Dear Justyce

Dear Justyce

by

Nic Stone

Teachers and parents! Our Teacher Edition on Dear Justyce makes teaching easy.

Justyce Character Analysis

Justyce is an African American boy a year older than Quan and the recipient of most of Quan’s letters in the novel. The boys were childhood playmates and had several advanced classes together, but while Quan stopped focusing on academics, Justyce took the opposite route. Justyce eventually attended a fancy prep school for high school, and he attends Yale as a prelaw student in the novel’s present. He and Quan first met when they were 9 and 10 years old, when both ran away from home to escape abusive father figures. Due to their similar upbringings, Quan often wonders how he and Justyce ended up so different. Quan decides to begin writing to Justyce after Justyce visits and leaves Quan a journal. In the journal—the basis for Dear Justyce’s predecessor, Dear Martin—Justyce wrote letters to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. about racism, implicit bias, and his experience of growing up Black in the United States. The journal helps Quan see that he and Justyce weren’t so different—as a kid, Justyce just had more support and more mentors than Quan did. Readers don’t meet Justyce in person until midway through the novel, when Justyce is on his way back to Georgia after his first year at Yale. After reading Quan’s secret confession that he didn’t shoot Officer Castillo, Justyce knows he can’t allow Quan to stay in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. Justyce is committed to making sure that young Black men like Quan receive actual justice, so in addition to remaining Quan’s best friend, Justyce takes on the role of Quan’s legal advocate. He assembles a team of legal professionals and other support people, like Doc and Quan’s social worker Liberty, to work together to prove Quan’s innocence. Though he stumbles at times, he manages to preserve Quan’s trust as he does this. Ultimately, Justyce is successful, and he even bravely negotiates Quan’s exit from the Black Jihad gang.

Justyce Quotes in Dear Justyce

The Dear Justyce quotes below are all either spoken by Justyce or refer to Justyce. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Choices vs. Fate Theme Icon
).
January 12 Quotes

The minute that van drove away with him in it, I felt...doomed.

It’s why I stopped talking to you. Everybody else too, but especially you. I woulda never admitted this (honestly don’t know why I’m admitting it now...) but I kinda looked up to you. Yeah, you were only a year older and you were dorky as hell, but you had your shit together in a way I wanted mine to be.

I knew if I could just be like you, my dad would be proud of me.

Related Characters: Quan Banks (speaker), Justyce, Daddy, Ms. Mays
Page Number: 26
Explanation and Analysis:
February 8 Quotes

Dude had all these obstacles he couldn’t seem to get past no matter how hard he tried, and it was almost as though falling into the life of crime everybody expected from him was (sorta) unavoidable? I know it probably sounds crazy to an upstanding young gentleman such as yourself, but for real: based on the systems in place—the “institutions of oppression,” as my former mentor, Martel, would say—homie’s situation and how he ended up kinda seemed like destiny.

Related Characters: Quan Banks (speaker), Justyce, Martel
Page Number: 41
Explanation and Analysis:
April 4 Quotes

The reason I joined the Black Jihad: I needed backup. Support without judgment. People who hadn’t—and wouldn’t—give up on me.

I needed a family.

Related Characters: Quan Banks (speaker), Justyce, Martel, Mama, Daddy
Page Number: 93-94
Explanation and Analysis:
April 24; Snapshot: A Postscript (Present Day) Quotes

I guess I didn’t realize just how big of a difference it could make to have somebody really believe in you. I been thinking a lot about Trey and Mar and Brad and them. We were all looking for the same things, man—support, protection, family, that type of shit. And we found SOME of it in one another, but we couldn’t really give each other no type of encouragement to do nothing GOOD because nobody was really giving US any. Matter fact, we typically got the opposite. People telling us how “bad” we were. Constantly looking at us like they expected only the worst.

How the hell’s a person supposed to give something they ain’t never had?

Related Characters: Quan Banks (speaker), Justyce, Martel, Trey, Brad, DeMarcus
Page Number: 133
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9: Dawg Quotes

He kept pushin’. Come on, kid. We know you did it. Might as well just say so...shit like that.

When he said You know if we get one of your little buddies in here, we can get ‘em talkin’. You should just save ‘em the trouble, that’s when I broke. Just said

Fine, man. I did it. You happy now?

Related Characters: Quan Banks (speaker), Justyce, Officer Tommy Castillo
Page Number: 182
Explanation and Analysis:
June 1 Quotes

She came in and we talked for a while and she asked me a bunch of questions the other dude never asked. And I’m pretty sure she actually believes everything I told her. Which was even a little bit uncomfortable despite the fact that I was telling the truth.

I just didn’t realize what a difference it would make to be in conversation with someone who genuinely wants to keep me OUT of prison altogether. Shit made me realize that in all my years dealing with the system, I ain’t never had an attorney who wanted to see me totally free.

Related Characters: Quan Banks (speaker), Justyce, Attorney Adrienne Friedman
Page Number: 185
Explanation and Analysis:

But he was telling me how growing up, he was this real good kid, until some stuff happened to his family.

So he went looking for a new family. Like a lot of us do. Same story with another dude we call Stacks. He’s constantly talking about “this guy” he knows (aka himself) and how “he was workin’ to become a musician,” but “he was young and ain’t have no guidance”; how “he just wanted a family so he went and found one,” but then “he got in trouble doing family shit.”

And that’s what it comes down to. We find the families we were desperate for and learn different ways of going about things. Ways that sometimes land us in places/positions we don’t really wanna be in.

Related Characters: Quan Banks (speaker), Justyce
Page Number: 187
Explanation and Analysis:
June 14 Quotes

This is a real-ass Catch-22. I read that shit a couple weeks ago. (HELLA trippy book.) The only way to stay OUT of what I really have no choice but to go back to is to stay IN here. But the longer I’m IN here, the more debt I’ll rack up for when I do get OUT.

Kind of a no-win, ain’t it?

Story of my damn life.

Related Characters: Quan Banks (speaker), Justyce, Martel, Trey
Page Number: 207
Explanation and Analysis:
Snapshot: Two Young Men on a New (To Them) Playground Quotes

The two BIG boys—if you can even call them that—chillin’ at the top of the climbing wall are wildly oblivious to the glares aimed at them from the actual children below.

Related Characters: Justyce (speaker), Quan Banks
Page Number: 253
Explanation and Analysis:

“You miss [the rocket ship]?”

At first, Quan doesn’t respond. Because he really has to think about it. His eyes roam the always-clean park space. Touch on his mom [...] his sister [...] his brother [...] his best friend right beside him.

Only thing missing is his dad. But they write to each other weekly, and Quan’s been out to visit the old man a few times, so even that’s okay.

[...]

He smiles. “You know what, man? I don’t.”

“You don’t?”

“Nah,” Quan says. “No need to go to outer space.”

[...]

“Everything I need is right here.”

Related Characters: Quan Banks (speaker), Justyce (speaker), Mama, Daddy, Dasia, Gabe
Related Symbols: The Rocket Ship
Page Number: 253
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Dear Justyce LitChart as a printable PDF.
Dear Justyce PDF

Justyce Quotes in Dear Justyce

The Dear Justyce quotes below are all either spoken by Justyce or refer to Justyce. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Choices vs. Fate Theme Icon
).
January 12 Quotes

The minute that van drove away with him in it, I felt...doomed.

It’s why I stopped talking to you. Everybody else too, but especially you. I woulda never admitted this (honestly don’t know why I’m admitting it now...) but I kinda looked up to you. Yeah, you were only a year older and you were dorky as hell, but you had your shit together in a way I wanted mine to be.

I knew if I could just be like you, my dad would be proud of me.

Related Characters: Quan Banks (speaker), Justyce, Daddy, Ms. Mays
Page Number: 26
Explanation and Analysis:
February 8 Quotes

Dude had all these obstacles he couldn’t seem to get past no matter how hard he tried, and it was almost as though falling into the life of crime everybody expected from him was (sorta) unavoidable? I know it probably sounds crazy to an upstanding young gentleman such as yourself, but for real: based on the systems in place—the “institutions of oppression,” as my former mentor, Martel, would say—homie’s situation and how he ended up kinda seemed like destiny.

Related Characters: Quan Banks (speaker), Justyce, Martel
Page Number: 41
Explanation and Analysis:
April 4 Quotes

The reason I joined the Black Jihad: I needed backup. Support without judgment. People who hadn’t—and wouldn’t—give up on me.

I needed a family.

Related Characters: Quan Banks (speaker), Justyce, Martel, Mama, Daddy
Page Number: 93-94
Explanation and Analysis:
April 24; Snapshot: A Postscript (Present Day) Quotes

I guess I didn’t realize just how big of a difference it could make to have somebody really believe in you. I been thinking a lot about Trey and Mar and Brad and them. We were all looking for the same things, man—support, protection, family, that type of shit. And we found SOME of it in one another, but we couldn’t really give each other no type of encouragement to do nothing GOOD because nobody was really giving US any. Matter fact, we typically got the opposite. People telling us how “bad” we were. Constantly looking at us like they expected only the worst.

How the hell’s a person supposed to give something they ain’t never had?

Related Characters: Quan Banks (speaker), Justyce, Martel, Trey, Brad, DeMarcus
Page Number: 133
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9: Dawg Quotes

He kept pushin’. Come on, kid. We know you did it. Might as well just say so...shit like that.

When he said You know if we get one of your little buddies in here, we can get ‘em talkin’. You should just save ‘em the trouble, that’s when I broke. Just said

Fine, man. I did it. You happy now?

Related Characters: Quan Banks (speaker), Justyce, Officer Tommy Castillo
Page Number: 182
Explanation and Analysis:
June 1 Quotes

She came in and we talked for a while and she asked me a bunch of questions the other dude never asked. And I’m pretty sure she actually believes everything I told her. Which was even a little bit uncomfortable despite the fact that I was telling the truth.

I just didn’t realize what a difference it would make to be in conversation with someone who genuinely wants to keep me OUT of prison altogether. Shit made me realize that in all my years dealing with the system, I ain’t never had an attorney who wanted to see me totally free.

Related Characters: Quan Banks (speaker), Justyce, Attorney Adrienne Friedman
Page Number: 185
Explanation and Analysis:

But he was telling me how growing up, he was this real good kid, until some stuff happened to his family.

So he went looking for a new family. Like a lot of us do. Same story with another dude we call Stacks. He’s constantly talking about “this guy” he knows (aka himself) and how “he was workin’ to become a musician,” but “he was young and ain’t have no guidance”; how “he just wanted a family so he went and found one,” but then “he got in trouble doing family shit.”

And that’s what it comes down to. We find the families we were desperate for and learn different ways of going about things. Ways that sometimes land us in places/positions we don’t really wanna be in.

Related Characters: Quan Banks (speaker), Justyce
Page Number: 187
Explanation and Analysis:
June 14 Quotes

This is a real-ass Catch-22. I read that shit a couple weeks ago. (HELLA trippy book.) The only way to stay OUT of what I really have no choice but to go back to is to stay IN here. But the longer I’m IN here, the more debt I’ll rack up for when I do get OUT.

Kind of a no-win, ain’t it?

Story of my damn life.

Related Characters: Quan Banks (speaker), Justyce, Martel, Trey
Page Number: 207
Explanation and Analysis:
Snapshot: Two Young Men on a New (To Them) Playground Quotes

The two BIG boys—if you can even call them that—chillin’ at the top of the climbing wall are wildly oblivious to the glares aimed at them from the actual children below.

Related Characters: Justyce (speaker), Quan Banks
Page Number: 253
Explanation and Analysis:

“You miss [the rocket ship]?”

At first, Quan doesn’t respond. Because he really has to think about it. His eyes roam the always-clean park space. Touch on his mom [...] his sister [...] his brother [...] his best friend right beside him.

Only thing missing is his dad. But they write to each other weekly, and Quan’s been out to visit the old man a few times, so even that’s okay.

[...]

He smiles. “You know what, man? I don’t.”

“You don’t?”

“Nah,” Quan says. “No need to go to outer space.”

[...]

“Everything I need is right here.”

Related Characters: Quan Banks (speaker), Justyce (speaker), Mama, Daddy, Dasia, Gabe
Related Symbols: The Rocket Ship
Page Number: 253
Explanation and Analysis: