Names of All the Flowers (eBook)

A "e;poignant, painful, and gorgeous"e; memoir that explores siblinghood, adolescence, and grief for a family shattered by loss (Alicia Garza, cocreator, Black Lives Matter).Melissa and her older brother Junior grow up running around the disparate neighborhoods of 1990s Oakland, two of six children to a white Quaker father and a black Southern mother. But as Junior approaches adolescence, a bullying incident and later a violent attack in school leave him searching for power and a sense of self in all the wrong places; he develops a hard front and falls into drug dealing. Right before Junior's twentieth birthday, the family is torn apart when he is murdered as a result of gun violence.The Names of All the Flowers connects one tragic death to a collective grief for all black people who die too young. A lyrical recounting of a life lost, Melissa Valentine's debut memoir is an intimate portrait of a family fractured by the school-to-prison pipeline and an enduring love letter to an adored older brother. It is a call for justice amid endless cycles of violence, grief, and trauma, declaring: "e;We are all witness and therefore no one is spared from this loss."e;"e;A portrait of a place, a person who died too young, the systems that led to that death, and the keen insights of the author herself. Lyrical and smart, with appropriate undercurrents of rage."e; -Emily Raboteau, author of Searching for Zion"e;Eloquently poignant."e; -Kirkus Reviews