Malcolm and Me may well be set in 1973/74 but its subject matter is as relevant now as it would have been then. There is cultural issues, racism, displacement.. I could go on but I truly believe that this is a book that everyone should read at least once in their lives.

Robin Farmer's fiction is based on some factual events that happened to her and its that knowledge of how it must have felt to be a black teenager in seventies Philadelphia during the tenuous presidency of Richard Nixon that had me regularly reading out paragraphs of the book outloud to my husband.

I cannot for one second as a white female, imagine the way both the author and Roberta feels, nor can I fully understand what it must be like to be a person of colour living in America. But this book gave me a glimpse of how hard it must have been to be surrounded by people who cannot see past the colour of your skin.

Farmer's writing is phenomenal and there are incidents in the book that left me laughing, but there are so many more that left me thoughtful. Roberta is a rebellious teenager whose thoughts are expressed as poetry in her diary because voicing them causes increased confrontation. We witness a turning point in her life when during a class discussion, Roberta describes the third United States President, Thomas Jefferson as being a hypocrite because whilst stating all men are equal? Jefferson is a slave owner and slaves were seen as 3/4 of a person.

Her words cause discord and the nun who teaches Roberta's class reacts with a racist insult.

From there, Roberta's world falls apart and the heartbreaking story is brilliantly told from her perspective. She sees a similarity to her situation with those faced by the late Malcolm X when reading his autobiography and finds strength in his actions to stand up for what she sees as being right. That she be regarded as something more than the colour of her skin.

It is a conversation between Roberta and her father that reduced me to tears however and made me truly believe that this book should be in every school.

"Tell your class mates that the Panthers ten point program will be as meaningful fifty years from now, as it is today..."

"In fifty years, I'll be an old lady daddy, we won't need it" I say

"Let's hope not. As a betting man, those are odds I would not take."


Read Malcolm and Me, have your children read it to because this is a book that should be read by everybody.