Benefits

1. Depicts people rarely depicted in literature.

2. It's gloriously uplifting and empowering.

3. No other book in my experience makes me feel this strongly for its characters.

4. While the characters are black, it is not so much a novel about racial oppression as it is simply a novel about love and living.

Challenges

1. The novel speaks frankly about incest, sexual assault, and domestic abuse.

2. There are racial slurs in the novel.

3. The novel deals realistically with sex, both heterosexual and homosexual and the entire spectrum.

4. The novel starts with some very awful abuse.