Bronx Masquerade by Nikki Grimes
"Bronx Masquerade" by Nikki Grimes is a novel set in a high school English class where students engage with the poetry of the Harlem Renaissance. The story begins when a student, Wesley "Bad Boy" Boone, opts to write a poem instead of an essay, igniting a trend that leads to the creation of "Open Mike Friday." This event allows each student to share their poetry, revealing deep emotions and struggles behind the masks they wear—masks that hide their insecurities, fears, and desire for identity. The diverse cast includes young men and women of various backgrounds, each providing a unique perspective through their voices and experiences.
As the students read their poems, they connect with one another on a deeper level, fostering a sense of family and understanding in the classroom. The novel alternates between the students' poetry and character sketches, with Tyrone Bittings serving as a comedic commentator. Through the exploration of their talents and challenges, the students experience personal transformations, showcasing the power of poetry as a vehicle for self-discovery and community connection. Grimes's work is recognized for its innovative style, combining elements of prose and verse to convey the multifaceted lives of youth in the Bronx.
Bronx Masquerade by Nikki Grimes
First published: 2002
Type of work: Novel
Type of plot: Experimental
Time of work: 2002
Locale: Bronx, New York
Principal Characters:
Tyrone Bittings , a high school student who has a low opinion of school and wants to be a musicianRaul Ramirez , a student who loves to paint and hopes to be the next Diego RiveraDiondra Jordan , a student who is tall but does not want to be a basketball player and who has a talent for drawing portraitsLupe Algarin , a student who wants to love and to be loved but is struggling to love herselfJanelle Battle , a student who knows she is much more than meets the eye
The Novel
In Nikki Grimes’s Bronx Masquerade, Mr. Ward’s English class has been studying the Harlem Renaissance. He has assigned an essay, but an essay seems to be an inappropriate assignment to at least one of his students: Wesley “Bad Boy” Boone. Wesley would rather write a poem, thinking it would be more in keeping with the spirit of the Harlem Renaissance. Mr. Ward allows Wesley to write a poem and even to read it aloud in class. He must still write the essay, however. Wesley’s poem starts a trend, and soon his “homey” Tyrone brings in a poem of his own to read. Before long, other students in class want to read their poems, and Open Mike Friday is born.
The eighteen voices representing the students in Mr. Ward’s English class are quite diverse, including young men and women who are black, white, and Latino. They range from the quintessentially “cool” to the naturally “nerdy.” On the surface, the students seem very different; each wears a mask in order to portray the person they want the world to see. Beneath their masks, they share common feelings: fear, insecurity, the need for love, a lack of identity, and a struggle for recognition.
The students’ poems gradually pierce their masks, exposing their deeper identities to their classmates. The hotshot basketball player, seemingly confident and in control, is revealed as a secret bookworm who loves to learn. The meek, needy, overweight girl becomes a loving, giving, caring young woman her classmates had never before noticed.
Poetry has a transforming effect, and it becomes a positive force that reaches beyond the school and into the students’ extracurricular lives to affect their families and their community. Grimes’s novel alternates between poems written by the students and short character sketches of each student. In addition, Tyrone injects his own comments after every poem, reacting on behalf of the class.
The Characters
Bronx Masquerade features the literary equivalent of an ensemble cast. The novel is filled with the voices of these young adults. By contrast, the voice of Mr. Ward, their teacher, is never heard directly. The students speak, first in prose then in verse. Writing in The Horn Book Magazine, reviewer Susan P. Bloom said, “Grimes asks a lot of poetry in this short, fast-paced novel: within a year these eighteen kids have allowed poetry to turn them into a family and to turn them around.”
Grimes, who was born in Harlem and has lived in nearly every borough in New York City, presents eighteen young men and women, each with a unique voice and a special circumstance. With the exception of Tyrone Bittings, the students get about equal billing. Tyrone is essentially the emcee of the novel, the man who comes on stage between the acts to crack wise and give the next act time to set up.
Depending on one’s frame of mind and personal experience, one might find a particular student’s story more compelling than the others or more relevant to one’s own life. However, each young character is sufficiently drawn by Grimes to convey his or her story.
One student, Diondra Jordan, is tall and lanky. Her father looks at her and sees the son he never had, the basketball player he has always dreamed of, but his daughter is awkward and inept at sports. With a charcoal pencil, however, she can capture a person’s essence and allow a viewer to see her subject’s soul through carefully rendered eyes. As the novel begins, she has no idea of the depth of her talent. She only knows that she loves to draw. It is another student in the class, Raul Ramirez, confident and determined, who is the class artist. He uses Mr. Ward’s desk as a miniature studio before each class. Only when Raul sees one of Diondra’s drawings does she realize that she has a gift: Raul chases after Diondra down the hallway just so he can get a better look at her drawing and tell her he only wishes he had her skill. Only then does Diondra begin to believe in herself.
This type of discovery transforms to some degree every student in Mr. Ward’s class. The vehicle for each transformation is poetry.
Critical Context
Grimes has written over fifty books and won many awards, including the Coretta Scott King Award for Bronx Masquerade. Encouraged to write by her father and her older sister, Grimes was influenced in high school by the poetry of Kahlil Gibran and Langston Hughes. As she became a writer, she traveled with Nikki Giovanni and was mentored by James Baldwin. Her initial passion was to write novels for adults, but her first idea for a children’s book led to another and another.
Bronx Masquerade represents an experimental style, alternating poetry and prose. Within the set milieu of a high school English class and working with a finite number of students, Grimes is able to endow each student with a personality, talents, fears, and dreams. The plot is advanced not by description so much as by monologue expressed as verse.
Bibliography
Bloom, Susan P. Review of Bronx Masquerade, by Nikki Grimes. Horn Book Magazine 78, no. 2 (March/April, 2002): 213. Claims that the novel succeeds despite its somewhat excessive optimism, because its compelling characterization breeds sympathy in readers.
Evarts, Lynn. Review of Bronx Masquerade, by Nikki Grimes. School Library Journal 48, no. 1 (January, 2002): 132. Compares Grimes’s style to that of Mel Glenn, but emphasizes the originality of her decision to combine both poetry and prose narrative in the same text.
Grimes, Nikki. “An Interview with Poet Nikki Grimes.” Interview by Sylvia M. Vardell and Peggy Oxley. Language Arts 84, no. 3 (January 1, 2007): 281. In this interview Grimes emphasizes the extent to which poetry is incorporated into children’s everyday lives, in the form of nursery rhymes, schoolyard chants, and so on. She says that poetry in children’s literature therefore begins with a strong foundation on which to build.
Roback, Diane. Review of Bronx Masquerade, by Nikki Grimes. Publishers Weekly 248, no. 51 (December 17, 2001): 92. Notes that each character is strong enough to hold his or her own as a protagonist, but that the ensemble format prevents them from receiving as much time as they deserve.
Wysocki, Barbara. Review of Bronx Masquerade, by Nikki Grimes. School Library Journal 52, no. 11 (November, 2006): 66-67. In this review of the audiobook version of Grimes’s novel, Wysocki asserts that the book may encourage teens both to become poets and to communicate honestly with one another.