A New York Times and Washington Post Notable Book A Best Book of 2021 by BuzzFeed and Real Simple An unmissable (Vogue), exceptional (The Washington Post), and evocative (Chicago Tribune) memoir about three Black girls from the storied Bronzeville section of Chicago that offers a penetrating exploration of race, opportunity, friendship, sisterhood, and the powerful forces at work that allow some to flourish. . . and others to falter. They were three Black girls. Dawn, tall and studious, her sister, Kim, younger by three years and headstrong as they come, and her best friend, Debra, already prom-queen pretty by third grade. They bonded-fervently and intensely in that unique way of little girls-as they roamed the concrete landscape of Bronzeville, a historic neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, the destination of hundreds of thousands of Black folks who fled the ravages of the Jim Crow South. These third-generation daughters of the Great Migration come of age in the 1970s, in the warm glow of the recent civil rights movement. It has offered them a promise, albeit nascent and fragile, that they will have more opportunities, rights, and freedoms than any generation of Black Americans in history. Their working-class, striving parents are eager for them to realize this hard-fought potential.
A New York Times and Washington Post Notable Book A Best Book of 2021 by BuzzFeed and Real Simple An unmissable (Vogue), exceptional (The Washington Post), and evocative (Chicago Tribune) memoir about three Black girls from the storied Bronzeville section of Chicago that offers a penetrating exploration of race, opportunity, friendship, sisterhood, and the powerful forces at work that allow some to flourish. . . and others to falter. They were three Black girls. Dawn, tall and studious, her sister, Kim, younger by three years and headstrong as they come, and her best friend, Debra, already prom-queen pretty by third grade. They bonded-fervently and intensely in that unique way of little girls-as they roamed the concrete landscape of Bronzeville, a historic neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, the destination of hundreds of thousands of Black folks who fled the ravages of the Jim Crow South. These third-generation daughters of the Great Migration come of age in the 1970s, in the warm glow of the recent civil rights movement. It has offered them a promise, albeit nascent and fragile, that they will have more opportunities, rights, and freedoms than any generation of Black Americans in history. Their working-class, striving parents are eager for them to realize this hard-fought potential.