Taking a sixteen year old girl’s coming-of-age party as a jumping off point to explore the dreams and struggles of a richly delineated cast of characters, Woodson’s stunningly assured work navigates three generations of black American history with verve and urgency.
Exclusive edition - containing interview with Trevor Noah.
A standard edition is available here.
Longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2020
An extraordinary new novel about the influence of history on a contemporary family, from the New York Times-bestselling and National Book Award-winning author of Another Brooklyn and Brown Girl Dreaming.
It's 2001, the evening of sixteen-year-old Melody's coming of age ceremony in her grandparents' Brooklyn brownstone. Watched lovingly by her relatives and 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 - a celebration that ultimately never took place.
Unfurling the history of Melody's parents and grandparents 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 and escape the pull of history.
As it explores sexual desire and identity, ambition, gentrification, education, class and status, and 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 and what they want to be.
Publisher: Orion Publishing Co
ISBN: 9781474622905
Number of pages: 224
Dimensions: 198 x 129 mm
Following the generations of an African American family, this is a story of compassion, about coming of age, class, racism, poverty and self-discovery. Jacqueline Woodson’s multi-layered characters have you thinking... More
Never read Jacqueline Woodson before, but this was a brilliant novel!
Fantastic writing, I would happily read anything she writes.
Certainly recommended.
A multi-layered look at love, class, age and how life walks all over it. This quietly potent tale comes in at just under 200 pages and not a word is wasted - a real contender for the Women's Prize 2020 shortlist.... More
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