I am hoping that the grand jury will do a better job than the initial police investigation, where they quickly accepted that the shooting was in self-defense and neglected to run a background check and drug/alcohol screen on Zimmerman. I will not try to sort out all the facts. And George Zimmerman has been neither charged nor arrested for his role in Trayvon’s death. Trayvon was unarmed (aside from a pack of Skittles, a cell phone, and a can of iced tea). While there are many emerging facts in the telling of the incident, two things are clear.

Trayvon is the 17 year old African-American teenager pursued by a town watchman, George Zimmerman, for looking “suspicious.” He too was part of a love story, on the phone with his girlfriend as the incident began to unfold. The tale runs all too close to the recent killing of Trayvon Martin. Yet we soothed ourselves in the knowledge that “If You Come Softly” is fiction, even as we knew how closely it mirrors real life.īut on the heels of our reading, real life has jumped out and shown us how right we were to not be lulled by the “fiction” of the book. It’s tough to watch my son go from reading books like Harry Potter to books with themes this real and heavy. This story sparked several conversations in my house. I love that my son trusted that the love story was enough, until he read the ending I imagine he won’t be so naive again. If You Come Softly helped paved the way for a new generation of politically aware, best-selling YA books from authors like Angie Thomas and Tomi Adeyemi.WHYY thanks our sponsors - become a WHYY sponsor

Woodson infuses their romance with the emotional urgency that defines her work and a prescient sense of social justice, zooming in on topics such as white privilege and police violence against Black youth. That is, until he finds love at first sight with a white, Jewish classmate named Ellie. Fifteen-year-old protagonist Jeremiah, a gifted Black boy from Brooklyn, feels painfully out of place as a new student at a posh Manhattan prep school. If You Come Softly, a Romeo-and-Juliet variation published in 1998 and set in New York City, is a particular highlight of her young-adult output. A 2020 MacArthur “Genius Grant” honoree with a National Book Award, five NAACP Image Awards and four Newbery Medals, she has spent the past three decades publishing celebrated literary fiction, poetry and, most famously, a wide variety of books for children and teens. Jacqueline Woodson has had a remarkable career.

If you come softly