First published 2021
Ailey Pearl Garfield grows up between two worlds. She lives in the north but spends every summer in Chicasetta, the small Georgia town where her mother's family has deep roots. Her ancestors arrived there in bondage centuries ago. From childhood, Ailey feels the weight of what W.E.B. Du Bois called Double Consciousness, the divided awareness that African Americans carry to survive. She bears the names of choreographer Alvin Ailey and her great grandmother Pearl, connecting her to both artistic achievement and family legacy. The women in her family whisper encouragement and expectations. Her mother Belle and sister Lydia want her to succeed where they could not. A lingering trauma makes her struggle for belonging even harder. To understand who she is, Ailey digs into her family's past. She uncovers stories spanning generations of ancestors who were Indigenous, Black, and white. Their tales reveal cycles of oppression and resistance, bondage and freedom, cruelty and survival that mirror America's own story.
Genres: family-life, american-fiction, american, african-american, biographical-fiction, 21st-century, family-drama, african-american-historical-fiction
Vibes: atmospheric, emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, multigenerational
Setting: Chicasetta, Georgia, America
Period: 21st Century
816 pages · Hardcover · Harper
Content warnings: racism, slavery