A review by bsmith27
Anger Is a Gift by Mark Oshiro

4.0

A good novel about how black people in our country are targeted by cops. It takes place in Oakland in a struggling neighborhood. The boy, Moss, is a black gay boy in high school in high school that is failing and has trouble with finances. He meets Hispanic boy on the train named Javier. The two begin dating they're very cute together. Moss is still dealing with the trauma of his father being killed by the Oakland Police in a case of mistaken identity. Masa's mother, wanda, has been a lifelong activist although recently has taken a step back it is explained later in the novel that this is because she believes her husband was targeted because of her filming an incident. Moss's School is going through some troubles and the administration decides to bring in metal detectors. The students raise concerns about this and on the first day of the metal detectors being in Moss's friend Reggie, who has three pins in his knee is brutally hurt by the magnets inside. Because of this moss and his friends and Javier and some of his friends who go to a different School decide to protest they plan a walkout at the school. However the protest goes wrong. The police are now in a partnership with the school and pray the children with a type of pepper spray and use batons against them and Javier is killed. This makes Moss very angry and he eventually changed himself to a flagpole in front of the police headquarters in order to get Justice. And eventually they are told that they have to leave, so the police move in and brutally attack all of them. The city realizes their mistake because they kill a white woman. They apologize to Moss and sort of let the police officer off the hook. The story is a bit long-winded and some of the tactics that the police use against the students are a bit far-fetched however I understand that black people are not treated as fairly as their white counterparts. The story also highlights how important social media is to show the unfairness of cops. For the most part it portrays cops in a negative light although at the end there is one kind cop and it holds him accountable to not stopping the actions of his fellow police officers.