4.45 AVERAGE

gjanuska's review

3.5
challenging hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad slow-paced
sportula's profile picture

sportula's review

3.75
informative slow-paced

jminaya's review

1.0
slow-paced
goodwitchs's profile picture

goodwitchs's review

5.0
challenging informative
informative reflective sad slow-paced
biv1949's profile picture

biv1949's review

5.0
emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

Wow wow wow. This book was incredible. The stories written about Greenwood members and descendants were so well written and I was engaged throughout the book. I cried multiple times throughout and really felt like I got to know some of the members of the community. I feel like I learned so much about the history of Greenwood and some of the ways that institutionalized racism existed and still exists in the US.
So glad that I was able to read this book, highly recommend. 

adamcshanks's review

4.75
challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

lorena_rose's review

4.5
dark informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced
challenging dark emotional informative sad slow-paced

A vital book about the Tulsa Race Massacre that focuses on the aftermath rather than the tragedy itself. The book exhaustively chronicles the efforts to rebuild, the many enduring challenges of the Greenwood neighborhood and its residents, and the ongoing effort to secure meaningful reparations. At times due to the level of detail the book is a bit of a slog to get through and shrinking it by 100 pages or so would make it more accessible to more readers, which is essential as most Americans only have a passing knowledge of the massacre at best. Regardless it’s a deeply informative book and one I highly recommend to everyone.
dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

I cried my eyes out reading parts of this book. I love the way Luckerson takes so much care with the people, past and present, who inhabited Greenwood. In particular, Mrs. Loula Williams, a Black woman who owned and operated not one but two businesses. We follow her accomplishments and the way that the massacre upends her life and dreams. When at the end, her descendants visit her grave to care for her plot, I BAWLED. 

I loved the way he centers the Black women who were pivotal for the formation of Black Wall Street and for the movement to preserve and restore the Greenwood community to its former glory and its determined search for justice for the survivors and descendants. Luckerson also does a remarkable job weaving past and present, tracking all the through lines to the modern political landscape where the reverberating effects of the massacre and resulting predatory legislation and government funded programs are being debated. He is a truly gifted writer— constructing a book with this amount of cited information that still manages to captivate in its narrative story-telling is mind-blowing to me.

I’m so glad that I read this, and I hope you will too. It’s extremely dense with information, and of course, some events are hard to read about, but I think a main takeaway from the book is that looking back at the past and learning, acknowledging, and making actionable change to repair the damage is how we can heal. Sometimes that means reading shit that makes you really sad or incredibly angry, but it’s still worth it. Highly recommend for anyone and everyone.