I had never heard of this book by Dawn Turner before my book club elected to discuss it. It’s Turner’s memoir of her childhood growing up in the Bronzeville neighborhood of Chicago along with her younger sister, Kim, and best friend, Debra, and how drastically different their lives turned out despite all growing up in the same building.
Unsurprisingly, there’s a lot of discussion about the disinvestment in black communities and how that limits the opportunities presented to the people living and working in those communities. Dawn managed to get out and live the American Dream: husband, child, nice house, nice job, etc. And while she’s clear on the fact that she worked very hard for those things, she’s realistic about the fact that dumb luck played a significant role in setting the trajectory of her life. While many people like to believe they could never end up in Kim’s or Debra’s situation because of some innate quality, Turner has no such delusions.
SPOILER ALERT! I can’t really talk about this book without getting heavily into spoiler territory, so consider yourself warned.
Kim died of a drug overdose in her 20s. Debra also got addicted to drugs, worked odd jobs, including stripping, and ended up accidentally killing a man, which landed her in prison for more than a decade.
While Turner does her best to explore how her life ended up so different from that of Kim and Debra, her information on their lives is limited simply because she wasn’t living them. She and Debra would go years without speaking. Turner was away at college when her sister’s life was really falling apart, ultimately culminating in her death. She does her best to connect the dots, but there’s only so much she can do.
It took a while for me to warm up to this book. I listened to the audio version, and most of the time I was listening I felt pretty ”meh” about the whole thing. But then I got to the end and saw how Turner wove themes from the beginning into her conclusion and it was just beautiful. I ended up awed by this book and I’m so glad I read it.