We Deserve Monuments

Content Warning: This section of the guide references racism, colorism, anti-gay bias, anti-fat bias, emotional abuse, and terminal illness.

In the early chapters of We Deserve Monuments, Avery dreads moving from Washington DC to small-town Bardell County, Georgia. She views the Confederate Flag hanging from a local bar and bullet holes on the town’s welcome sign as confirmation of her expectations about Bardell: that, as a small town in the Deep South, it must be unilaterally socially and politically conservative. As a Black, pansexual teenager, Avery assumes that Bardell will be unwelcoming. Her understanding of setting as contributing to political atmosphere—which, for liberal and justice-minded Avery, equates to potential happiness in a location—starts off as binary and based on stereotypes. For Avery, a city in the North must be liberal and accepting, something Avery equates with being “good.” Similarly, a small town in the South must be conservative and unaccepting, which Avery mentally frames as “bad.” The longer she spends in Bardell, however, the more Avery embraces that this paradigm is insufficient. Avery learns that it is the individuals within her city or town who determine her relationship with the place and give her a sense of home.  

While in Bardell, Avery becomes closer with Jade and Simone who, despite their conflict in the latter half of the book, she finds more open-minded than her friends in DC, often encouraging Avery to embrace her truest self. By contrast, she begins to understand the racism she faced from her friends in DC, however veiled it may have been. The novel does not present this as an inversion, however; the legacy of Jim Crow laws is more visible to Avery in Bardell than in DC, as are emblems of slavery. Jade’s family lives, for example, at a plantation. Yet the novel’s overall argument is not that one place is inherently better than the other. Instead, they each have their pros and cons. Avery is able to find people she loves and respects in Bardell, thereby defining the town as a place she can call home.  

The novel suggests, moreover, that there is a benefit to experiencing life in both rural and urban communities, as evidenced by Jade and Simone (both Bardell natives) choosing to travel to big cities after they graduate high school. Avery’s friends are thus implied to be sent on a journey analogous to Avery’s, seeking to understand the relationship between setting and self. Before coming to Bardell, Avery could not comprehend what her vision of herself might look like outside a large metropolis. By contrast, Jade and Simone have never been given a chance to see themselves in any other place than Bardell. Avery, the last interlude quickly notes, ends up seeking even more rural surroundings, as she works in national forests. Ultimately, the novel thus suggests that the best part about different locations is their difference. The pros and cons of different settings are not absolute but reflect rather how a character can come to understand themselves by living in that place.