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Three Girls from Bronzeville: A Uniquely American Memoir of Race, Fate, and Sisterhood
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About This Book
They were three Black girls. Dawn, tall and studious; her sister, Kim, younger by three years and headstrong; and her best friend, Debra, already prom-queen pretty by third grade. They bonded as they roamed the concrete landscape of Bronzeville, a historic neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, the destination of hundreds of thousands of Black folks who fled the ravages of the Jim Crow South. These third-generation daughters of the Great Migration come of age in the 1970s, in the warm glow of the recent civil rights movement. It has offered them a promise that they will have more opportunities, rights, and freedoms than any generation of Black Americans in history. But the girls have much more immediate concerns: hiding under the dining room table and eavesdropping on grown folks' business; collecting secret treasures; and daydreaming about their futures. And then fate intervenes, sending them careening in wildly different directions. There's heartbreak, loss, displacement, and even murder. Three Girls from Bronzeville is a memoir that chronicles Dawn's attempt to find answers. It's a celebration of sisterhood, a testimony to the unique struggles of Black women, and a tour-de-force about the complex interplay of race, class, and opportunity, and how those forces shape our lives and our capacity for resilience and redemption.
Reviews
"Turner shares Debra's and Kim's stories with aplomb, celebrating the bright moments of their lives while honestly depicting their suffering."
"At times, the lives and personalities of the adults threaten to eclipse the girls' tale."
"Throughout, Turner's grandmother, mother, and aunt exhibit the resilience and strength of many Black women, a theme that takes its most affecting form in Debra's rehabilitation."
"Turner's vivid recollections of her girlhood in Bronzeville ground Three Girls from Bronzeville in the experiences of those in the Chicago neighborhood, as Turner expertly combines memoir and social history in her analysis of the many systems that made Bronzeville into the place it is today--and how those same oppressive systems shape the lives of even society's youngest neighbors."
"Like the poet Gwendolyn Brooks and the playwright Lorraine Hansberry, she is a native daughter of Black Chicago with a bone-deep knowledge of the place and its people."
"Drawing on hundreds of hours of interviews, Turner reconstructs decades-old scenes and verbatim dialogue that build on stories she first told in the Tribune and on NPR."
"Turner vividly recounts the neighborhood's atmosphere and history, framing the ongoing struggles of Black women ..."
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