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Monday’s Not Coming
By Tiffany D. Jackson
ISBN: 978-0-06-242267-5, 978-0-06-242267-5
Book Summary: A young teenage girl goes through memories of her best friend as she tries to discover why her best friend has gone missing.
Summary of Concerns: This book contains violence including child abuse; excessive/frequent profanity and derogatory terms; inexplicit sexual activities; sexual nudity; sexuality; alcohol and drug use; and controversial racial commentary.
Book Content
| Page | Content |
| 41 | Folks in Southeast talk about crack often. |
| 42 | Later on, developers realized how valuable the land was, sitting right on the river, with easy access to the city. Too valuable for black folks to have. How convenient that crack would ravish the area developers wanted most. |
| 57 | Monday used to do this, twerk in the mirror like girls in the music videos we’d studied, face stoic and focused as if she was solving a complicated word problem. I’d laugh until tears streamed down my face, but now I see it. The draw. How I went from a little kid to a hot girl in a matter of a few moves. Sex. A word I would never use to describe myself, but at that moment, I saw a glimpse of it. And I liked it. |
| 57 | …noticing the way my swiveling hips made my ass shake. |
| 74 | “You think Monday’s mom sent her away because they were lesbians?” a voice whispered behind me. “Probably,” another said. “You heard how they got caught in the bathroom last year, right? Doing nasty shit.” |
| 75 | “Guess Monday go down with both guys and girls. Living that ‘ho life…just like her sister.” |
| 100 | Trying to find another job but these white folks just don’t want to hire a black woman. |
| 111 | “It’s just like the movies. When the guy puts his tongue in your mouth.” |
| 118 | “Issues? You mean when you let crazy people take pictures of my child and spread them all over the internet? You mean like when that boy touched her butt?…” |
| 121 | Bouncing from school to school, kicked off basketball teams, smoking, drinking until he couldn’t stand up straight. |
| 124 | “Of course she did,” Shayla said, busting through the crowd. “She a ‘ho, just like her sister, fucking every dude on the courts.” …”She said she only like doing it with Claudia, ’cause they lesbians!” |
| 126 | Jacob jumped up, enraged. He shoved Monday into a locker, pinning her. Monday dropped to the floor with a scream as he pulled her hair. …”Don’t you touch her!” she screamed, and kicked him in the nuts. He cried out, falling to the floor before she swung her leg back and kicked him again. She kicked and kicked- each kick to the gut more powerful than the last. …Light bounced off the sweat on her brows as she straddled him. She slammed against his head and I caught the unfamiliar glimpse of rage in her eyes. |
| 129 | “You let that nigga spread lies about my daughter…have her looking like some ‘ho and you gonna tell me…wait. What the hell is that?” |
| 130 | “…A school full of fucking adults and you letting some boy, some MAN, touch my child!” |
| 131 | On Monday morning, she stumbled into school, dazed, eyes glossy, lips white and chapped. Her uniform wrinkled and filthy, her flat twists in the same unraveling wreckage they had been after Thursday’s fight. No one would have noticed her condition, except for the fact that she smelled soaked in piss. |
| 153 | “…But don’t let a bunch of homophobic knuckleheads- what’s the word y’all use again? Oh right- bammas make you feel like it’s wrong!…” |
| Page | Content |
| 180 | “Probably missing her boo-thang. Thinking about them doing nasty shit.” |
| 181 | “Wait a minute, is that what was really going on? She did your homework and you ate her coochie!…” …”‘Cause in that PICTURE, look like Monday was the one licking your box.” |
| 190 | “Blond? Now I know you lunchin’! You ain’t got no business with white-people hair.” |
| 216 | “So y’all really gay for real, huh?”… |
| 226 | I tiptoed toward the door, peering through the window at the boy- his pants around his ankles- squeezed between April’s straddled legs as she lay on top of a teacher’s desk. |
| 227 | “Whatever, April. You don’t even go to this school. You just here to get some dick. And ain’t you too old to be up in-” |
| 230 | “…And that dude she fucked.” The word fucked landed hard… |
| 243 | “How you know her? And how you know she a ‘ho?” |
| 261 | “What? A ‘ho is a ‘ho is a ‘ho. I ain’t gonna sugarcoat shit to make it easier for her to swallow!” |
| 265 | The crop top Kit Kat let me borrow might as well have been a bra, and the skirt sat so short I’d only have to bend slightly before an as cheek popped out. |
| 266 | Well, not like me, but older kids-high school kids. They stood in thick clusters, drinking, laughing, grinding on each other. …On the table in the corner sat rows of half-empty bottles of brown liquor, a bag of melting ice, and a stack of red cups. Kit Kat and Megan went to work mixing drinks. They giggled, the way Monday and I used to, which made me only want to drink more to erase the memories. |
| 268 | The party was cranking, folks laughing and dancing, when it hit me: I’m at a high school party! How would I tell Monday about this? About my hair, my makeup, the nasty brown drink in my cup making my body tingle. |
| 270 | With the alcohol, I felt lighter somehow, a weight lifted off my back. …The girls were back on the sofa with the boys, kissing. I mean, REALLY kissing, tongues in each other’s mouths, hands up shirts, touching their mother’s bras. …I kept dancing, lost in the music until some boy pushed up behind me, holding my hips. I froze, looking to Megan for help. She nodded and mouthed an “it’s okay.” It’s cool; this is what girls do at parties, I told myself, and kept dancing- with a boy I couldn’t see, the alcohol making my waist wind faster. The boy pulled me tighter to him, heat pulsing off his chest. |
| 271 | Didn’t care some guy was rubbing on my booty, breathing all hard in my ear? |
| 272 | I snatched my arm back, fumbling, the liquor making my body extra light. …”She…sucked my dick. I didn’t really want it to happen, it just kinda…did.” |
| 275 | The dudes lit up blunts, heckling the other kids. |
| 276 | “Is she fucking all of them?” a girl whispered, but loud enough for April to hear. |
| Page | Content |
| 281 | I’m kissing a boy, Monday! I’m kissing a boy. Just like you! …I gripped his arms and flipped him around, pushing him against the wall. His eyes widened, mouth dropping. “Hey, what are you doing?” he chuckled nervously. I took a deep breath before dropping down on my shaky knees, the ground cold. “Whoa…Claudia.” As I reached for his belt buckle, Michael gently pushed my hands away and held my wrist. “No, Claudia, stop!” But I didn’t want to stop. If I do this, they’ll stop calling me a lesbian, a baby, stuck up. |
| 289 | “Darrell, didn’t you fuck my sister?” |
| 314 | They so cooped up, the older brother and sister start having sex. …“I mean, why would Monday want to read a book like this? A brother and sister having sex? That’s nasty…” |
| 344 | Last night, Mom beat August until he couldn’t get up. Said he deserved it. I thought he just passed out, but when April tried to move him, he wouldn’t wake up. April tried to save him, but Mom stopped her. She made April put him in the freezer. I’m so scared. I want to tell someone. But what if they split us up like before? …August is still in the freezer. I keep telling April we got to tell somebody. |
| 346 | Mrs. Charles was down the street, next to Darrell’s, calmly smoking a blunt, listening to the sirens come for her. |
| 354 | “That funeral was fucking bogus, wasn’t it?” |
| 390 | “August kept putting his hands on females! I kept telling him to stop that. But he was beating up on his sisters. Them bruises you see on Monday and April you can’t put all the blame on me. Final straw was when I caught him biting Tuesday. She was just a baby! I started punching him, biting him back. Told him, ‘Didn’t I tell you boys not supposed to touch no females?’ He knew that I told him all the time. He was screaming and wouldn’t shut up. I choked him, putting my hands around his throat. He fought until his eyes started rolling back, and then he was dead. Told April to put him in the freezer ‘cause…well, I didn’t feel like dealing with him.” |
| 391 | “Monday was a fast-ass little girl. Fast from the day she was born. Got boys coming up to my house looking for her and shit. I even heard her messing with girls too.” …”I came home early from babysitting and see her coming out of some car, in these tight-ass little shorts, talking fast, telling me she’s about to leave me. I grabbed her by the neck and started punching her. She wanted to be all big and bad, trying to face me like a grown-ass woman, she gonna get beat like a grown woman. She started screaming, cursing at me and carrying on. “I threw her in the closet for a couple of days. She kept on screaming, begging to be let out, begging for water. Every time she made too much noise I’d walk in and kick her. That last time…she wouldn’t get up. I don’t know how she got in that freezer. I didn’t put her there. I would’ve let her rot in that closet.” |
| Profanity | Count |
| Ass | 26 |
| Bitch | 6 |
| Dick | 1 |
| Dyke | 2 |
| Fuck | 26 |
| Nigga | 1 |
| Piss | 7 |
| Pussy | 1 |
| Shit | 32 |
