Monse likes Cesar and Cesar likes Monse. But they have to hide their relationship, because Spooky’s out of prison, and probably going to try to recruit Cesar into gang life, so Cesar starts going out with Olivia, which hurts Ruby (short for Ruben), because he has a monstrously huge crush on Olivia – one that Jamal, who is lying to his football-mad parents about being on the football team, is trying to cure him of, but Jamal’s preoccupied with tracking down the hidden treasure of the RollerWorld heist and, with Abuela – aka Ruby’s grandma – he’s going to find it.
Are you watching the delightful On My Block on Netflix? Man, you should be. It’s a Los Angeles-set coming-of-age story about kids of colour, and I am completely invested in its mix of grim realism (deportation, gang violence, hidden teen romance) and Technicolor charm.
Much as I love the show, however, I am gently mournful of the fact that there has never been an accurate portrayal of my own schooldays as I fumbled my way into adulthood. These brown-skinned kids’ inner-city lives, so lovingly rendered on screen, made me begin making notes for an autobiographical series of my own youth.
A sample: we open on a library scene, where a young black girl sits cross-legged on the floor, playing absentmindedly with her braids. She will remain there for five hours straight, nibbling on a chocolate swiss roll from Kwik Save (RIP) for lunch. When she leaves, she checks out nine books: six romance novels, plus three books of prose by Maya Angelou. She requests another five inter-library loans. Once home, she watches repeats of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Her life is actually very boring. “If only I had Netflix,” she thinks as she drifts asleep by 9pm.
