Review: If You Come Softly

THE FACTS: 

            Title:  If You Come Softly

            Author:  Jacqueline Woodson

            Publication Date:  1998

            Pages:  192

Round of applause: 

SUMMARY:

            The main characters in this novel, Ellie and Jeremiah are both 15 year olds who have recently transferred into an expensive private New York City high school.  Jeremiah (Miah) is an only child who splits his time between his mother and his father who has moved in with the woman across the street.  Ellie is the youngest of several children, but, 10 years younger than her closest siblings, she spends a lot of time alone in an empty house.  Her dad is a doctor who works almost all the time and her mom has walked out on the family twice.  Both Miah and Ellie crave connection and someone to count on for once.  When they meet in the hallway on their first day of school, something in each of them clicks.  Once they finally get a chance to meet outside of school, they quickly become a couple.  The catch? Ellie is Jewish and white, Miah is black.  As perfect a couple as they may be, Ellie and Miah quickly discover the challenges of being an interracial couple.  Miah has always been aware of the color of his skin and the assumptions that came with it depending on the neighborhood, but for Ellie, noticing the biases in the people she has always been around comes as an unpleasant surprise.  But both of them notice the stares and comments when they’re together.  Both of them hesitate to tell their parents, but eventually they do.  Like true star crossed lovers, just when everything looks like it’s going right, their superficial differences find a way to separate the two.  But I’ll let you read that part.

E’S 2 CENTS:

            I booktalked this book in class.  While wish I would have had more time and energy to come up with something more original, I hope my talk encouraged my classmates to check out this book.  At first, my feelings about If You Come Softly were a bit lackluster.  I thought the story was too simple and direct—it seemed to want to be a short story that was just stretched out for almost 200 pages.  In wrestling with some of these points of critique, I began to see a purpose for what I had originally viewed as weaknesses.  The simplicity of Miah and Ellie’s love for each other—how easily they recognize and accept it—allows the challenge of being a biracial couple to pop as the sole complicating feature.  It forced me to recognize the persistence of racial prejudice in our society and how that impacts relationships.  Simply, worth a read.

--E