Every Body Looking is a novel of a young woman’s struggle to carve a place for herself—for her black female body—in a world of deeply conflicting messages.
Told entirely in verse, Ada’s story encompasses her earliest memories as a child, including her abuse at the hands of a young cousin, her mother’s rejection and descent into addiction, and her father’s attempts to create a home for his American daughter more like the one he knew in Nigeria.
The present-tense of the book is Ada’s first year at Howard University in Washington DC, where she must finally confront the fundamental conflict between who her family says she should be and what her body tells her she must be.
Format
Page Count
Trim Size
Dewey
AR
Genre
Scholastic Reading Counts
JLG Release
Book Genres
Topics
Standard MARC Records
Cover Art
Gr 7 Up-Ada, pronounced Aah-dah!, means "first daughter" in Igbo and, as Ada shares, such a name carries the heavy weight of expectations. Written in verse, Ada's narrative unfurls from her high school graduation, then jumps around in time while she navigates her early college days at an HBCU, dipping in and out of scenes from first, second, and sixth grades. Pivotal and sometimes wrenching episodes are seared into each of these time periods, from sexual abuse in first grade to a betrayal of her privacy by an aunty who arrives from Nigeria in sixth grade. Iloh poignantly captures the tension and jagged emotion required for Ada to juggle her needy and absent mother with the heavy expectations of her father, all while trying to figure out who she really wants to be. Amidst all this uncertainty and seeking lies dance. While Dad is the one to introduce Ada to dance lessons to connect her to his home country, it is the deep desire for movement that consumes Ada and begins to pull her in the opposite direction of his more practical aspirations for her. VERDICT Readers will be left wishing they could accompany Ada as she pursues her passion and finds her way to a genuine relationship, while left hopeful and inspired by her beautifully-told story.-Jill Heritage Maza, Montclair Kimberley Academy, NJ?(c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.