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A review by joinreallife
So Many Beginnings: A Little Women Remix by Bethany C. Morrow
5.0
Oh man, this book destroyed me emotionally in the best possible way. That last line? Sobs.
I'm a big fan of Little Women, I'm a big fan of Bethany C. Morrow, and I also really enjoyed Clash of Steel, the Treasure Island remix in this same series. So this was kind of perfectly created, in my mind. Folks who are looking for a beat-for-beat retelling are not going to find it here, and Morrow has been explicit about that. (See her Twitter thread here about why here: https://twitter.com/BCMorrow/status/1421860886348697603)
But I'm not one of those people. As a lover of Little Women, this book hit all the right notes for me while presenting an entirely new perspective, of what that same time period was like for Black Americans. It is set in the same time period as the source material, where we encounter the March family at the Roanoke Island Freedpeople's Colony. Which was a very real place! So Many Beginnings thinks about the trauma of the Civil War for Black folks, and the challenges of not only dealing with that trauma but then attempting to establish new lives and families with little resources and even less support. (Basically, imagine the "that's enough activism for today" chat meme as the Union army...) It encounters the struggles of wanting to pursue new possibilities while also clinging so strongly to physical proximity because of past violent separations. It confronts the self-righteousness of white liberalism, and explores the disconnect between the Black experience of former slaves and those who were already free.
Less important than those beats, Morrow also introduced some twists that made my precious little heart very happy.
It packs a big emotional punch while also being incredibly enjoyable to read, is what I'm saying. I'm really looking forward to handselling this one.
I'm a big fan of Little Women, I'm a big fan of Bethany C. Morrow, and I also really enjoyed Clash of Steel, the Treasure Island remix in this same series. So this was kind of perfectly created, in my mind. Folks who are looking for a beat-for-beat retelling are not going to find it here, and Morrow has been explicit about that. (See her Twitter thread here about why here: https://twitter.com/BCMorrow/status/1421860886348697603)
But I'm not one of those people. As a lover of Little Women, this book hit all the right notes for me while presenting an entirely new perspective, of what that same time period was like for Black Americans. It is set in the same time period as the source material, where we encounter the March family at the Roanoke Island Freedpeople's Colony. Which was a very real place! So Many Beginnings thinks about the trauma of the Civil War for Black folks, and the challenges of not only dealing with that trauma but then attempting to establish new lives and families with little resources and even less support. (Basically, imagine the "that's enough activism for today" chat meme as the Union army...) It encounters the struggles of wanting to pursue new possibilities while also clinging so strongly to physical proximity because of past violent separations. It confronts the self-righteousness of white liberalism, and explores the disconnect between the Black experience of former slaves and those who were already free.
Less important than those beats, Morrow also introduced some twists that made my precious little heart very happy.
It packs a big emotional punch while also being incredibly enjoyable to read, is what I'm saying. I'm really looking forward to handselling this one.