Book Review: The Names of All the Flowers by Melissa Valentine

Melissa and her brother Junior are tight-knit siblings at the tail-end of a large, chaotic family. Growing up in the 90s in Oakland, California, the parents of a Black mother from the South and a white Quaker father. Their mother works nights, sleeping during the day, and their father is a hoarder and the children are largely left to their own devices. As Junior gets older, he becomes the target of bullying and violence and in his search for power, delves into an increasingly dangerous world. Before his twentieth birthday, he is murdered as a result of gang violence.

As a reader, we know Junior’s death is coming from the very beginning of this intensely personal memoir. It is an inescapable fact of young Melissa’s life and yet it was hard not to hope that the story would have a different ending. With parents who seem largely uninvolved and, at best, ignorant of the world that their children are living in, Melissa and Junior’s bond is tight. Even as Junior becomes more deeply involved in crime and violence, his softest moments seem reserved for Melissa.

As the narrator of her own life, Melissa is very honest, both about her own shortcomings and her family’s. It was hard to read at many times and I often wondered what her family must think of this book. As I read Melissa’s personal story, I found myself reflecting quite a bit on my own childhood and the things we had in common. I also am the younger sister of a much adored older brother and one who got into his share of trouble as a teenager. Although we weren’t as close while growing up as Melissa and Junior were, I can so clearly remember the thrill of any occasion when he would invite me into his world. The music, fashion, and exploits of these Oakland teenagers were familiar to me. My brother and I also grew up in a sometimes rough neighbourhood and any trouble we might have wanted to get into wasn’t hard to find.

There are many differences too, of course, but the key one is of course that Melissa and her brother were Black children in America while my brother and I were white children in Canada. We might have appeared to be minorities in our predominantly Asian East Vancouver schools and neighbourhoods but we existed in a larger, more privileged society that Melissa and Junior couldn’t entirely access, even with a white father.

What The Names of all the Flowers does most powerfully is to share a family story, the bring to life a victim of gang violence. A news story that many of us might dismiss or even judge. With vulnerability and a lot of love, Melissa’s lays out her brother’s life and reminds us of our own fragilities.