Red at the Bone

Reviews

Praise for Red at the Bone:

“Readers mourning the death of Toni Morrison will find comfort in Sabe’s magnificent cadences as she rues her daughter’s teen pregnancy, which flies in the face of the lessons her mama ingrained in her from the Tulsa race riots of 1921—the massacre by whites that drove her family north and taught them to vigilantly safeguard their social and economic gains. . . . With Red at the Bone, Jacqueline Woodson has indeed risen—even further into the ranks of great literature.” —NPR

“Occasionally mentioned, and never forgotten, is the fact that Iris’s family moved to Brooklyn from the South in 1921 after white people in Tulsa burned down black people’s schools, restaurants, and beauty shops. It’s not just that the past informs the present, nor is it just that the past isn’t past; it’s also the case that the past has to be remembered, has to be kept alive.” —The New York Times

“Red at the Bone is a nuanced portrait of shifting family relationships, jumping back and forth in time and moving bet­ween the characters’ different voices. . . . Underneath it all runs the vexed and violent history of the US. Sabe’s family lost everything in the Tulsa massacre of 1921. . . . Stories may be hidden, but they will come to light.” ­—Financial Times

“Beautiful . . . a generous, big-hearted novel.” —Brit Bennett, #1 NYT bestselling author of The Vanishing Half
 
“Profoundly moving . . . With its abiding interest in the miracle of everyday love, Red at the Bone is a proclamation.” —The New York Times Book Review

“A spectacular novel that only [a] legend can pull off, one that wrenches us to confront the life-altering and life-pulling and life-subsuming facts of history, of love, of expectations, of status, of parenthood.” —Ibram X. Kendi in The Atlantic

“A treasure awaits readers who encounter Red at the Bone. . . . [A] universal American tale of striving, failing, then trying again.” —Time

“Sublime . . . This short novel contains immense empathy for each member of its wide ensemble. Thus, as Woodson covers nearly a century, from the 1921 Tulsa race massacre to 9/11, her grasp of history’s weight on individuals — and definitive feel for borough life, past and present — proves to be as emotionally transfixing as ever.” —Entertainment Weekly

“A true spell of a book, Woodson is one of those rare writers who make you feel like you can do anything, should do anything. The story of family and young love are timeless human stories—but through Woodson’s sentences, this novel offers us new ways to think and embody our burning world and, perhaps most mercifully, permission to dream—and to change.” —Ocean Vuong, New York Times bestselling author of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

“Red at the Bone is a narrative steeped in truth. . . . Thank you, Ms. Woodson, for leading me home.” —The Washington Post

“Red at the Bone is a slim novel that has all the heft of a family saga . . . [but] reads like poetry. . . . Woodson nailed the ending, leaving me thoroughly satisfied and awed by her talent.” —Lynn Neary, NPR

“Lyrical, dreamy, and brimming with compassion for her characters.” —Esquire

“[Red at the Bone] subtly explores the ways in which desire can reconfigure our best-laid plans, and its expansive outlook suggests how easily, in African-American life, hard-won privileges can be dissolved.” —The New Yorker

“Vast emotional depth, rich historical understanding, and revelatory pacing . . . Woodson draws the profound magic out of the ordinary. She is unmatched in her ability to evoke emotion.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“A remarkable, intergenerational harmony of voices. At its center is hope for both individual and hereditary survival.” —USA Today

“Gorgeous, moving . . . A story of love—romantic and familial—and alienation, grief and triumph, disaster and survival.” —Nylon

“Red at the Bone breaks down the ways in which parenthood changes people for both better and worse and what it means to find your true identity.” —Parade
 
“Slender miracle of a novel [that] performs a magic trick with time. . . . Woodson skips back and forth between the decades so deftly that it feels like it all happens in a heartbeat.” —Family Circle Expand reviews