SuitabookBabylon Boyz
Jess Mowry
- Reading
- Pause at the boys’ debate and invite your reader to consider what each boy hopes money might change. Afterwards, check which parts felt most troubling or complicated.
- Themes
- Money, need and community: The boys consider selling cocaine to meet personal hopes, while worrying it could harm their neighbourhood. The dilemma places individual needs alongside possible consequences for others.
- Care amid hardship: The boys take in a homeless younger boy; a caring mother figure and a loving, often absent father are also described. Acts of care are presented as important support in the boys’ lives.
- Identity and exclusion: The book addresses identity and exclusion; the detail of how it is developed remains unclear. Exclusion and social pressures form part of the characters’ circumstances, but their treatment across the novel is unclear.
- Worth knowing
- The story includes cocaine and crack, guns, gang activity and violence; an account also describes a young man being beaten unconscious by police. These elements may merit a check-in.