Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Winner of the Michael L. Printz Medal
★ " P]urely mesmerizing ... the most haunting exploration in youth literature to date of the advantage and poison that is white privilege, and the resentment of young people at the toxicity of what they inherit."--BCCB
A surreal and searing dive into the tangled secrets of a wealthy white family in suburban Pennsylvania and the terrible cost the family's children pay to maintain the family name.
The Shoveler, the Freak, CanIHelpYou?, Loretta the Flea-Circus Ring Mistress, and First-Class Malcolm. These are the five teenagers lost in the Hemmings family's maze of tangled secrets. Only a generation removed from being Pennsylvania potato farmers, Gottfried and Marla Hemmings managed to trade digging spuds for developing subdivisions and now sit atop a seven-figure bank account--wealth they've declined to pass on to their adult children or their teenage grandchildren. "Because we want them to thrive," Marla always says. What does thriving look like? Like carrying a snow shovel everywhere. Like selling pot at the Arby's drive-thru window. Like a first-class ticket to Jamaica between cancer treatments. Like a flea-circus in a double-wide. Like the GPS coordinates to a mound of dirt in a New Jersey forest. As the rot just beneath the surface of the Hemmings' precious suburban respectability begins to spread, the far-flung grandchildren gradually find their ways back to one another, just in time to uncover the terrible cost of maintaining the family name.
With her inimitable prose and keen insight into teenage experience, A.S. King explores how a corrosive culture of polite, affluent white supremacy tears a family apart and how one determined generation can save themselves.
Synopsis
Winner of the Michael L. Printz Medal ★"King's narrative concerns are racism, patriarchy, colonialism, white privilege, and the ingrained systems that perpetuate them. . . . Dig] will speak profoundly to a generation of young people who are waking up to the societal sins of the past and working toward a more equitable future."--Horn Book, starred review
"I've never understood white people who can't admit they're white. I mean, white isn't just a color. And maybe that's the problem for them. White is a passport. It's a ticket."
Five estranged cousins are lost in a maze of their family's tangled secrets. Their grandparents, former potato farmers Gottfried and Marla Hemmings, managed to trade digging spuds for developing subdivisions and now they sit atop a million-dollar bank account--wealth they've refused to pass on to their adult children or their five teenage grandchildren. "Because we want them to thrive," Marla always says.
But for the Hemmings cousins, "thriving" feels a lot like slowly dying of a poison they started taking the moment they were born. As the rot beneath the surface of the Hemmings' white suburban respectability destroys the family from within, the cousins find their ways back to one another, just in time to uncover the terrible cost of maintaining the family name.
With her inimitable surrealism, award winner A.S. King exposes how a toxic culture of polite white supremacy tears a family apart and how one determined generation can dig its way out.