I'm Not Dying with You Tonight: 12/28/20

I'm Not Dying with You Tonight by Kimberly Jones and Gilly Segal is set over an evening that begins with a football game and ends with rioting across the neighborhood. It's told from alternating points of view, Lena, a Black teen who has lived in the area her entire life, and Campbell, a white teen recently moved here after her mother leaves the country for work. When they are trapped together in the concession stand after a white boy incites a fight through his repeated racist comments, the girls team up to get to safety.

The school sits on the border of two very different neighborhoods. One is gentrified and one isn't. The "safe" way, meaning through the gentrified neighborhood is blocked by the influx of police brought in to break up the fight, but clearly there to stir up extra trouble. The other way is through a neighborhood that Lena knows and Campbell has been taught to be afraid of.

While the novel doesn't take place where I live, it shares a similar geography, with the high school sitting right in the middle of two very different parts of our valley. If a riot or some other disturbance happened at or near the high school, getting around the problem could be extremely difficult.

Lena and Campbell's flight can be plotted on the road narrative spectrum. Together they are marginalized travelers (66) in that they are teens fleeing violence at night, on foot. Their goal is home (66). The route is the blue highway, or more precisely, the streets near the high school, between there and somewhere safe (33). Summarized, I'm Not Dying with You Tonight is about marginalized travelers trying to get home via the blue highway (666633).

Five stars

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