Betsey Brown
(Book - Regular Print)

"With astonishing lyrical beauty and dramatic intensity, Ntozake Shange tells the story of thirteen-year-old Betsey Brown, a colored girl poised between the enchanted world of childhood and the passionate promises, romantic and political, of the adult world. Set in the colored community of St. Louis in 1959, the year school integration disrupted everybody's lives, Shange's story traces the stress lines created in black families not only by racism and court-ordered integration, but also by the class conflict and cultural estrangement found within the black community itself. Seamlessly woven into this masterful and complex portrait of an extended black family is the story of Betsey's adolescent awakening, the exuberant rush of first romance, the frustrating awkwardness and impatience of a girl striving to be grown, and the sobering responsibilities of approaching adulthood. In counterpoint to the stories of her mother and grandmother, Betsey's story becomes the magic melody that weaves together this magnificent song of the black family at one specific and decisive point in American history."

Accelerated Reader,Grades 9-12,5.7,8.0,SD,Quiz 47661,English fiction.

Accelerated Reader AR,UG,5.7,8.0,47661.

Accelerated Reader,Grades 9-12,5.7,8,SD,Quiz 47661,English fiction.