We Deserve Monuments

Content Warning: This section of the guide references racism, colorism, anti-gay bias, anti-fat bias, emotional abuse, and terminal illness.

Avery Anderson is the narrator and protagonist of We Deserve Monuments. Avery begins the novel uncertain how her identity as a pansexual teenager will be received in Bardell, only to increasingly recognize the subtler forms of bias that she encountered in her hometown of Washington DC. Avery also feels some anxiety, in the early parts of the text, about her relationship to Blackness, due to her (white) ex-girlfriend’s comments that she was “barely Black.” Though Avery does not articulate a resolution to these anxieties, her increasing connection to her family history and the way she and her relatives have faced (and continue to face) anti-Black racism indicates a diminished sense of anxiety over this issue. Instead, as the novel continues, her identity as a Black teenager decreasingly contains echoes of Kelsi’s racist comment.

Avery faces tension regarding past familial trauma and ongoing racist violence. Though she spends much of the novel arguing for answers about the longstanding animosity between Letty and Zora (and later Carole), she finds that learning the answers to these questions is painful in a different way.