We will be discussing this year's One Book, Everyone reads title, Three Girls from Bronzeville by Dawn Turner. They were three Black girls. Dawn, tall and studious; her sister, Kim, younger by three years and headstrong as they come; and Dawn's best friend, Debra, already prom-queen pretty by third grade. They bonded as they roamed the concrete landscape of Bronzeville, a historic neighborhood in 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 came of age in the 1970s, in the warm glow of the recent civil rights movement. Their striving working-class parents are eager for them to realize this hard-fought potential. 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--Dawn and Debra want to be doctors, Kim a teacher. For a brief, wondrous moment the girls are all giggles and dreams and promises of 'friends forever.' Then they arrive at a precipice, a fraught rite of passage for all girls when the dangers and the harsh realities of the world burst the innocent bubble of childhood, when the choices they make can--and will--have devastating consequences. (Provided by the publisher)
This program is presented as part of the library’s One Book, Everyone Reads community reading program. Learn more about the series and this year’s selected book, Three Girls from Bronzeville by Dawn Turner, here.
Copies of the book are available here. Ebook and downloadable audiobook copies are available through Digital Library of Illinois or the Libby app.
Registration will close two hours before the program begins and registrants will receive a link to join shortly thereafter.
Please email community@wilmettelibrary.info with any questions about how to access the program via Zoom.
Make sure to join us for our signature author event, a conversation between Dawn Turner and Alex Kotlowitz, on Wednesday, May 11, at 7pm. Register here.
One Book, Everyone Reads is funded by the Friends of the Wilmette Public Library.
