Your House Will Pay

“Aunt Sheila knew there were gangs, but she talked about them like they weren’t her problem. She never warned her boys not the join. She just acted like she didn’t have to, seeing as she didn’t raise troublemakers and thugs. Her boys weren’t like those bad ones.”

Sheila is in many ways one of the wisest characters in Your House Will Pay, and yet is ignorant of her own family. She never believes anyone in her family might be guilty of doing anything wrong. Shawn calls this her unconditional love. This characterization is confirmed when Ray is arrested, as Sheila never doubts his innocence.

“See, it don’t matter what you do if you’re black in America. You can stay in your neighborhood, on your street, and still, some cop can find you in your own backyard. You can be an unarmed black boy, and someone can just come in and kill you with the full blessing of the law.”

At the memorial for Alfonso Curiel, the pastor summarizes the injustice at the heart of the novel. While racial injustice is a complex issue and the sociopolitical system of the United States is responsible for wronging Black individuals on many levels, the most visible example of this is the lack of punishment for the murder of unarmed Black youth.

“Miriam was right. It was wrong of Grace, selfish of her, to look away when there was so much injustice in the world. It had been too easy for her to feel nothing for Afonso Curiel, to do nothing to honor his death. She had let herself luxuriate in apathy, her world separate from the real world.”

Grace grew up in a sheltered environment and demonstrates how, for those who have the privilege of ignoring injustice, it takes effort to be informed about and active within the spaces where racial injustice is a more direct matter of life and death. Cha frames apathy as easy, luxurious.