My Review of Disgruntled by Asali Solomon

Disgruntled is a novel about a young girl, Kenya who lived with her very pro-black family and went to school where she was the only girl that didn’t celebrate Christmas. Her parents celebrated Kwanzaa and did’t believe in American holidays. Her father, Johnbrown was raised rich; his mother was wealthy and sometimes used her influence to get him out of trouble. For whatever reason, which was not disclosed in the book, Johnbrown left home, got married and never kept in touch with his mother. Unbeknownst to him though, his wife, Sheila kept in touch with his mother and visited regularly to collect money from her. After his mother passed away, she left most of her possessions to Sheila including a college trust fund for Kenya.

Johnbrown maybe seen as a political activist who hates white people and wants revenge for slavery. This also maybe seen as his inspiration to start Seven Days, a group made up of himself, wife and few friends that meet regularly at his house to discuss ideas and issues in the black community. However, he mostly volunteers and helps to rebuild the community. Although, later on in the book he deviated from this after remarrying someone who shares his crazy ideas.

Kenya had a not so common childhood. She didn’t have many friends, was only allowed to call her father “Baba”, and was made to join Seven Days, which she ended up looking forward to because it was the only fun she knew of. Johnbrown ended up cheating on Sheila with a Seven Days member and they got separated (not divorced because as it turned out they were never legally married – Johnbrown didn’t believe in it), he moved in with his new baby mama and then started getting into trouble with the law which got him thrown in prison. After he got out of prison, he married a second wife (or should I say his third baby mama?) who shockingly turned out to be white. Sheila also got remarried to a man who Kenya didn’t fancy with very good reasons.

During the summer after Kenya’s high school graduation and after learning from her mother that her college fund was gone, she decided to visit her father who lived in a farm with his two wives and three kids (one from his black wife and two from his white wife). Her visit initially was good until things went bad and she had to leave and chose not to come home to her mother and step father. She ended up staying with friends who turned out to be bad influence and caused her to end up in jail.

Disgruntled was not an easy or fun book to read. I found it boring sometimes but I held on because I wanted to know how the story ended. It was a well written book overall just not all that interesting to me like other books I’ve read.

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