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Griot African-American Book Discussion

Last Summer on State Street by Toya Wolfe

The Griot Book Discussion features books by African-American authors. Meets in-person or via Zoom on the third Tuesday of the month. October's selection: Last Summer on State Street by Toya Wolfe.

Monthly book discussion featuring works by African-American authors and meets in person at Eola Road Branch or on Zoom Please register and choose your attendance option. Copies of the book are available for checkout at the Eola Road Branch Adult Reference Desk on the 2nd floor. Contact group facilitator Becky Clark at 630-264-4262 or email rclark@aurorapubliclibrary.org for more information.

Book description:

Last Summer on State Street by Toya Wolfe

Felicia “Fe Fe” Stevens is living with her vigilantly loving mother and older teenaged brother, whom she adores, in building 4950 of Chicago’s Robert Taylor Homes. It’s the summer of 1999, and her high-rise is next in line to be torn down by the Chicago Housing Authority. She, with the devout Precious Brown and Stacia Buchanan, daughter of a Gangster Disciple Queen-Pin, form a tentative trio and, for a brief moment, carve out for themselves a simple life of Double Dutch and innocence. But when Fe Fe welcomes a mysterious new friend, Tonya, into their fold, the dynamics shift, upending the lives of all four girls. As their beloved neighborhood falls down around them, so too do their friendships and the structures of the four girls’ families. Fe Fe must make the painful decision of whom she can trust and whom she must let go. Decades later, as she remembers that fateful summer—just before her home was demolished, her life uprooted, and community forever changed—Fe Fe tries to make sense of the grief and fraught bonds that still haunt her and attempts to reclaim the love that never left. Profound, reverent, and uplifting, Last Summer on State Street explores the risk of connection against the backdrop of racist institutions, the restorative power of knowing and claiming one’s own past, and those defining relationships which form the heartbeat of our lives. Interweaving moments of reckoning and sustaining grace, debut author Toya Wolfe has crafted an era-defining story of finding a home—both in one’s history and in one’s self. 

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