A review by scorpstar77
Jam on the Vine by LaShonda Katrice Barnett

3.0

Ivoe Williams, growing up in the early twentieth century in Texas, dreams of a better future for herself, her family, and all African Americans. She is intelligent and bookish, and her family sacrifices a lot to send her to college. There she discovers her love of writing and journalism as well as the key to her sexuality. After college, she sticks with her family through increasingly hard times before she finally convinces them to move to Kansas City for better opportunities. There she is finally able to re-unite with the love of her life and start her own newspaper focused on African American issues.

I wanted to love this book. It has so many things that I love in a good story - a fight against racism, strong female characters and strong family relationships, an earnest bookish girl pursuing her dream... But ultimately, I found the constantly shifting perspectives too distracting (one paragraph in one character's voice, the next in another), and the story itself too meandering to win my heart. The novel is titled for the newspaper that Ivoe eventually starts in Kansas City - which happens with just 50 pages left in the story. It seems too late in the book for the seminal event to occur. With a strong editorial hand, this book could be great; as it is, it's just OK.