With The Fire On High Book Review

I have no qualms about saying that the cover art and title are what drew me to read this book. This approach can be a gamble but in this instant it proved rewarding. The story was just as colourful, vivacious and beautiful as the cover. Based on how many people mentioned having it on their TBR lists, I guess I’m not the only one to be seduced. There is quite a lot that I liked but for the sake of brevity, I will try to stick to the highlights. First things first though…

THE SUMMARY

Emoni Santiago is an AfroLatina teenager being raised by her Puerto Rican grandmother in a working class Philadelphia community. While dealing with the complexities of high school and adolescence, she becomes pregnant. As she is thrust into the role of motherhood, she is also confronted with deciding what to do with her life. Apart from her baby and grandma, one thing that Emoni can always rely on for comfort is cooking but she wonders if she can feasibly pursue this passion as a career.

THE REVIEW

Sometimes YA books don’t seem fully fleshed out to me but that was not the case with With The Fire On High. The story is written from the perspective of Emoni and I think that the author did a great job capturing the voice and dialect of her character without it feeling like she was trying too hard. I also like that Elizabeth Acevedo shows that children of immigrants don’t always inherit their parents’ language. For some immigrants the pressures to assimilate can discourage them from passing on their first language to their children. In Emoni’s case, she understands Spanish best when it’s spoken with a Puerto Rican accent or mixed with English but she struggles with it otherwise. Nonetheless, Spanish colours Emoni’s life. It is one of the things that tethers her to her Latinx heritage and Emoni is refreshingly clear about her cultural and racial identity. As someone who shares AfroLatina heritage, I thoroughly enjoyed seeing how Emoni confidently explains it to her peers. Hers is the first literary character I can recall that articulated so well what it means to be AfroLatinx.

Apart from the spoken form, language also manifests in the form of food. Food is the primary way Emoni expresses her joy, love, hopes and anxieties. She connects to her roots through food and makes sense of the world through food. You can sense from the pages that cooking is not only Emoni’s love language but her calling. Despite how essential it is to Emoni though, she doesn’t fathom that it can be the basis for a viable career or that she, as a single teenage mother who doesn't come from a wealthy family, has that option. Through this personal conflict, Acevedo shows how for immigrant/first generation and working class black people, it often isn’t easy envisioning making good money doing things that bring us fulfillment. As such, I loved witnessing Emoni’s coming of age as she goes from improvising in her home kitchen to being exposed to the professional culinary arts world and all the possibilities that she begins to see through that exposure.

For Emoni, the question of what she can make out of her life is complicated by being a young mother. Several of the decisions she faces revolve around motherhood. This is actually the first contemporary book I can think of that addresses teenage motherhood in a thorough, compassionate and realistic way. The author lays bare the difficulties in raising a baby while trying to finish high school. She shows the stigmas and often flawed assumptions about teenage mothers. For example, when it’s evident that Emoni is pregnant, her peers judge her even though they are promiscuous themselves while up until that point she was a virgin. Emoni grapples with being judged but she doesn’t allow the negative opinions of others to damage her self esteem. The author also highlights how perceptions differ vastly between teenage fathers and mothers. That is not to say that Elizabeth Acevedo is not fair in her portrayal of teenage fatherhood. She tackles this perspective too in nuanced way.

I think all the main characters in this book are multidimensional and sufficiently complex. None of them felt superfluous. By the end of the book, even though I was curious to learn a bit more about the characters, I felt that what the author did reveal was satisfying. Furthermore, the relationship dynamics were rich and though provoking. I would love to discuss Emoni’s relationships with her grandmother, best friend, father and child’s father but that would result in a much longer post. So I will save those details for my YouTube Review.

FINAL THOUGHTS

It’s impressive that although Elizabeth Acevedo is extensive in how and how many issues she covers, the book never feels wordy or strained. With The Fire On High explores issues such as family, friendship, responsibility, loyalty and loss deftly. I especially appreciated reading a story about an inner city AfroLatina girl that doesn’t reduce her to a caricature. With The Fire On High is a heart warming book that manages to both tackle salient topics and offer inspiration.

Have you read this book, if so, what do you thing about it?

My rating for this book: ⭑⭑⭑⭑⭑