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Fiction. African American Fiction. Literature. HTML:Named one of the Most Anticipated Books of 2019 by LitHub and The Millions. Called one of the Top 10 Literary Fiction titles of Fall by Publishers Weekly. 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. Two families from different social classes are joined together by an unexpected pregnancy and the child that it produces. Moving forward and backward in time, with the power of poetry and the emotional richness of a narrative ten times its length, Jacqueline Woodson's extraordinary 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 this 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 soundtrack 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. Read by Jacqueline Woodson, with Quincy Tyler Bernstine (Sabe), Peter Francis James (Po�??Boy), Shayna Small (Iris), and Bahni Turpin (Melody… (more)
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Iris grows up in a neighborhood in Brooklyn, nurtured by her solidly middle class parents. Her mother holds her own mother's memories of the Tulsa Massacre, when an entire community was destroyed and her father has worked hard to raise his family into the middle class. She's about to have her coming out party, when she becomes pregnant and that event never occurs. Within a few months, she goes from a girl with everything to look forward to, to the girl parents warn their children about. But her story doesn't end there, and while her path forward isn't easy, or without harm done, she perseveres.
Woodson's writing is beautiful. There isn't a single unnecessary word in this novel. She has a talent for bringing her characters to life in very few words and of making their experiences vivid to the reader.
The book examines how attitudes about family, sex, and respectability change over the generations. It depicts love between family members, and how that love sometimes manifests in hurtful ways. It explores generational trauma: the grandmother was an infant in Tulsa and bears scars from the Tulsa Massacre, and that trauma manifests in different ways for her daughter and granddaughter.
The book jumps around between characters and time places a lot, usually in the first person. With a less-skilled author, this would have been really confusing, but Woodson gives each character such a unique voice that it's not hard to follow what's happening. Woodson also packs a lot into a very short book: the book examines race, family, trauma, sexuality, responsibility, and a lot of other topics.
“If this moment was a sentence, I’d be the period.”
This begins, as a coming of age
This is my third outing, by Woodson, and each one is a marvel of delicate prose, directing a loving spotlight on the African-American experience.
In the course of this short novel, the family suffers many tragedies and some triumphs. Woodson addresses a number of significant questions and themes, including teenage pregnancy, racism, the meanings of motherhood and family in contemporary society, the role of education,gender and gender roles, personal freedom v. responsibility, and more. I admire Woodson's style but think the book might have benefited from fleshing out the characters a bit more. iris is the most fully developed, but I empathized most with Aubrey and would have liked more background on the lives of Sabe and Po'Boy.
Jacqueline Woodson writes with a poetic style that flows effortlessly across the page, delivering a story packed with emotion whether describing the love between two people, or the tragedy and loss the family faced over the years. Just beautiful.
The most vivid retelling is Sabe’s lookback to the Tulsa massacre of 1921, when whites rioters resentful of the success of her family and other black entrepreneurs in Greenwood, the "Black Wall Street", use a flimsy Emmett-Till-like false premise to burn businesses and murder hundreds. And the most unique and remarkable facet of the fine writing we always expect from Woodson is her ability to give true and full voice to every character so that the story is rounded and complete, including a few unpredictable surprises.
I am a great fan of Woodson's writing. Her stories are powerful, and manage to be intimate while touching on universal themes. Culture, community, love, loss, and of course the fact we don't know what we
Jacqueline Woodson has chosen a discontinuous mode of narration. Not only does she spring back and forward chronologically, but she also gives different characters a voice and also has a 3rd person narrator tell parts of the plot. This makes the whole story quite lively and often unexpected because at the beginning of each chapter you do not know where you are starting from and who is addressing you.
There are some central topics focussed on, first of all, of course, the teenager falling pregnant. The family manages the situation perfectly, no major fight or disruption arises from Iris’s decision to keep the baby, but it is hard to read about the reactions of her friends and school, even though I would classify it as highly authentic. The only person really struggling with the new-born, yet, is Iris who can never really bond with her daughter. She puts some effort in their relationship, but it is simply never enough and she most certainly suffers from the chances that she in her own perception never had in her life due to becoming a mother that early – admittedly, I had the impression that life could be much worse under these circumstances and Iris had a lot of opportunities to fulfil her dreams.
Another aspect are the class-related and skin-colour attributed options in life. These do not determine the characters’ fate, yet provide some food for thought as do family relations in general in the novel.
The novel offers a lot of blind spots, leaves gaps that you have to fill on your own due to the structure of the narration. I actually liked it because it makes you think on after reading and sticking with the book much longer. I also enjoyed Jacqueline Woodson’s style e of writing which is well adapted to the different characters and authentic.
The writing style was a
And with lots of blank pages and loads of white space on many pages, it is at least a quick read, easily finished in a weekend.
I just finished my third book by Jacqueline Woodson entitled Red at the Bone,and I am here to highly recommend a fine novel. Woodson uses various narrators and various
Some lines:
Bro, how you doing? You holding on? Man, you know how it goes. One day chicken. Next day bone.
He had spent his childhood on a diet of Reagan’s cheese and Taystee Bread with the occasional roast beef boiled to chewing gum. His mother didn’t care much about cooking, and on a good evening—payday or when her income tax return came in—the two of them sat at the table, peeling back foil-covered TV dinners, talking softly through mouthfuls of Salisbury steak and scorched mashed potatoes.
Po’Boy puts his arm around my shoulder and I reach up for his hand. Feel the arthritis bending the bones in his fingers. Feel the thinness of his body that is cancer eating its way from inside to out and know I’ll be growing old without him. No green drinks or raw diet or holistic doctor over on Flatbush Avenue seems to be helping him. Po’Boy wasting away.
The baby’s eyes carried everything in them—they were almond shaped like her own, but for the few minutes they remained open, she could see that they were already a deep brown strangely flecked with green. The eyes were too beautiful. Too hungry. As they fluttered up toward Iris’s own while she nursed, it was hard not to look back into them.
He didn’t like the way they shaped her legs beneath her tights and lifted her feet off the ground just enough to promise something.
She felt red at the bone—like there was something inside of her undone and bleeding.
I loved it because it felt authentic, real.
"Something about memory. It takes you back to where you were, and just lets you be there for a while."
A much better read for my reading buddies, Angela, Lise and myself.
ARC from Netgalley and Riverhead books.