How Does 'We Deserve Monuments' Address Themes Of Racial Injustice?

'We Deserve Monuments' hit me hard with its raw portrayal of generational trauma. The novel doesn't just show racism as individual acts—it exposes how systemic injustice seeps into families over decades. The protagonist's journey uncovering her grandmother's past reveals how Black communities in the South endured violence that still echoes today. What struck me most was how the author shows racism's psychological toll through three generations of women: the grandmother's bitterness, the mother's avoidance, and the protagonist's rage. The book makes you feel how racial wounds never fully heal, only scab over until someone picks at them again. The way it connects historical lynching to modern microaggressions proves racism isn't history—it's an ongoing battle fought in grocery stores and school hallways.

This book wrecked me in the best way. It's not another 'racism is bad' lecture—it makes you LIVE the lingering effects through the characters' messy, authentic relationships. The grandmother Zora's sharp tongue hides decades of swallowed rage, while her daughter's 'respectability politics' show how each generation copes differently. When Avery digs up Bardell's buried history, it's not some neat discovery—it fractures her family further before any healing can begin.

The setting itself becomes a character. The 'monuments' aren't just statues—they're the town's refusal to acknowledge its bloodstained soil. A scene where Avery finds rusted shackles while gardening made me gasp. The author brilliantly shows how racism persists through coded language—like when white neighbors call police on Black teens 'just playing music too loud.' What floored me was the ending: no tidy resolution, just hard-won progress as Avery plants a garden where a lynching occurred. That image—life stubbornly growing from death—stuck with me for weeks.

Having studied racial narratives in literature, I appreciate how 'we deserve monuments' layers its themes like archaeological strata. The surface level follows a classic coming-of-age story, but beneath lies a brutal excavation of America's racial sins. The fictional town of Bardell acts as a microcosm—its antebellum architecture literally built on Black suffering, its white residents clinging to distorted histories. The novel's brilliance lies in contrasting two types of monuments: the Confederate statues white characters worship versus the unmarked graves of Black victims.

The intergenerational conflicts hit hardest. The grandmother Zora's refusal to speak about her past mirrors how many Black families suppress trauma to survive. When the protagonist Avery uncovers documents proving racial terror, it forces painful reckonings. The scene where Zora finally describes witnessing a lynching wrecked me—her trembling hands showing how racial violence etches itself into the body. The book argues that real justice requires tearing down false monuments (both physical and ideological) before rebuilding communal healing. Its depiction of queer Black love as radical resistance against historical erasure adds another brilliant layer.