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YWCA Racial Justice Book Club

Three Girls from Bronzeville by Dawn Turner

Join thoughtful discussions on topics of racial justice. Everyone is welcome. Register for Zoom link. Email mericsson@tscpl.org with questions or for a copy of the current book.

Our September title is Three Girls from Bronzeville by Dawn Turner. Email mericsson@tscpl.org for assistance in obtaining a copy of the current title. 

We have discussions on the fourth Tuesday of every month. Stay updated about Racial Justice Book Club information including receiving the meeting details and Zoom link by signing up: ywcaneks.org/what-we-do/advocate/racial-justice-book-club

More About the Book

They were three Black girls. Dawn is tall and studious. Her sister, Kim, is younger by three years and headstrong. Dawn's best friend, Debra, was 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. This was 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. 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.