This Thing of Ours : (A Coming-Of-Age Young Adult Novel That Confronts Racism, Classism, Homophobia, and Book Banning)

Ossie Brown is ranked the third-best high school basketball player in the country and seems set to follow in the legendary footsteps of his late father, until a devastating knee injury ends his promising career. Six months later, Ossie starts his senior year without basketball or his ex-girlfriend, Laura—who ditched Ossie when he lost his star status—to get him through the alienating experience of being Black and working class amid the predominantly white, wealthy student body at Braxton Academy. Ossie’s former teammates now distance themselves, while his classmates freely let him know they think he doesn’t belong: “You’re just a welfare baby from the ghetto,” one says.

But Ms. Hunt, an English teacher, sees that Ossie has other talents, too, and she encourages him to apply last-minute to the school’s prestigious creative writing program. Ossie’s resulting heartbreaking essay depicts basketball as his lost hope for breaking his family out of a cycle of poverty that has spanned generations, from sharecropping in Georgia to their present life in the South Yonkers projects: “Boys like me aren’t given the sky and whatever is beyond it. Boys like me are told that we’re too dark to fly any closer to the sun.” The creative writing program becomes a space where Ossie’s burgeoning artist’s voice flourishes, as Ms. Hunt introduces the students to Black writers like Toni Morrison and James Baldwin, who—despite being considered among the greatest writers in American history—are not given proportional weight at Braxton. Although this opens exciting avenues of creativity for students like Ossie and his new friends Luis and Naima, other students take to social media and leverage their potent connections to smear Ms. Hunt’s “woke agenda,” drawing national attention and leading to a conflict that spirals with dizzying intensity. 

Frederick Joseph constructs a true roller coaster of a narrative in This Thing of Ours, painting Ossie’s complex struggles in language that is both poetic and engaging for a young adult audience. Impressively, the plot’s momentum stays strong even when dipping into the stories of the other characters, such as Naima, whose father was viciously beaten by police, and Luis, who has not yet come out as gay to his homophobic parents. Ossie and his friends’ fight against powerful, seemingly unstoppable forces determined to block the teaching of iconic literary voices for the reason of being too “diverse” is almost frustratingly realistic, with moments of vivid despair. However, This Thing of Ours doesn’t lose sight of its hopeful heart, and readers will be moved by the thoughtful, unexpected ways in which Joseph develops Ossie and his journey to be heard.