Colorism

Alicia Williams’ novel offers a thorough exploration of the theme of colorism with several sub-themes such as bullying, conformity versus individualism, and the subjectivity of beauty. Defined as the prejudice or discrimination against individuals with a dark skin tone, typically among people of the same ethnic or racial group, colorism within the black community has been found to be more widespread than one might expect and to have serious emotional and psychological implications. As a thirteen-year-old girl growing up in a mostly black neighborhood, Genesis has come to view other black people in terms of how light or dark their skin. When the reader meets her, she is just awakening to the fact that this view now defines her.

This legacy has been passed on to Genesis not so much by her mother as by her father and grandmother, although the fact that her mother has...