Systemic Shadows: Race, Class, and Inner Conflict in Nic Stone’s Dear Justyce

Abstract

Dear Justyce by Nic Stone deals with the life of an African American protagonist, Quan, a seventeen-year-old boy who navigates a life of struggle, chaos, and loss. This paper discusses how Quan, who was academically growing, gets pulled into a cycle of incarceration following his father’s arrest and death, as well as his mother, Mama’s, abusive relationship with Dwight. Following Dwight’s death, Quan is left to care for his mother and half-siblings without any financial stability or mentorship. Desperate, he begins to steal and ends up in juvenile detention. He wrote a letter to his friend Justyce while he was in prison. Quan finds an emotional release, sharing with his friend some of his trauma and internal struggle. The play goes between flashbacks and present-day introspection, and the novel shows how institutionalised injustice and poverty create Quan’s identity.  This paper applies Cultural Studies and Global Literature, drawing on theories such as Marxist theory to examine class repression, and Freud’s psychoanalytic theory to discuss Quan's emotional repression and the struggle between Id, Ego, and Superego.