A review by bookedandlit
Confessions in B-Flat by Donna Hill

4.0

This week I read #ConfessionsInBFlat by #DonnaHill . This book is a love letter to the civil rights era of the 60's. We begin with a young man named Jason from Atlanta. He is in a meeting with MLK, John Lewis, and Bayard Rustin, and he volunteers to move to Harlem to teach non-violence as a protest philosophy. On the way he meets Anita. She is a beat poet who believes that Malcolm X's teachings of "by any means necessary" is that correct path towards true freedom. Together they wrestle with their ideologies, and become each other's refuge in a world marked by unrest. At first I had a hard time getting into this book because there was so much history and context being provided. But once I understood what the author was doing, I enjoyed it very much. This is a historical romance where she has included photos and historical markers to push the story forward. And it really resonated with me because in this brief snapshot of their love affair there was the Birmingham Church Bombing, the Kennedy Assassination, the beginning of the Vietnam War, other attacks on Black people in the south. And seeing these characters repeatedly choose each other while it felt like the world was spinning out of control was incredibly moving. This book was clearly a labor of love, and really expanded the genre for me.