pair that I didn’t mind the romance one bit. In fact, I loved all of the relationships between the characters in this book in general! The friendships, the romances, and family relationships were all things I just adored.
I just loved the entire idea of ANGER IS A GIFT in general. Specifically, I love the how the quote “Anger is a gift” is used throughout the story. It plays on that idea (at least, in my opinion) that in order for change to truly happen we need to be angry about things to the point when we have to do something. ANGER IS A GIFT reminds me a lot of the music video "This Is America" by Childish Gambino, where it follows that theme of ignoring what is truly going on behind the scenes.
As for the writing, I did find that Mark Oshiro tended to write more detail than necessary; there were tons of moments where the writing felt like it needed to shorten a bit more. This was the same for the length of the book in general; it an extremely long contemporary that had a longer plotline than needed. I know there are people who will not end up enjoying this book as much because of the writing, so if you’re someone who cares about writing a lot, know that before going into the story. Also, this book is written in third person, which almost never happens in contemporary novels. I don’t like third person point of view most of the time, but I somehow was able to enjoy it here.
I could go on and on about why I loved ANGER IS A GIFT, but I won’t because that would make this review too long. Once again, I would recommend this to people who are fans of the "This Is America" music video and fans of Jason Reynolds.