So People Know It’s Me by Francesca Maria Benvenuto
I grabbed this book for a lot of reasons. It’s a book in translation (originally in Italian), and I like books in translation. I feel like I am expanding my worldview a little more by reading them. It’s about a 15-year-old boy in a juvenile detention center in Italy. I was hoping it might be a good fit for my school.
Not for middle school! But that’s okay. I can’t ever imagine being upset about reading a book. So, I can’t put it in my school library, oh well. I can tell my friends about it instead.
Zeno is in a juvenile prison for killing a man. He is hoping to get a furlough at Christmas so he can visit his mom. To do this, he has to write in a diary about his life. So that is what we are reading. Sounds interesting, right?
Zeno talks about the other guys in prison with him. Like Marietto, he had no family and stole food to survive. He actually likes being in prison. He has a warm place to sleep, and he is fed three times a day! He plans on stealing as soon as he gets out, so he can come back. That was so sad when I read that, prison is better than his freedom.
He also talks about how his mom was happy that he went to prison. Not because she didn’t want him around but because she felt he was safer in prison.
“Last time we spoke, she said the sound of jail doors closing was better than the sound of funeral bells.”
Again, so sad.
The book feels like Zeno is being honest. He’s not trying to act tough or pretend that he has learned his lesson. He just says what he feels. He doesn’t say the best things, like how he hates certain people or how he admits that if he saw one of his teachers outside of jail with her gold earrings, he would have “cut your ears right off your head and fuckin took em.” And this is a teacher he likes!
He also talks about the corruption he sees. He knows there are guards that hate the kids in the prison, he knows that there are people in his community that break the law just like he did, but they have money and can hire lawyers to keep them out of jail.
I liked his honesty. I like books written like this; I think they are called epistolary novels. I will say this is a bit of a sad one. But I still really liked reading this book.
Four out of Five Magical Coffee Cups
Literary Coffee 