This is incredible! Think Jason Reynolds meets Angie Thomas. Written in verse, prose, acts of a play… this is an absolutely beautiful, brilliant, powerful, compelling read. I flew through it in one sitting. 10⭐️

This was such a powerful book. A novel in verse, The Story of My Anger takes a look at racism, book banning and the power of speaking up. Especially for people who maybe don’t understand what book bans are or are actually doing, it really shows how it affects students and teachers alike. I absolutely loved Yulieta and her group of friends. They were such a force and so supportive of each other. The theatre aspect of the book was really fun, but also frustrating to see Yulieta not be given a true chance based in her skin color. I loved how she eventually found her voice not just with the guerilla theatre, but with the school board and talking to her drama teacher. I also really enjoyed her relationship with her family, especially her brother. I liked how the book showcased the importance of standing up and speaking out, but also how important it is to take care of yourself and your mental health. Highly recommend this one!
CW: racism, bullying

Thank you to Dial Press for the gifted copy!

Man, this book was wonderfully done. Written in verse, you are following Yuli and her fight against racism and more. To experience such things at great length at such a young age is heartbreaking, but very relatable to the real world. This story was done so well and I would read more.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the earc in exchange for my honest review.

A timely novel about book banning and racism. Mendez crafts a story about Yuli, a Black teen who loves theater, but who struggles to control her rage in the face of unfair casting, a racist school environment, and a school board that is determined to keep Yuli's beloved books out of her favorite teacher's classroom. Yuli's rage manifests in guerilla theater, and she is inspired to raise her voice and speak out against the injustice happening in her school. I thought this book was very well-written, and I enjoyed the novel-in-verse format. I thought this novel spoke about very timely topics, and will appeal to a lot of teen readers. This book is perfect for fans of "The Hate U Give" and "The Poet X".

I do appreciate that this story is meant as a personal narrative and as such can be as small or as big as is representative of its characters' feelings and emotions. I don't think the fact that I was left feeling like this was too small a story for what the title promised is a fair critique, but it is an honest accounting of how I felt. Even though I am also a woman of color, and I enjoy YA, I was left a bit unsatisfied. Maybe it had to do with me not being able to relate in the theater / drama kid space... but I just felt like there was often room for a bigger story to be told. I would absolutely still recommend this to young readers but with a good synopsis and with a proper expectation of the story scope.

This book is so good! Yuli loves theater and she’s also from a family of activists. When she had to take on some activism of her own, she comes into her own identity while also still struggling as a teenager. I thought this was super well done and riveting since it was done in verse. It has so much diverse rep with queer people, people of color, and even disability with her mom having lupus. This is an all around amazing book.

Thank you to the publisher for the review copy

Specifically, THE STORY OF MY ANGER focuses on high school junior Yulieta/Yuli Lopez and her anger about the racism and book-banning that permeates her TX school and to channel her desire for change into an action that includes her passion for the performing arts. More generally, this book is for anyone who feels unseen, ignored, or worse blatantly discriminated against and/or abused because of what/who they are or the skin they are in. The NIV and play format adds to the intensity of Yuli’s growing anger and determination with its carefully selected words and make the text approachable for all.

Yuli is a junior at a fictitious school and is one of two Black members of the drama department and both continue to hope that one day, a person of color will be more than a background character or someone working on sets. The director even asks Yuli and Aleeyah if they would straighten their hair because all those curls are too much for the stage. Also fueling Yuli’s anger is the sudden removal of all the books in Mr. Gonzalez’s classroom and the eventual suspension of the Mexican teacher of English and Ethics Studies. Yuli and several like-minded students form a social justice club called ACT Now, Activism-Collaboration-Transformation Now, utilize the concept of Guerrilla Theater by performing original plays in the cafeteria and as an added event after the drama department’s Fall play, collect more than 1200 signatures supporting books that represent marginalized populations and speak at school board meeting. Yuli’s anger is predominantly expressed in a constructive way but it does slip and cause her to strike a student who has belittled her frequently and caught putting a racial slur on Mr. Gonzalez’s classroom white board. She is suspended and while at home, encouraged by her family and friends to regroup and continue to use her talents in the fight against book-banning and discrimination.

Overall, I found author Jasminne Mendez’s book to be powerful and a positive way to demonstrate to students that they are enough, no matter who they are, and activism is for everyone and can be done in a variety of ways. The anger, however, does spill out in a large amount of profanity including more than a dozen F-bombs. There is very little violence and no sexual content present. Representation: strong family support present for many of the main characters, Yuli is Black-Latine, Aleeyah is Black, Mr. Gonzalez is Hispanic/Mexican, Madison is non-binary (referred to as enby), and family structures are varied.

THIS. IS. SO. GOOD. I'm not usually much of a highlighter when it comes to books, but I went on a little highlighting spree here.

"Everything's bigger/in Texas,/except the straight white Texan's ability/to imagine a world where they are not/the center of the universe,/which is why, I think, they keep making laws/and they keep changing the rules/to keep the rest of us "in our place"/to keep the rest of us/small." {This is a quote from my ARC copy, and may be revised or altered in the final printing.)

This book exists in conversation with Ntozake Shange's play "for colored girls..." and references a lot of other authors along the way. This story is familiar because it's what we're dealing with as a nation RIGHT NOW. Surely many young readers will recognize this struggle, with book bans and hate speech proliferating across the country from the highest offices on down. I don't mean to imply that this is a new thing, only that it's pervasive and ever-present, and I'm in favor of any work that offers a road map for how to push back, especially one targeted at younger readers. Yuli makes some mistakes, and again, I think a lot of late MG and YA readers will recognize those feelings of anger and helplessness, and how anger sometimes manifests in harmful ways when we don't provide a productive or meaningful outlet.

The story follows Yuli, who's dealing with racism from classmates and a teacher, book bans, her mother's illness (yay for lupus rep), and her brother's increased activism and declining mental health. None of the individual issues are depicted as extreme, and I don't want to give the impression that this book is super dark---it's just compounding and compounding in a way that leaves Yuli feeling helpless. The gatekeeping drama teacher drove me insane, as she was meant to. I appreciated that there were no easy or unqualified wins in this book, as I find that many stories for young readers imply that taking action will result in all problems being neatly resolved. The outcomes in this story were more realistic, and in some cases relied on Yuli picking her battles and altering her response rather than relying on the other party to change.

tl;dr, loved this, great for kids and young adults. There's a little mild language but I think this could work for middle grade readers as well as YA. Unrelated to anything, but I appreciated that there's no romantic interest in this book, just because that feels rare. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC. This was one of the best novels in verse+ I've read this year. (+ because there are other forms, like scripts, peppered throughout the text)

The Story of my Anger is a perfect firestorm of a story. Yuli and her anger and her community and the love around her were all so wonderful and, especially in the current sociopolitical climate, is so incredibly important. I love seeing stories where Black girls are allowed the space to be angry and have fire inside them, as well as space to fall apart and be held together by those who love them. There are so many fantastic references to other important literature, and I cannot wait to try some of the stories and books mentioned. This was a book I couldn’t put down, and I can’t wait for it to find people and be a spark of change and hope.

I really enjoyed this book! I loved the lupus representation, because my mom also has lupus and the way it is described in the book, is also how my mom describes having it. I also. really loved how the writing of this book is described as being written in verse. Which, yes, it is, but it's also written as a script. And as the author states in the beginning of this novel, you cannot skip over those lines or parts. Every little bit is vital to the story.

I look forward to the release of this book! And I will definitely be recommending this book to my peers and community.