Ladies in READ Book Club

NOTE: We will meet offsite at Cracker Barrel in Greenfield this month.

Librarian Nicole Scurlock will lead a discussion of The Weight of Blood by Tiffany D. Jackson. Participants are encouraged (but not required) to read the book in advance. Ask for a copy at the library’s information desk.

In this smart and unsettling retelling of Carrie, Jackson (White Smoke, 2021) tells the story of a community’s first integrated prom in present-day Georgia. Maddy Washington has been trained from a young age by her domineering father to keep her mixed-race status a secret. Already an outcast among her peers, she becomes the target of intense bullying when her classmates discover she has been passing as white for years. After an instance of racial bullying at the school goes viral, some students push to combine the school’s long-segregated proms, and a popular Black student is convinced to invite Maddy. The disaster that ensues is told through shifting perspectives and formats, including news reports, police statements, and podcast transcripts. Jackson puts themes from the source material (isolation, otherness, bullying) to good use in this story about identity, race, and the lengths communities will go to—and the monster narratives they'll create—that allow people to ignore systemic racism and the problems it perpetuates. A forward by the author gives information about U.S. towns that are still integrating prom.

From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.

December's book will be The Shack by William Paul Young.