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A review by carolynf
Mare's War by Tanita S. Davis
4.0
Sometimes YA historical fiction books can feel artificial. This book does a great job of integrating the history into the story rather than having characters suddenly start spewing paragraphs of one fact after another. Mare (like a female horse) is Octavia's grandmother's first name. She and her sister have been tasked with spending their summer vacation riding with Mare from California to Alabama, for a family reunion. They are less than pleased about this, and a bit too much of the book consists of the girls being spoiled and bitchy, especially Octavia's older sister. Mare has apparently never told them a thing about her past, and neither has their father, and so the roadtrip becomes an opportunity to hear all about it. The chapters alternate between the present day and the early 1940s, with the 40s part told in first person and in the present tense.
Mare grew up in Alabama, better off than a lot of black folks but still dealing with an outdoor privy and having to share her bed with her sister and her coat with her mom. Segregation is described as a fact of life, and there is an early incident on a bus that is given as a sign of the times. A separate incident causes Mare to feel like she has to leave home and she joins up with the Women's Army Corp. She gets a bus ticket to Iowa and with a lot of other girls gets trained up to be support staff - clerking, typing, filing. But since it is the army, she still has to get up at 5:30, peel potatoes, march with a heavy pack, make her bed properly, learn about tear gas and enemy planes, etc. She and her fellow WACs form close friendships, mostly, and make it over to Europe around 1944.
While the WACs are taught in high school curriculum it is just as an aside ("women did war stuff too") and doesn't go into detail about their responsibilities. High school curriculum certainly doesn't mention that women of color were WACs as well. When they are in Europe, they run in to some African American soldiers and so their experience gets told indirectly too, particularly the welcome they receive from Europe accompanied by the harassment from white American soldiers. It is a great introduction to an ignored part of American history.
Mare grew up in Alabama, better off than a lot of black folks but still dealing with an outdoor privy and having to share her bed with her sister and her coat with her mom. Segregation is described as a fact of life, and there is an early incident on a bus that is given as a sign of the times. A separate incident causes Mare to feel like she has to leave home and she joins up with the Women's Army Corp. She gets a bus ticket to Iowa and with a lot of other girls gets trained up to be support staff - clerking, typing, filing. But since it is the army, she still has to get up at 5:30, peel potatoes, march with a heavy pack, make her bed properly, learn about tear gas and enemy planes, etc. She and her fellow WACs form close friendships, mostly, and make it over to Europe around 1944.
While the WACs are taught in high school curriculum it is just as an aside ("women did war stuff too") and doesn't go into detail about their responsibilities. High school curriculum certainly doesn't mention that women of color were WACs as well. When they are in Europe, they run in to some African American soldiers and so their experience gets told indirectly too, particularly the welcome they receive from Europe accompanied by the harassment from white American soldiers. It is a great introduction to an ignored part of American history.