{"product_id":"betsey-brown-9780312134341","title":"Betsey Brown","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis 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 rendering a complete portrait of this girl  author Ntozake Shange also profiles her friends  her family  her home  her school  and her world. This world  though a work of fiction  is based closely and carefully on actual history  specifically on the nationwide school desegregation events of the Civil Rights movement in Americas recent past. As such  Betsey Brown is a historical novel that will speak to and broaden the perspectives of readers both familiar with and unaware of Americas 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. Board of Education of Topeka--a verdict now seen by many as the origin of the Civil Rights movement--the United States Supreme Court outlawed school segregation. The novel is firmly located in the wake of this landmark ruling; the plot of Shanges novel and the history of Americas quest for integration during the Civil Rights era are fundamentally entwined. Thus textual references abound to the watershed events at Little Rocks Central High School in the September of 1957  for example  and to \"fire-bombings and burningcrosses\" 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  remarkable  and slightly eccentric African American family. Her father is a doctor who wakes his children each morning with point-blank questions about African history and Black culture while beating on a conga drum; her mother is a beautiful  refined  confident  and strong-willed social worker who is overwhelmed by the vast size of her young family and who cares very little for all that nasty colored music.  Indeed  Betseys whole existence can be seen as a perceptive  adventuresome  and still-developing hybrid of her parents most distinctive qualities. Her feelings of internal conflict are often clearer or easier to identify when seen as the collision of her fathers dreams and her mothers manners  or her fathers music and her mothers cosmetics. There are several fascinating characters in this noveland encountering  describing  and trying to figure out these characters will appeal to students of all backgroundsbut the two characters who  after Betsey  most influence the directions  themes  and issues of this tale are Betseys mother and father  Jane and Greer. Their her parents difficult marriage  like the difficult era of desegregation that has only begun in St. Louis and the rest of America  is the realistic  conflicted  yet ultimately hopeful backdrop before which Betseys lip-synching  poem-reciting  soul-searching  truth-seeking  tree-climbing  and fact-finding take place. In fact  her parents stubborn disagreements  heartfelt reconciliations  past glories  and future worries are all  at various times in the book  anchored or else set adrift by the activities of theireldest daughter (and first teenager!). Betseys running away sends her parents into a vicious fight  while her subsequent return seems to bring them closer together (if only temporarily).  As a novel  Betsey Brown is panoramic yet personal. It tells us what being a Black student in the early days of American desegregation was like by showing us what being Betsey Brown is like. This is an episodic  character-driven saga of the Black experience in St. Louis at the end of the Fabulous Fifties  but it is also a story about the many and variousand basically familiargrowing pains of a precocious  passionate  spunky young protagonist. We see Betsey fall in love; make friends; say prayers; argue with  look after  inspire  and ignore her younger siblings; run away from home; return to those who love and value her above all else; and switch from a school she knows and enjoys to a school on the other side of town where she is a minority and an outcast. We see Betsey outside the very door of her womanhood  we are told all about the steps and path that have brought her to this door  and we are left to wonder at what she will find beyond it.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45646778007605,"sku":"ByrdShop_0312134347","price":25.76,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780312134341.jpg?v=1781678361","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/betsey-brown-9780312134341","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}