First published 2022
Maud Martha Brown watches dandelions push through sidewalk cracks on Chicago's South Side in the 1940s. She sees beauty where others see weeds, dreams of New York while walking past crumbling taverns and overgrown lots. As she grows from girl to woman, Maud Martha learns to drink coffee, falls in love, marries, and decorates her small kitchenette apartment. She navigates the daily indignities that chip away at her spirit: the saleswoman's cutting remark, the movie theater's segregated seating, the department store Santa's cruelty to her child. Her lighter-skinned husband harbors his own dreams of the Foxy Cats Club and other women, pulling him away from their shared life. Through small moments and quiet observations, Maud Martha discovers how to live with wisdom and dignity amid the scraps of baffled hate that surround her. She learns that an ordinary life, lived fully, contains its own poetry and power.
Genres: fiction, family-life, american-fiction, 20th-century, african-american, contemporary
Vibes: emotional, intimate, lyrical
Tropes: ordinary-life, slice-of-life
Setting: Chicago, New York
Period: 1940s
126 pages · Kindle Edition · Faber & Faber
Content warnings: racism, sexism