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More than 100 attendees gathered at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, and virtually via live stream, were immersed in the world of 1957 Alabama at the July meeting of the Well-Read Black Girl Book Club. The guest of honor, Jamila Minnicks, author of "Moonrise Over New Jessup," set the stage for a discussion of history and the power of personal stories.
Minnicks, the 2021 PEN/Bellwether Prize recipient for Socially Engaged Fiction, drew attendees into the book's protagonist, Alice Young's shoes by performing a section of the book from memory. Set in the late 1950s and early 60s, "Moonrise Over New Jessup" questions the value of integration and acceptance if it means losing the comfort of self-created safety.
Against the backdrop of the Civil Rights movement, Minnicks's characters negotiate the intersection of public and private life. Alice grapples with holding on to the security she has found in New Jessup, an all-Black Alabama town has rejected integration in favor of a separate existence, and supporting her love whose secret activism threatens this status quo.
Minnicks then turned the conversation toward a topic close to her heart: personal histories. "I feel like when we have these conversations about why people left the South, the narrative that they were going to something better isn't always necessarily the case."
As Minnicks shed light on her characters' nuanced dynamics, she also offered a fresh perspective on a critical historical era. "To think about how narrowly our ancestors and elders' history has been sort of boxed in. And then it goes through the generations where the generations get such a narrower and narrower slice of life," said Minnicks.
With this, Minnicks not only urged her audience to engage with the past in a more personal and intimate way but also challenged them to consider how personal narratives and unspoken family stories have shaped, and continue to shape, our collective understanding of the past.
"Don't just ask your people what they were doing during this Civil Rights Movement," she advised. "If you want to know, ask them what life was like for them at 15. Because the stories are going to come out if they want to tell you. But, they also want to tell you - your granddaddy wants to tell you how he pulled your grandma. And you can probably learn a thing or two."
Minnicks, an author whose short fiction and essays have been featured in The Sun, CRAFT, Catapult, Blackbird, The Write Launch, and elsewhere, has significantly contributed to contemporary literature. Her thought-provoking piece "Politics of Distraction" earned a nomination for the prestigious Pushcart Prize. In 2022, she received a Tennessee Williams scholarship for the Sewanee Writers' Conference and completed a residency at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.
Those who missed the live event can watch the discussion on the Library's YouTube channel.
The Well-Read Black Girl continues on Thursday, August 17, with National Book Award finalist Ibi Zoboi and author and podcaster Jennifer Baker, who will discuss their new YA novels "Nigeria Jones" and "Forgive Me Not." To learn more, visit dclibrary.org/well-read-black-girl
The DC Public Library Foundation generously supports Well-Read Black Girl at DC Public Library.