Three Girls from Bronzeville: A Uniquely American Memoir of Race, Fate, and Sisterhood

Product Description

A “beautiful, tragic, and inspiring” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) memoir about three Black girls from the storied Bronzeville section of Chicago that offers a penetrating exploration of race, opportunity, friendship, sisterhood, and the powerful forces at work that allow some to flourish…and others to falter.

They were three Black girls. Dawn, tall and studious; her sister, Kim, younger by three years and headstrong as they come; and her best friend, Debra, already prom-queen pretty by third grade. They bonded—fervently and intensely in that unique way of little girls—as they roamed the concrete landscape of Bronzeville, a historic neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side, the destination of hundreds of thousands of Black folks who fled the ravages of the Jim Crow South.

These third-generation daughters of the Great Migration come of age in the 1970s, in the warm glow of the recent civil rights movement. It has offered them a promise, albeit nascent and fragile, that they will have more opportunities, rights, and freedoms than any generation of Black Americans in history. Their working-class, striving parents are eager for them to realize this hard-fought potential. But the girls have much more immediate concerns: hiding under the dining room table and eavesdropping on grown folks’ business; collecting secret treasures; and daydreaming about their futures—Dawn and Debra, doctors, Kim a teacher. For a brief, wondrous moment the girls are all giggles and dreams and promises of “friends forever.” And then fate intervenes, first slowly and then dramatically, sending them careening in wildly different directions. There’s heartbreak, loss, displacement, and even murder. Dawn struggles to make sense of the shocking turns that consume her sister and her best friend, all the while asking herself a simple but profound question: Why?

In the vein of
The Other Wes Moore and
The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace,
Three Girls from Bronzeville is a piercing memoir that chronicles Dawn’s attempt to find answers. It’s at once a celebration of sisterhood and friendship, a testimony to the unique struggles of Black women, and a tour-de-force about the complex interplay of race, class, and opportunity, and how those forces shape our lives and our capacity for resilience and redemption.

Review

Named a Best Book of the Fall by People Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, Vogue, Buzzfeed, Shondland, Apple, & Real Simple

September recommended reading by Essence, CNN.com, Ms. Magazine, Fortune, Goodreads, and BookRiot

“Unmissable”—
Vogue

“Wholehearted…Turner interrupts the monolithic narrative of Black Chicago as ruined and broken, as well as the one-note stereotypes about growing up in public housing. In their place she offers a textured portrait of a moment in time in a particular place…Like the poet Gwendolyn Brooks and the playwright Lorraine Hansberry, she is a native daughter of Black Chicago with a bone-deep knowledge of the place and its people.”—
New York Times Book Review

“An exceptional work, a memoir told with honesty, grit and a sly wit that continually takes readers to unexpected places…I’m hooked on these women.”—
Washington Post

“Evocative”—
Chicago Tribune

“Vivid…incisive.”—
Shelf Awareness

 “Dawn Turner is the 
perfect person to tell this heartbreaking yet gorgeous tale of three Black girls from the Bronzeville section of Chicago as they come of age during the 1970s. And not just because it’s partially 
her story, but because her lengthy career as a journalist who has reported on stories from all across the globe makes her uniquely capable of weaving an intricate, deeply researched and reported tale, but also one with heavy personal implications, an enormous amount of heart, and a remarkable measure of poise. Turner’s memoir is an achievement on many levels, not the least of which is the fact that it’s just downright entertaining as well. Highly recommended.”—
Shondaland

“By turns beauti