Book Review: The F Words
The F Words. Barbara Gregorich, Cross Your Heart, imprint of City of Light Publishing, Buffalo NY, September 1, 2021, Electronic, Paper, approx. 380 pages.
Reviewed by Lisa Lickel.
It is completely refreshing to read a book about a good kid making restitution for doing a bad thing while figuring out constructive ways to deal with injustice. Chicago high school sophomore Cole Renner comes to grips with the fact that he is not going to change the world all at once, but that he can and should make a difference in his own environment.
Barbara Gregorich uses her experience as an activist and lover of sports to create a marvelous cast of eclectic teachers, staff, students, and parents in this street-level view of precarious teen life in contemporary Chicago. Cole is beyond frustrated when his father receives jail time for leading a protest against closing a local public elementary school. All this over a grade school, Cole thinks. It’s one more event in a long list of frustrations over inequality, petty revenge, getting dumped by his girlfriend, and upside-down thinking he encounters in his life.
Taking out his anger at the “system” by tagging the school with a vulgarity one night at the beginning of the school year, he’s caught in the act by his English teacher who happens to be in the neighborhood. Quick and creative thinking combine to form an unusual punishment. Cole shows his quality of character by taking to heart and learning from this unique assignment of creating at least two poems a week featuring a word that begins with the letter F for the remainder of the school year.
Cole’s journey of self-discovery involves applying cross-country running advice from an empathetic coach, the deep love of his parents, the experience of visiting his father in the Cook County jail, watching his mother learn how to cope with brief single parenting, and from his boss at his afterschool job at a greenhouse. During an event in which Cole supports his friend Felipe’s class presidency campaign, Cole observes that Felipe is breathing “like he’s in a race. Then I realize he is. Not an actual race, but a race to represent tenth graders. To argue for what he believes in.”
The F Words is an enlightening book for middle and high school. While it does contain limited and mild appropriately situational cursing, I recommend it, especially to foment family discussions on social justice and youth activism.