Three Girls from Bronzeville: A Uniquely American Memoir of Race, Fate, and Sisterhood

(Paperback)

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A New York Times and Washington Post Notable Book
A Best Book of 2021 by BuzzFeed and Real Simple

An unmissable (Vogue), exceptional (The Washington Post), and evocative (Chicago Tribune) memoir about three Black girls from the storied Bronzeville section of Chicago that offers a penetrating exploration of race, opportunity, friendship, sisterhood, and the powerful forces at work that allow some to flourishand others to falter.

They were three Black girls. Dawn, tall and studious; her sister, Kim, younger by three years and headstrong as they come; and her best friend, Debra, already prom-queen pretty by third grade. They bondedfervently and intensely in that unique way of little girlsas they roamed the concrete landscape of Bronzeville, a historic neighborhood on Chicagos South Side, 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, albeit nascent and fragile, that they will have more opportunities, rights, and freedoms than any generation of Black Americans in history. Their working-class, striving parents are eager for them to realize this hard-fought potential. 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 futuresDawn and Debra, doctors, Kim a teacher. For a brief, wondrous moment the girls are all giggles and dreams and promises of friends forever. And then fate intervenes, first slowly and then dramatically, sending them careening in wildly different directions. Theres heartbreak, loss, displacement, and even murder. Dawn struggles to make sense of the shocking turns that consume her sister and her best friend, all the while asking herself a simple but profound question: Why

In the vein of The Other Wes Moore and The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace, Three Girls from Bronzeville is a deeply personal (Real Simple) memoir that chronicles Dawns attempt to find answers. Its at once a celebration of sisterhood and friendship, 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.

Author Bio

Dawn Turner is an award-winning journalist and novelist. A former columnist and reporter for theChicago Tribune, Turner spent a decade and a half writing aboutrace, politics, and people whose stories are often dismissed and ignored.Turner, who served as a 2017 and 2018 juror for the Pulitzer Prize in commentary, has written commentary forThe Washington Post, PBSNewsHour, CBSSunday Morning Newsshow, NPRsMorning Editionshow,theChicago Tonightshow,and elsewhere. She has covered national presidential conventions, as well as Barack Obamas 2008 presidential election and inauguration. Turner has been a regular commentator for several national and international news programs, and has reported from around the world incountriessuch as Australia, China, France,andGhana. She spent the 20142015 school year as a Nieman Journalism fellow at Harvard University. In 2018, she served as a fellow and journalist-in-residence at the University of ChicagoInstitute of Politics. Turner is the author of two novels,Only Twice Ive Wished for HeavenandAn Eighth of August.In 2018, she established the Dawn M. Turner and Kim D. Turner Endowed Scholarship in Media at her alma mater, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.