If You Knew My Name by Lisa Roberts Carter

I honestly don’t recall the last time I read a novel in verse, but I’m glad I broke that spell with this powerful debut!

Mason Zy’Aire Tyndall is a high school senior who has two goals: hone his battle rap skills to better fit the “Legend” moniker he’s working on and find a cute girl to couple up with so he doesn’t look like a loser in his final year of school. Which might not be his final year if he doesn’t choose and pass one more elective. His guidance counsellor Ms Franklin encourages him to take a Black Poetry class, which he scoffs at because he’s a rapper not a poet. She rightfully laughs at his teenage ridiculousness and gets him to sign up for it anyway.

Black Poetry class is not what he expected. For starters, their teacher, Ms Jordan, is white. Rumor has it that her husband didn’t mind when she wanted to adopt a Black child but drew the line at moving to a Black neighborhood, so left her. More concerningly tho is the presence of several classmates Mason did not expect. While his school is large and diverse, the last people Mason expects to see in a Black Poetry class are white people openly hostile to Black honesty.

But as class progresses and Ms Jordan gets them all to speak up and be heard, what looks like the basis for a healthy dialog is tentatively established. That all changes when a large-scale fight breaks out at school. Mason knows better than to get involved in what’s soon termed a “riot”, but when a cop stops him at the park later on, accusing him of being a riot instigator, his Black Lives Matter activist mom’s worst nightmares look dangerously close to coming true.

I legit cried during the poems when Mason had that encounter with the cop. It’s still shocking to me that anyone could think that America doesn’t have a racism problem, but That Fucking Guy is in office, so clearly our racism is a feature not a bug for far too many voters. Lisa Roberts Carter addresses this in her terrific debut, which has no problem making things uncomfortable for readers as she succinctly brings up all the arguments that raged through President Biden’s term regarding BLM and Critical Race Theory and immigration. She’s not both-sides-ing things tho: it’s very clear that the point of bringing all these arguments into the light is to show how specious the ones in favor of racism are, especially in the face of the eloquent rebuttals included here.

Not all the poems stick the landing: some would definitely sound better with a person to say them aloud instead of just having them on the page. While I was moved and drawn in by plenty of the verses here, I was surprised at how underwhelmed I was by the words Mason’s mom had for the school board, for example. Overall, however, this was a smart, nuanced and incisive look at the state of race relations in the US in the early 2020s, presented in a very accessible manner, and one that I’m hoping is more widely read.

If You Knew My Name by Lisa Roberts Carter was published May 28 2024 by Central Avenue and is available from all good booksellers, including