sassenach Posted January 9, 2017 Share Posted January 9, 2017 Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry is our next assigned book, but dd has already read it (and its sequel). Are there any other books at about the same level that cover the Jim Crow south? I don't want anything with sexual violence, which nixes a lot of the higher level books. Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chelli Posted January 9, 2017 Share Posted January 9, 2017 Lions of Little Rock might work. It takes place the year after the Little Rock Nine enrolled in Central High School. and deals with the closing of the Little Rock school districts so that no more African American students could be enrolled in white schools. An AA girl who can pass as white attends a Jr. high anyway where she befriends the main character of the book, a white girl. Of course, the girl gets caught and there is fall out in the community over it. I read it for the first time this fall and thought it was excellent. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tanaqui Posted January 9, 2017 Share Posted January 9, 2017 Hm. The Mighty Miss Malone covers the same time period and racism, but not so much the South. Celeste's Harlem Renaissance is set a little earlier, handles racism but - again, more in Harlem. One Crazy Summer covers the Black Panthers in California, so different time period and also not quite "Jim Crow", but still racism. Freedom Maze does have aspects of Jim Crow... but it mostly takes place in the Antebellum South. (The protagonist thinks she's in Half Magic or The Time Garden, but actually she's in The Devil's Arithmetic, but with slavery. Unfortunately, while she's read Edward Eager, Jane Yolen had yet to become a big name author, and so the protagonist is completely unprepared for the life-changing trip through the past.) I think what I'm accidentally trying to get at is that black people and racism exist in books set in times and places other than "slavery" and "Jim Crow". Lions of Little Rock is also a good book. However, as a general principle, I'm a little uncomfortable with reading books ostensibly about racism in the South which are really about white people's personal growth. It's not that they can't be great books, it's just that it seems that often they become the default texts, and that's just not right. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shinyhappypeople Posted January 9, 2017 Share Posted January 9, 2017 (edited) Bud, Not Buddy is set in 1936 and is a wonderful story. eta: oops, but not the South. Still, a book well worth reading. :) The Watsons Go to Birmingham by the same author is in the south but later time period. Edited January 9, 2017 by shinyhappypeople 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tanaqui Posted January 9, 2017 Share Posted January 9, 2017 Bud, Not Buddy is set in 1936 and is a wonderful story. Yes, and a companion to The Mighty Miss Malone :) The Watsons Go to Birmingham by the same author is in the south but later time period. That's a good point. Isn't Roll of Thunder part of a series? 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shinyhappypeople Posted January 9, 2017 Share Posted January 9, 2017 Yes, and a companion to The Mighty Miss Malone :) That's a good point. Isn't Roll of Thunder part of a series? I just looked up MMM, so that's Deza from Bud? How cool :) I'm going to have to check that one out. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tanaqui Posted January 9, 2017 Share Posted January 9, 2017 I actually like it a bit more than Bud's book, which is why I always recommend that one and not the other one. (Also, upon reflection, Freedom Maze is also about a white person's personal growth... but part of the personal growth is realizing that she's definitely mixed somewhere in her family tree, and her family freaking out over things like her getting a tan or wearing her hair loose is part of that. So, yeah....) 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Farrar Posted January 10, 2017 Share Posted January 10, 2017 How about Sounder? It's dramatically shorter and simpler language (though I don't think it's that it's younger in terms of age to read exactly... just targeted differently, very different book). Same era - pre-civil rights era Jim Crow south. And deals with sharecropping as well - which is different from the characters in the family in Roll of Thunder, but is exactly what they fear and what their neighbors live. The time period and setting of Sounder are much more vague, but I think it could fit in. I sort of agree with Tanaqui about Lions of Little Rock. It's a great book and worth reading just because it's worth a read (and I think I have a thank you in the acknowledgements - Kristen Levine was briefly in my critique group and I had the pleasure of reading an early draft of it), but as a fill in for Roll of Thunder, I think it would be ideal to have another African American author and perspective. Alternately, there are a lot more than two books that come after Roll of Thunder (I think she wrote 7?). She could absolutely just read another one. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elizabeth 2 Posted January 11, 2017 Share Posted January 11, 2017 I will agree with Sounder. The setting could be in a number of decades, but requires a certain amount of history to know when it could be set. This could lend to some of the specific practices that AA were subjected to in the justice system, the limited income options, and just a lot of little details in the simplicity that really paint how bad it was. As a Caucasian girl raised on the west coast by a very welcoming family, it was a great eye opener to how bad, and how recent, these problems were (are). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HollyDay Posted January 12, 2017 Share Posted January 12, 2017 Hidden Figures Young Readers Edition?? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sebastian (a lady) Posted January 12, 2017 Share Posted January 12, 2017 A Mighty Long Way is a memoir of one of the Little Rock Nine. I thought it was a great read. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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