Ghost Boys

Jerome goes back to the day he died. It is a cold day, and Jerome plays in Green Acres. He feels “powerful. Like a first-person shooter in a video game” (195) and imagines for just a moment that he is a “good guy. A cop. Better yet, a movie star playing a cop” (19) who shoots down the bad guy. Reality sets in, and Jerome realizes that his pretend play is dangerous because someone might thing he is “a thug and want a real shoot-out” (196). That’s the moment in which Officer Moore shoots him. Jerome tries to run away, but the bullets stop him. He tries to explain that what he is holding is a toy, but he dies thinking about how he would have liked to have seen his mother or grandmother one last time.

Jerome ends his story by asking the reader to “[b]ear witness” (204) now that he has told his story. He demands that the living wake up because only they can change the world to one in which stories like his never have to be told. He signs his last words with the name “Ghost boy” (195).

Parker Rhodes explains that the killing of Tamir Rice in 2014 shook her to the point that she felt compelled to write Ghost Boys. She grew weary of seeing stories that “criminalized” (205) Black boys to make them guilty for their own deaths at the hands of adults. Recent scholarship reveals, for example, that nothing Emmett Till did would justify his murder. Carolyn Bryant, the woman whose honor her husband was supposedly defending when he helped to kill Emmett, has proclaimed that nothing justified the killing of Till. Parker Rhodes hopes that parents, teachers, and young people will read Ghost Boys to learn about the prejudice and fear that make the country ripe for more of these killings.

Parker Rhodes provides additional context about the Day of the Dead and other traditions people use to honor their dead. She ties this cultural aspect of holidays like Day of the Dead to her mission as a writer, which is to “honor and speak for those who can no longer speak for themselves” (207). In the cultures of people who have been oppressed, especially Black Americans, “bearing witness” (208) can take the form of telling stories that document trauma, abuse, oppression, racism, and other injustices. Bearing witness through storytelling is also a key way of allowing the teller to heal.