Though Maverick is only 17 years old, he’s already been a member of the King Lords gang for five years. He had to join at age 12 for protection, since his father, Pops (a former member of the same gang), made so many enemies before he was imprisoned for life. Because of his father’s reputation, Maverick is known around the city of Garden Heights as Li’l Don, a reference to Pops’s first name. To others in the gang, it’s impossible to see Maverick as his own person separate from his father. But as Maverick struggles to balance his gang affiliation with suddenly becoming a parent, he begins to question what he really wants out of his life—and what kind of a person he wants to be. Through Maverick’s struggle, Concrete Rose proposes that even in cases where a person feels immense pressure to act a certain way, people always have a choice in who they want to be and how they want their lives to look.
When readers first meet Maverick, his identity isn’t entirely his own and he feels like he has few choices in who he becomes. The novel opens with Maverick and his best friend, King, playing a pickup basketball game against Maverick’s cousin Dre and the King Lords’ “crown” (leader), Shawn. As people cheer in support of Maverick and King from the sidelines, they cheer not for Maverick and King, but for “Li’l Don and Li’l Zeke.” Don, or Adonis, is Maverick’s father and the King Lords’ former crown, and he’s in prison; Zeke is King’s deceased father. As Maverick explains this to the reader he notes, “Guess we not old enough to go by our own names yet.” With this, Maverick shows that he’s growing up in his father’s shadow—nobody sees him as his own person yet. For Maverick, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing—it’s just the way things are. As he understands it, his future and his identity are already laid out for him: he’s going to progress through the ranks of the gang and follow in Pops’ footsteps. Similarly, the way that Maverick talks about becoming a father suggests that he doesn’t see himself as having choices. He insists to people like Ma and his employer, the grocer Mr. Wyatt, that conceiving Seven and Lisa’s baby were “accidents” and “just happened”—thereby absolving himself of any responsibility. In other words, Maverick thinks of fatherhood as something that happened to him, not something that he chose to risk by having unprotected sex.
Though Maverick sees his identity as something set, Mr. Wyatt proposes that people always have choices when it comes to who they are and what they value. For instance, when Maverick tells Mr. Wyatt that he had no choice but to join the King Lords and follow in his father’s footsteps, Mr. Wyatt acknowledges that “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” But he adds to this saying by insisting that “[the apple] can roll away from the tree. It simply need a little push.” With this, Mr. Wyatt suggests that nothing is set in stone. Maverick might not be able to choose the “tree” he fell from, but he can make choices to move away from the circumstances he was born into rather than resign himself to them. It is, however, worth noting that Maverick only insists he doesn’t have a choice sometimes—on some level, he does recognize that he has choices. For instance, the one thing Maverick chooses to do of his own volition is sell hard drugs with King behind the “big homies’” backs. With this, Maverick shows that he recognizes he can make decisions for himself—but those decisions may have negative consequences, such as being beaten by the “big homies” for this transgression.
Eventually, Maverick realizes that he does have choices in who he is and who he becomes—but those choices aren’t easy. Arguably the most difficult choice Maverick makes over the course of the novel is to not murder Red, the man he believes murdered Dre. Maverick explains at several points that there are “rules” guiding life on the streets, and one of the most important rules is that if someone kills a family member, it’s imperative to then kill the family member’s killer. At first, Maverick accepts this rule at face value: killing Red is something he has to do to avenge Dre and make himself a man. But when Maverick is moments away from pulling the trigger, he finds that he does actually have a choice. And ultimately, he chooses not to kill Red. With this, Maverick chooses to become a more compassionate, understanding person, and he chooses to value being there for his family more than getting revenge for family members who are already dead (he recognizes that if he kills Red, he could easily end up in prison or shot by someone else following the rules).
Though Concrete Rose’s exploration of identity doesn’t tie up neatly—Maverick is still caught between the King Lords and a different future in which he doesn’t have to sell drugs to make ends meet—the novel nevertheless suggests that a person’s identity can shift multiple times throughout their life. Indeed, the novel implies that in order for a person to grow, it’s necessary that they learn the importance of making their own decisions and trying to become the person they want to be. To this end, Maverick is eventually willing to voice to Lisa and to Pops that he’d eventually like to get out of the gang—a dangerous prospect, but one that Maverick knows will give him the life he wants. Anyone, the novel suggests, can make choices about who and what they want to be—they must just be willing to accept the consequences of those choices.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Identity and Individuality ThemeTracker
Identity and Individuality Quotes in Concrete Rose
One of them yell out, “Don’t let them punk you, Li’l Don and Li’l Zeke!”
It don’t matter that my pops been locked up for nine years or that King’s pops been dead almost as long. They still Big Don, the former crown, and Big Zeke, his right-had man. That make me Li’l Don and King Li’l Zeke. Guess we not old enough to go by our own names yet.
“You only putting roses in this bed?”
“That’s the plan. Roses need space to grow. Why you ask?”
He got greens, green beans, tomatoes, strawberries, blueberries—all kinds of fruits and vegetables out here. “Seems like a lot of space to give something you can’t eat.
“You might be right,” he admits. “I like to be reminded that beauty can come from much of nothing. To me that’s the whole point of flowers.”
“Weak,” P-Nut says, behind a fake cough. The big homies smirk. I’m nothing but a joke to them.
I storm toward the church. I found Dre with bullets in his head. The least Shawn could do is let me handle the dude who killed him.
But nah. I’m just a li’l kid who can’t live up to his pops’s name.
I’m gon’ prove all them fools wrong one day. Believe that.
“Everybody in the set already think I’m soft, Shawn.”
“So?” he says. “Forget what them fools think. You gotta live for you and Dre now, you feel me? You can do everything he didn’t get a chance to do.”
I never thought of that.
“Raise your son. Be the best father you can be,” Shawn says. “That’s how you honor Dre. A’ight?”
The person who killed my cousin got killed.
It’s been a weird three weeks since it happened. ‘Cause Ant was shot at a school function it was all over the news. His parents cried on TV, and I realized he had parents. Like Dre. Some kids at school were really tore up over his death, and I realized he had friends. Like Dre. At the stadium, he got a memorial in the parking lot with flowers and balloons. Like Dre.
Everybody get mourned by somebody, I guess. Even murderers.
I’m feeling bold as hell, and things I’ve been scared to say suddenly not so scary. “You left us. Got Ma busting her ass to take care of me and put money on your books. I had to join a gang ‘cause of you. You can’t come at either of us.”
“What I did ain’t got shit to do with the fact you keep knocking girls up.”
“Yeah, a’ight, I made some bad decisions,” I admit. “I’m gon’ be there for my kids. Unlike you.”
He can’t say nothing, like I thought.
“We need to start calling you Old Man Carter,” Rico says. “I take that back. My grandma get out more than you and she fresher than you.”
“Whatever,” I mumble.
The first bell ring for class. I follow Rico and Junie down the hall as they discuss the dance and their plans. It’s like they speaking a language I ain’t fluent in anymore. The words real familiar, but they done lost all meaning for me.
“No offense, Mr. Wyatt, but your nephew seem like a nerd. As for Carlos, his momma kept him and Lisa in the house. Of course they didn’t need protection. Anyway, I’m Li’l Don. Everybody expected me to join.”
“Because the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree?” Mr. Wyatt asks. “However, it can roll away from the tree. It simply need a little push.”
“Word around the school is that you’ve had some life-changing developments this year,” he says.
I wait for the look. I swear, when grown folks know I got two kids, I see myself become trash in their eyes. It’s like they see my babies as trash, too, just ‘cause I made them so young. Hell nah.
“Do you love Pops?”
“I do,” she says. “I’ll always love Adonis, and I’ll always be there for him. I also have to love myself. All of that ‘ride or die’ stuff, it’s nice until you feel like you’re dying from not living. Adonis made choices that put his life at a standstill. He didn’t have to sell drugs; he chose to. I shouldn’t have to put my life on hold because of his decisions.”
There’s a lot of things I never wanted to know ‘bout my pops. It come with the territory when your father is Big Don. I’d rather hear that he bought kids’ shoes and fed families at holidays. Not that he got people hooked on crack.
Sometimes one person’s hero is another person’s monster, or in my case, father. Yet it’s hard for me to judge him when I’m plotting to kill somebody else’s father. But see, taking Red out is the best way for Dre to get justice. It ain’t much different from a judge sentencing Red to death row.
I think.
“Daddy’s here. It’s okay.”
Them few words do me in. I say them to Seven all the time, but I ain’t heard them myself in years, and they everything I ever needed. “Dre should be here,” I blubber.”
“He should be.”
“He deserve better.”
“He did.”
“I wanna do this for him. I got to.”
Pops smile so sad it’s hard to call it that. “There were a lot of things I thought I had to do, too. Reality was, I only had to be there for you and your momma, and I failed at that.”
But when it comes to the streets, there’s rules.
Nobody will ever write them down, and you’ll never find them in a book. It’s stuff you need in order to survive the moment your momma let you out the house. Kinda like how you gotta breathe even when it’s hard to.
If there was a book, the most important section would be on family, and the first rule would be:
When somebody kills your family, you kill them.
“Why didn’t you do it?”
“I thought of my kids, my momma, and…and you. What it would do to y’all if I got caught or killed.” I close my eyes. Tears slip outta them. “I’m such a fucking coward.”
“No,” Lisa murmurs. “You sound like a man to me.”
I look at her. “How? That fool murdered Dre, Lisa. And what I do? I let him run away. What kinda justice is that?”
“It wouldn’t have been justice if you threw your life away to kill him.”
I almost laugh. “My life ain’t worth much. I just didn’t wanna put my babies through that. I know what it’s like to not have a father around.”
“Looks like you’re right. These canes need to be snipped.”
“Because they won’t help them grow, right?”
“Mmm-hmm. It’s kind like how we have to do with ourselves. Get rid of things that don’t do us any good. If it won’t help the rose grow, you’ve gotta let it go.”
“You don’t owe me an explanation,” he says. “Like I told you the other day, you’re becoming your own man. You don’t need my permission or approval.”
“Yes, sir.”
Pops take another deep breath. “On some real shit, son? There’s a lot of grown men in the game who don’t wanna be in it. They don’t have the guts to admit it like you do. They too caught up or scared of what people will think. They end up accepting that they stuck.”
