The Stars and the Blackness Between Them

I get so emotional, baby… every time I think about this book! Why YES, it is absolutely necessary to use Whitney Houston lyrics to describe how The Stars and the Blackness Between Them made this queer music-loving ‘90s kid feel.

Audre, a 16 year old raised in Trinidad, is in love with the pastor's daughter. But just as they begin to explore their new love, they are discovered by Audre's deeply religious mother, who banishes Audre to Minneapolis to live with her father. Upon her arrival, Audre is confronted with a vastly different life—one with an unfamiliar parent and a culture and place she's never known. Luckily her father introduces her to Mabel, who helps her navigate her new life in America, and before long, the two fall in love. But this beautiful queer Black-girls-in-love story takes a heart-plunging turn into the realities of life when Mabel receives devasting news about her health.

With vivid characters and a gripping story, this book was a cosmic, emotional, and musical journey. I won't be forgetting this story or MABRE (Mabel/Audre) any time soon. In fact, you can find my singing "I Wanna Dance with Somebody" while re-reading this book and shedding both happy and sad tears.

Trinidad. Sixteen-year-old Audre is despondent, having just found out she’s going to be sent to live in America with her father because her strictly religious mother caught her with her secret girlfriend, the pastor’s daughter. Audre’s grandmother Queenie (a former dancer who drives a white convertible Cadillac and who has a few secrets of her own) tries to reassure her granddaughter that she won’t lose her roots, not even in some place called Minneapolis. “America have dey spirits too, believe me,” she tells Audre.

Minneapolis. Sixteen-year-old Mabel is lying on her bed, staring at the ceiling and trying to figure out why she feels the way she feels—about her ex Terrell, about her girl Jada and that moment they had in the woods, and about the vague feeling of illness that’s plagued her all summer. Mabel’s reverie is cut short when her father announces that his best friend and his just-arrived-from-Trinidad daughter are coming for dinner.

Mabel quickly falls hard for Audre and is determined to take care of her as she tries to navigate an American high school. But their romance takes a turn when test results reveal exactly why Mabel has been feeling low-key sick all summer and suddenly it’s Audre who is caring for Mabel as she faces a deeply uncertain future.