Coming of age

Book review
The novel “Coming of Age”, written 1991 by Lorri Hewett, is about the life and typical racial problems in American high schools.
It was Lorri Hewett´s first book she wrote when she was 18 years old.
In her opinion there was not enough fiction available which dealt with the experiences of black young adults, so she decided to write this book when she was still in high school. She realized from her own experiences that it is not easy to grow up as a black-skinned person.
The novel describes the life of the three main characters AJ, Ruthie and Erika.
AJ is the most famous, black-skinned football player at Centennial High, Erika is light-skinned and his girlfriend, but they do not really love each other, it is more a sexual relationship they’re having. In the development of the story AJ gets to know the all-teacher’s pet Ruthie. First of all he thinks she is just a grind and a show-off, bus as he gets to know her better, he realizes she is a really special person. There are also many racial problems between the different cliques at Centennial High, but while the story develops, some of the main characters start finding their identity.


Lorri Hewett über Coming of Age
This novel explored the themes of alienation from the points of view of a suburban teenager recently transplanted to the city, a girl of mixed race who feels she isn`t accepted by the black or the white community, and a popular athlete who experiences the shallowness of major university recruiting. Unsure of the book`s marketability, she sent the book to only one publisher, Holloway House, a medium-sized publisher of black experience paperbacks. She was surprised to learn in her freshman year at Emory University that the book had been accepted for publication. Lorri won a merit scholarship to attend Emory University that covered all of her tuition and room and boarding expenses. Because finances were not a big concern for her, she was able to devote her time to many different activities. At Emory, Lorri remained actively involved in the dance community, as well as getting involved in several African American organizations on campus. She had originally thought she would study political science and then go to law school, but she realized in her second year that she had a love of literature and that she wanted to explore that interest further. She became involved in the creative writing program at Emory, winning the undergraduate fiction contest in her freshman year. Coming of Age came out in print at the beginning of her second year ar Emory. Lorri was surprised by the amount of publicity surrounding the book and spent her first semester giving many television, radio, newspaper and magazine interviews. This was a rather unnerving experience, as writing, which had always been such a private part of her life, now became public. But the most enjoyable experiences for her were the visits to several Atlanta high schools, where she talked with students about the process of writing. She was often told by the students, especially by black students, that her book was the first book to get them interested in reading in general. These experiences further emphasized for her the paucity of books focusing on the contemporary experiences of young African-Americans and how it was important to her to keep writing for that audience