Title: Lies We Tell Ourselves
Author: Robin Talley
Publisher: Harlequin Teen
Release Date: September 30th 2014
I'd heard about this book online a lot and had wanted to pick it up for a while and finally did once I had enough money.
Synopsis:
In 1959 Virginia, the lives of two girls on opposite sides of the battle for civil rights will be changed forever.
Sarah Dunbar is one of the first black students to attend the previously all-white Jefferson High School. An honors student at her old school, she is put into remedial classes, spit on and tormented daily.
Linda Hairston is the daughter of one of the town's most vocal opponents of school integration. She has been taught all her life that the races should be kept separate but equal.
Forced to work together on a school project, Sarah and Linda must confront harsh truths about race, power and how they really feel about one another.
Boldly realistic and emotionally compelling, Lies We Tell Ourselves is a brave and stunning novel about finding truth amid the lies, and finding your voice even when others are determined to silence it.
Review:
I'm a bit late to the party when it comes to Lies We Tell Ourselves, but I finally got the chance to read it and I absolutely loved it.
We begin the book from the point of view of Sarah Dunbar, one of the young adults integrating Jefferson High School. When Sarah and the other students chosen to integrate Jefferson reach the school, there is a mob of segregationists waiting for them. Police officers are there, supposedly to protect the black students from the protesters, but they stand by doing nothing and are only there for the first day, despite the fact that the harassment continues until the end of the year and only gets worse.
In the second section of the book, we hear from Linda Hairston, a sworn segregationist. Being inside her head shows that even seemingly kind, well-educated people could be just as racist and harmful to people of color as more stereotypical, backwoods, ignorant people could be. Being a seemingly nice person doesn't mean you can't be racist.
Reading Linda's POV, at least for the first few chapters was nauseating. When we were reading Sarah's POV I never wanted to put the book down, but during Linda's first chapters, I could hardly make myself pick it up. This is how realistically and unflinchingly Robin Talley depicts the racism of the time. Everyone who says they wish they were born in the 50's or acts as if racism ended when slavery did should be required to read Lies We Tell Ourselves.
Something else to note is that without spoiling anything, this book features a lesbian romance that doesn't end in death or disaster and we don't have enough of those.
I loved loved this book and I think you will too.
Author: Robin Talley
Publisher: Harlequin Teen
Release Date: September 30th 2014
I'd heard about this book online a lot and had wanted to pick it up for a while and finally did once I had enough money.
Synopsis:
In 1959 Virginia, the lives of two girls on opposite sides of the battle for civil rights will be changed forever.
Sarah Dunbar is one of the first black students to attend the previously all-white Jefferson High School. An honors student at her old school, she is put into remedial classes, spit on and tormented daily.
Linda Hairston is the daughter of one of the town's most vocal opponents of school integration. She has been taught all her life that the races should be kept separate but equal.
Forced to work together on a school project, Sarah and Linda must confront harsh truths about race, power and how they really feel about one another.
Boldly realistic and emotionally compelling, Lies We Tell Ourselves is a brave and stunning novel about finding truth amid the lies, and finding your voice even when others are determined to silence it.
Review:
I'm a bit late to the party when it comes to Lies We Tell Ourselves, but I finally got the chance to read it and I absolutely loved it.
We begin the book from the point of view of Sarah Dunbar, one of the young adults integrating Jefferson High School. When Sarah and the other students chosen to integrate Jefferson reach the school, there is a mob of segregationists waiting for them. Police officers are there, supposedly to protect the black students from the protesters, but they stand by doing nothing and are only there for the first day, despite the fact that the harassment continues until the end of the year and only gets worse.
In the second section of the book, we hear from Linda Hairston, a sworn segregationist. Being inside her head shows that even seemingly kind, well-educated people could be just as racist and harmful to people of color as more stereotypical, backwoods, ignorant people could be. Being a seemingly nice person doesn't mean you can't be racist.
Reading Linda's POV, at least for the first few chapters was nauseating. When we were reading Sarah's POV I never wanted to put the book down, but during Linda's first chapters, I could hardly make myself pick it up. This is how realistically and unflinchingly Robin Talley depicts the racism of the time. Everyone who says they wish they were born in the 50's or acts as if racism ended when slavery did should be required to read Lies We Tell Ourselves.
Something else to note is that without spoiling anything, this book features a lesbian romance that doesn't end in death or disaster and we don't have enough of those.
I loved loved this book and I think you will too.
Comments
Post a Comment