Red At The Bone
Jacqueline WoodsonAn unexpected teenage pregnancy pulls together two families from different social classes & explores their histories – reaching back to the Tulsa race massacre of 1921 - & exposes the private hopes, disappointments, & longings that can bind or divide us from each other.
"A spectacular novel that only this legend can pull off." — Ibram X. Kendi
As the book opens in 2001, it is the evening of sixteen-year-old Melody's coming-of-age ceremony in her grandparents' Brooklyn brownstone. Watched lovingly by her relatives & friends, making her entrance to the music of Prince, she wears a special custom-made dress. But the event is not without poignancy. Sixteen years earlier, that very dress was measured and sewn for a different wearer: Melody's mother, for her own ceremony that ultimately never took place.
Unfurling the history of Melody's family to show how they all arrived at this moment, Woodson considers not just their ambitions and successes but also the costs, the tolls they've paid for striving to overcome expectations & escape the pull of history.
"In less than 200 sparsely filled pages, this book manages to encompass issues of class, education, ambition, racial prejudice, sexual desire & orientation, identity, mother-daughter relationships, parenthood & loss... With Red at the Bone, Jacqueline Woodson has indeed risen - even further into the ranks of great literature." — Jacqueline Woodson, NPR
As it explores sexual desire & identity, ambition, gentrification, education, class & status, & the life-altering facts of parenthood, Red At The Bone most strikingly looks at the ways in which young people must so often make long-lasting decisions about their lives - even before they have begun to figure out who they are & what they want to be.