“Firstborn Girls” is a memoir from Tulane University’s Assistant Professor of Creative Writing Bernice McFadden. The book is as memorable as her previous fiction including “This Bitter Earth and Sugar.” McFadden is not a native of Louisiana but has adopted the city as her home base. Her new book explores her life in Brooklyn, New York, and as a world traveler. From her first experience, dying in a car crash and being brought back to life by her mother, to her development as a writer, McFadden shows in this memoir the reason that she is beloved by readers throughout the United States and abroad.
According to her publisher, “Interwoven with Bernice’s personal journey is her family’s history, beginning with her four-times enslaved great-grandmother Louisa Vicey Wilson in 1822 Hancock County, Georgia. Her descendants survived Reconstruction and Jim Crow, joined the Great Migration, and mourned Dr. King’s assassination during the Civil Rights Movement.” McFadden’s first person account gives testament to the work of an author and the women who give her the foundation and inspiration to live an interesting life.
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“Crescent City Girls” by LaKisha Michelle Simmons is a “group biography of ordinary girls,” according to her publisher The University of North Carolina Press. The book covers young women living in New Orleans during segregation through their oral histories, newspaper reports, photography, and fiction writing. Simmons teaches at the University of Michigan. This book is a unique investigation of women’s lives in the past.