I was born in Georgia but grew up in Florida during Jim Crow. My earliest memory of racism was when my mother took me downtown to buy new school shoes. I grew thirsty, so I went to drink from the “colored” water fountain. My young mind may have been attracted to water that might have been blue or pink or green. Quickly my mother whisked me to the “white” fountain, and it was then that I first began to question the racism that was part of my Southern heritage. I wrote Spite Fences to explore the historical barriers erected against equal treatment for African-Americans. All of those prohibitions are fences, limiting opportunity, begging to be torn down.
I wrote...
Spite Fences
By
Trudy Krisher
What is my book about?
Maggie Pugh has lived all her young life in Kinship, Georgia. In all that time, almost nothing has changed in her racially divided town. If you are poor, you live on the west side. If you are rich, you live in the north. If you are white, you can sit at the counter at Byer's drugs. If you are black, you have to eat outside.
That's just the way things are in the Jim Crow South. Then something horrible happens, and Maggie is the only eyewitness to this scene of racial injustice. As Maggie’s world explodes, she wonders: Who can she tell? Who would care? Can Black Lives Matter in Georgia in 1961? Read this classic, award-winning work of historical fiction to explore Maggie’s struggle for justice and redemption.
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The Books I Picked & Why
To Kill a Mockingbird
By
Harper Lee
Why this book?
Although I was a child of the Jim Crow South, this is the first book I ever read that brought home the cruelty of the injustice suffered by African-Americans in a world similar to that in which I grew up. What I admire most is Lee’s use of young Scout as the narrator, for her innocence and childhood grasp of truth makes for a brilliant ironic contrast to the racism that abounds in Macomb County. Although her portrait of Atticus Finch may be a bit unrealistically heroic, that depiction is chastened by Lee’s second novel, Go Set a Watchman. This is the very best YA American novel of historical fiction ever written.
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The Nickel Boys
By
Colson Whitehead
Why this book?
Elwood Curtis, a black boy growing up in 1960s Florida, is unfairly sentenced to a juvenile reform school, the Nickel Academy. This Pulitzer Prize-winning novel appealed to me for three reasons: (1) because I was only glancingly aware of the horrors of these nightmarish reform schools found not just in Tallassee, the setting of The Nickel Boys, but elsewhere across the country. (2) because my heart went out to sweet, naïve Elwood and his friend Turner, another delinquent who, in contrast to Elwood, is entirely cynical. (3) because, as the terrifying events at Nickel and the tension between these misfit-friends intensifies, the story culminates in a decision with historical repercussions. This is what is known as a YA/Adult crossover more appropriate for older youth because of its mature themes.
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The Lions of Little Rock
By
Kristin Levine
Why this book?
I had long been familiar with the events of Little Rock Central High, having read books, articles, and online accounts of the attempt to integrate this Arkansas school. I found The Lions of Little Rock an accurate and compelling novel that provides young adults with a masterful introduction to how attempts to integrate the Jim Crow South impacted its children. Built on the seminal events to integrate Arkansas’s Little Rock High in 1958, the friendship of young Marlee and Liz portrays how segregation damages not just communities, but friendships. Young adults will be pulled in by Levine’s blend of plot, humor, and emotion to make this a memorable work of historical fiction that may inspire young readers to engage in the cause of civil rights.
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Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry
By
Mildred D. Taylor
Why this book?
Threats thunder across the young lives of Stacey, Christopher-John, and Cassie Logan. It is 1933 during the Depression in rural Mississippi. The novel, part of Taylor’s Logan Family Saga, is told from the point of view of nine-year-old Cassie. Through a plot covering the landscape of the racist Jim Crow South, the Logan children face threats involving property rights, sharecropping, substandard schools, racial epithets, servitude, and the prospect of “night men” bent on lynching.
I admire the way this tightly plotted Newbery-winning novel offers a comprehensive portrayal of childhood in Jim Crow Mississippi, ringing with compelling truths about white-and-Black relationships. In addition, I love the way Taylor creates concrete details to bring the setting to life: peanuts roasting over hickory fires, red mud oozing between toes after a sucking rain, schools that were a makeshift conglomeration of throwaway desks, paper, and blackboards. I’m in awe of the way Taylor helps you see, feel, and smell the rural South in this deserved classicof Young Adult historical fiction.
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The Bluest Eye
By
Toni Morrison
Why this book?
This work of historical fiction was Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison’s first novel, published in 1970. I was a newspaper book reviewer at the time, and I read it for my column. I instantly recognized Morrison’s early genius for poetic language and unflinching truth-telling, which blossomed into her mature masterpiece Beloved. The story captivated me, for I ached for the struggles of Pecola Breedlove, an African-American girl struggling not only to grow up but to survive racism during the Depression. Most moving to me were her prayers for blue eyes, underscoring how standards of physical beauty can damage a young person’s self-image.
This is a YA/Adult crossover novel with strong themes of brutality and sexuality, so it is most appropriate for mature youth.
