Shining

Reading House of Sand and Fog (it was fine) and a trip to Seattle slowed down my summer reading a bit, but Elizabeth Acevedo's With the Fire on High is a book to fly through. I wasn't expecting prose, but I'm not mad about it, especially when she drops some poetry like this:

I look around at all of us, a colorful group of Americans. Not just our skin, although we are colorful in that sense too, but just about everything about us. The fitteds, the Jordans and Foams, the cutoff jeans, the bright lipstick and fresh sweats would make you think we were getting off a video shoot and not an eight-hour flight. We look beautiful and hood and excited to see the world, and none of us are hiding from this world seeing us. All of us shining despite what it took to earn our way here.