For readers unfamiliar with
Dear Martin, Quan references a time about a year before this novel’s present when Justyce visited Quan in prison. Quan offered Justyce Martel’s phone number and suggested Justyce join Black Jihad. Justyce
did visit Martel, but he didn’t join—instead, he went on to Yale. But because Quan didn’t have the same kind of support Justyce did, he felt he had no choice but to join a gang that was going to be able to fill those gaps. And Black Jihad, as Quan tells it, didn’t have nefarious aims—indeed, the mention of a community center suggests that Martel modeled it off of the Black Panthers in a number of ways. The Panthers ran community centers and children’s nutrition programs at their height.