Betsey Brown

This is a unique and vividly told novel about a girl named Betsey Brown, an African American seventh-grader growing up in St. Louis, Missouri. While r endering a complete portrait of this girl, author Ntozake Shange also profi les her friends, her family, her home, her school, and her world. This worl d, though a work of fiction, is based closely and carefully on actual histo ry, specifically on the nationwide school desegregation events of the Civil Rights movement in America's recent past. As such, Betsey Brown is a histo rical novel that will speak to and broaden the perspectives of readers both familiar with and unaware of America's domestic affairs of 1950s and 1960s .Shange has set her story in the autumn of 1959, the year St. Louis started to desegregate its schools. In May of 1954, in its ruling on Brown vs. Boa rd of Education of Topeka-a verdict now seen by many as the origin of the C ivil Rights movement-the United States Supreme Court outlawed school segreg ation. The novel is firmly located in the wake of this landmark ruling; the plot of Shange's novel and the history of America's quest for integration during the Civil Rights era are fundamentally entwined. Thus textual refere nces abound to the watershed events at Little Rock's Central High School in the September of 1957, for example, and to "fire-bombings and burningcross es" in the South as well as "'battalions of police and crowds of crackers'" at a demonstration in St. Louis.Betsey is the oldest child in a large, rem arkable, and slightly eccentric African American family. Her father is a do ctor who wakes his children each morning with point-blank questions about A.

Product Info

ISBN: 0413578909

ISBN-13: 9780413578907

Publisher: St. Martins Press

Year: 1985

Type: Used

Binding: Softcover

Seller Info

InfinityBooksJapan

Address: 1F Komagata Heights Bldg Tokyo,

Website: https://www.infinitybooksjapan.com

Country: Japan