Dec 28, 2009

Betsey Brown | Summary

Set in 1959, Betsey Brown tells the story of a black thirteen-year-old as she confronts racial identity and inequality, developing sexuality, and family life in a middle-class African-American neighborhood of St. Louis. The novel opens by introducing the family and describing the rambling Victorian house where they live. The Brown family— including parents Jane and Greer, grandmother Vida, four children, and cousin Charlie— get ready for a day of school and work. Betsey, Jane’s oldest and favorite daughter, practices a poem by the famous black poet Paul Laurence Dunbar for...