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.
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