Meet Maleeka Madison

Bookcover

Sharon G. Flake

I've been wanting to read "The Skin I'm in" by Sharon G. Flake (1998) book for a long time, it's been on my "Save for later"-list from Amazon for at least two years. After reading it, I must say, it did not disappoint me! What a great novel! It was very easy reading, and the story is gripping and touching. Flake received the "Coretta Scott King/ John Steptoe Award for New Talent" for this novel - and she deserved it 100%!

It is about a teenage-girl, Maleeka Madison, who is in 7th grade at some junior high school, somewhere in the U.S. Her classmates are giving her a hard time; although she is not the only black girl at the school, everybody's bullying her about it. Like John-John, who is black as well, but makes everyone else tease her with a song he made up: "Maleeka, Maleeka - baboom, bom, boom, we sure wanna keep her, baboom, boom, boom, but she so black, baboom, boom, boom, we just can't see her." 
To make things worse, her family does not have enough money to buy her "proper" clothes, (although the word "proper" here is clearly defined by her classmates, especially Charlese, who always wears new, modern and very expensive clothing) and her mother sews most of her clothes herself - making them look like it, too. Maleeka and her "friend" Charlese, who is the coolest girl of the school and always gets in trouble for skipping classes, smoking, being sassy to the teachers and the principal, and who lives with her older sister, who does not look after her very well but is more interested in partying after their parents died, made a deal: "Char" protects Maleeka from the other kids, by including her in her "in-group", and sometimes even brings her some of her old, used clothes; therefore, Maleeka does all the homework for Char and the rest of the group. 
As you might expect, there is nothing in that relationship that marks a real friendship. Neither of the sides is loyal to the other, and Char and the others let Maleeka down as soon as they don't "need" her anymore. They know that they can do whatever they want to with her, like blaming the guilt for tricks they play on teachers or students on her, and that Maleeka would never do anything about it; she's too much dependant on them. By the way, "tricks" is not really the right word for it, because one time they destroy a classroom and set it on fire for getting back on a teacher, and blame it all on Maleeka. 
It's so sad, really. Maleeka is such a likeable girl, but I think most of us can identify with her situation, especially everyone who's ever experienced only the slightest bit of bullying during their puberty-years. Wanting only to fit in makes it so difficult to stand up against injustice, on yourself or on others. I really like the character Flake invented. Maleeka is smart, loving, creative, and very thoughtful, but her junior-high years are the living hell for her, bringing her to make bad decisions and set wrong priorities.