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Griot African-American Book Discussion (In-person or Zoom)

Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson

The Griot Book Discussion features books by African-American authors. Meets in-person or via Zoom on the third Tuesday of the month. November's selection: Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson.

Monthly book discussion featuring works by African-American authors. You now have the option to attend in-person or on Zoom! Please register and choose your attendance option. Zoom links will be emailed out 1 week prior to discussion. Print copies of the book are available for checkout at the Adult Reference Desk on the 2nd floor. Email group facilitator Becky Clark at rclark@aurorapubliclibrary.org for more information.

Book description:

An unexpected teenage pregnancy pulls together two families from different social classes, and exposes the private hopes, disappointments, and longings that can bind or divide us from each other, from the New York Times-bestselling and National Book Award-winning author of Another Brooklyn and Brown Girl Dreaming. Moving forward and backward in time, Jacqueline Woodson's taut and powerful new novel uncovers the role that history and community have played in the experiences, decisions, and relationships of these families, and in the life of the new child.  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 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.

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