I picked up a copy of Monster by Walter Dean Myers at a thrift store the other day. I hadn’t seen it since high school—senior year, to be exact, when my teacher Mrs. Allgood assigned it. I remember reading it and feeling gutted. I was the same age as the main character, Steve Harmon, and the story felt too real for comfort even then. Reading it now, in 2025, knowing what I know about the world, it’s not just heartbreaking—it’s infuriating.
Monster tells the story of a 16-year-old Black teen on trial for a crime he didn’t commit. The courtroom scenes are raw. The fear Steve feels? It’s chilling. But what’s worse is how quickly society labeled him a “monster” without truly knowing him. That feeling of being dehumanized, of being guilty before even opening your mouth to speak—that’s not just fiction. That’s reality for far too many.
Reading Monster again made me think about the real-life Steves. The young Black and brown boys who’ve lived—and sometimes died—through the same nightmare. This isn’t just a literary story; it’s a mirror. A damning one.
Let’s talk about the Central Park Five—now known as the Exonerated Five. In 1989, five teenagers were accused of raping a white jogger in Central Park. They were interrogated for hours, without lawyers, and coerced into false confessions. They were 14 to 16 years old. Just kids. They were found guilty and spent years in prison—until 2002, when the actual perpetrator confessed and DNA confirmed their innocence.
What happened to them is the real-life version of what Steve Harmon feared. Society looked at their skin and their youth and decided: guilty. They were torn from their lives, publicly humiliated, and psychologically destroyed. And it took decades for the system to even say “sorry.”
Then there’s Kalief Browder. Just 16 years old when he was accused of stealing a backpack. No trial. No conviction. Just a charge. But that was enough to lock him up in Rikers Island for three years. He spent over 700 days in solitary confinement. For what? Nothing. The charges were eventually dropped, but the damage was permanent. Kalief took his own life at 22. We failed him—utterly.
George Stinney Jr.’s story still haunts me. A 14-year-old Black boy in 1944, accused of murdering two white girls. No real evidence, no defense, no justice. He was sentenced to death and executed by electric chair. His conviction was overturned in 2014, seventy years too late. Seventy years.
We like to believe these stories are “old” or “historical.” But they’re not. They keep happening. The systems that broke those boys still exist. Trayvon Martin wasn’t even in court—he was walking home when he was stalked and shot by a grown man who walked free. Trayvon was 17. Just a kid.
So when people call Monster a “young adult novel,” I think, sure—but don’t forget it’s also a cautionary tale. It’s a scream. A warning. And honestly? It’s a tragedy that the book is just as relevant now as it was when it was published in 1999.
We have created a world where kids—children—have to learn how to survive systemic injustice before they learn how to drive. We’ve allowed fear and racism to shape how we treat our youth, and then we act shocked when the system ruins them. Why is a kid’s worst fear being mistaken for a criminal?
What makes it worse is that, for some, Monster is the only time they’ll hear a story like Steve Harmon’s. It’s assigned in school and then forgotten, but the reality never stops. We let this happen again and again. How many more Kaliefs and Trayvons do we have to lose before we admit the system is broken beyond repair?
And it’s not just about being wrongly accused. It’s about being assumed guilty. About being treated like a threat just because of how you look. It’s about not getting the benefit of the doubt, about being “othered” from the minute you walk into a room.
Monster hurts because it’s honest. Walter Dean Myers didn’t write a fantasy. He wrote the truth wrapped in fiction. And it hurts even more knowing that not enough has changed since that book came out. Twenty-six years later, we’re still fighting the same battles.
The fact that kids still read this book and recognize themselves in Steve? That’s the tragedy. The fact that they still cry reading it like I did in 12th grade? That’s the failure. And the fact that we can name real people—real lives—who lived through it? That’s the crime.
We need more than reform. We need reckoning. We need change that actually protects Black and brown youth—not punishes them. We need justice that doesn’t come after a decade of suffering or a posthumous apology.
Because fiction should not feel like a documentary. Monster should be a warning, not a reflection. And I’m so tired of reading stories like this and realizing they’re still being written in real life.
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