Welcome to the second weekend of February, a unique collision of Friday-the-13th and Valentine's Day!
 Roy Jackson | Our February contributor, Roy Jackson, once again brings us a timely recommendation on protest, civil disobedience, and the eternal question of humanity: shouldn't being human be enough? To remind our readers, Roy Jackson is a writer and educator whose scholarship and prose have appeared in various outlets. He holds degrees in English and Education, including an MFA from Youngstown State University. He is currently an assistant professor of education at Goshen College. Our many thanks to professor Jackson for his ongoing commitment to our YA Literature community! |
One of the Good Ones by Maika Moulite and Maritza Moulite
Seeking contemporary YA stories relevant to our current times I came across this fantastic read in the shelves of my public library. I must admit that I was using AI with a search prompt of “YA books on protest, civil disobedience, and protest” and chat led me to the stacks where One of the Good Ones by Maika Moulite and Maritza Moulite resided. It deserves to be pulled from the line of spines with titles and displaced cover first. With a thematic tagline in the lower right corner of the cover, Shouldn’t being human be enough? the novel centers its narrative on the individual at the center of a movement, but in dire need of separation from a larger movement. To be remembered as an individual; as a human. This book holds power in manners not often utilized in today’s fiction where sainthood or martyr status is almost immediate in a divisive society without much reflection. The authors force us to pause and reflect inward, at least for me, on how I often play into this trope to suit my narrative needs.
 | One of the Good Ones centers on teen social activist Kezi Smith, who is killed under mysterious circumstances after attending a social justice rally. Her death quickly becomes national news, and she is held up as “one of the good ones,” a phrase that troubles her family because it implies only certain Black lives are worthy of sympathy. Her younger sister Happi, devastated and angry, struggles with the way Kezi is idealized by the public. Along with their sister Genny, she decides to honor Kezi in a more personal way. Guided by an heirloom copy of The Negro Motorist Green Book, the sisters embark on a road trip that Kezi had planned to take, hoping to understand her more fully and reclaim her humanity beyond the headlines. As they travel, the story weaves between past and present, revealing Kezi’s activism, her relationships, and the pressures she faced. The novel also includes a major twist that reframes the family’s understanding of what happened to her. |
Why someone gets remembered, mortalized in our ethos, isn’t new or surprising to me. Rather in our current times, I’m curious about how they are remembered and immortalized. It seems there are two memories in the last ten years of how someone is remembered. Trapped in the American binary where media drives the consumers' thoughts. A person is a martyr or domestic terrorist, a victim or criminal, a child or dangerous criminal. All sides play this game so easily, and concerningly. But Maika Moulite and Maritza Moulite do something so incredibly powerful. They challenge readers to see beyond this binary of saint or sinner and instead recognize the humanity of the individual, the human, so real and flawed in our existence. The authors force us to move beyond the media political mechanism and reach for something deeper. A life lived, with flaws and all, and seek for more meaning than the cultural and political divides to drive wedges. More than that, the story seeks this position through a non-linear timeline and historical literal and metaphorical road trip.
| The novel is told not through the voice of the murdered activist Kezi, but through those who knew and loved her most. Family and close friends try to make sense of her death and the way she is portrayed in the media. What emerges is an afterlife of activism, but even more so, a portrait of a family struggling to understand a loss that feels both intimate and senseless. Through its connection to Black mobility and resistance across American history, the sisters’ road trip creates a natural historical throughline that blends with the fabric of their grief. Their travel becomes an act of preservation, an attempt to hold onto the human being they cherished rather than the martyr the media insists on creating. |  Maika Moulite and Maritza Moulite |
As an adult reading YA, I often find myself considering the pedagogical possibilities each novel offers. This one offers many. Its structural choices, including family trees and non‑linear timelines, create natural opportunities for front‑loading and guided discussion. The historical context, especially the Green Book the sisters rely on during their road trip, provides another entry point for grounding students in the broader history of Black mobility and resistance.
Yet the true power of this novel lies in its intersection of trauma and political division. It raises a difficult question: what responsibility do the keepers of memory have to the actual lived human when the broader public demands a narrative that fits a divided society’s desire to right wrongs. The novel does not offer easy answers, but its climax opens space for rich, nuanced conversations. I would be deeply interested to hear how young and emerging adults respond to these questions, and how they navigate the tension between personal grief and public storytelling. Who is best served in these choices? Where is the voice of the dead in the public domain as it’s altered and manipulated?
While class discussions of this novel, especially when read during turbulent times in America, can be valuable, students may express more pointed or honest responses in private writing. I am interested in hearing a wide range of voices, not a monolithic set of affirmations. I am especially curious about the dissenting perspectives, the students who quietly and reasonably disagree. Journaling and written responses between instructor and student are useful and accessible, but I am drawn to the idea of a moderated, anonymous discussion board. Such a space could allow students to disagree, agree, and consider one another’s positions with a sense of safety and openness that traditional classroom dialogue does not always provide.
Published in 2021, Maika Moulite and Maritza Moulite’s novel is perhaps more important as a launching pad today than it was then. In the post‑2020 election and near end of the pandemic, the novel felt almost historical. Today in 2026, it is present, alive, and urgently resonant. The questions it raises about memory, narrative, and the human cost of public storytelling feel less like reflections on a past moment and more like guideposts for navigating the world we inhabit now.
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