Memphis by Tara Stringfellow

It’s a story that moves back and forth across the decades from World War II to the war in Afghanistan and chronicles the struggles of three generations of resilient black women. I read reviews of this book that used the words hopeful, and while on the one hand, the multigenerational family here does survive, but there is also pervasive discrimination throughout each generation, that is based solely on the color of skin and not ability, education, or contribution to the community. It is set in Memphis, which is where the author is also from. Memphis has played a complicated role in America’s racial history. In the mid-19th century, thousands of enslaved Black people were bought and sold at the market owned by Nathan Bedford Forrest, who later became a Confederate general and then the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. In the mid-20th century, Memphis was so central to the fight for civil rights that Martin Luther King Jr. and it is also where he was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel. The National Civil Rights Museum was built on the site of the motel, and the path through the museum ends up on the balcony where he died. This book is as complicated at the city it is set in, and well worth reading.