Book Review: Homeward by Angela Jackson-Brown

The country is changing, and her own world is being turned upside down. Nothing—and no one—will ever be the same.

Georgia, 1965. Rose Perkins Bourdon returns home to Parsons, GA, without her husband and pregnant with another man’s baby. After tragedy strikes her husband in the war overseas, a numb Rose is left with pieces of who she used to be and is forced to figure out what she is going to do with the rest of her life. Her sister introduces her to members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee—young people are taking risks and fighting battles Rose has only seen on television. Feeling emotions for the first time in what feels like forever, the excited and frightened Rose finds herself becoming increasingly involved in the resistance efforts. And of course, there is also the young man, Isaac Weinberg, whose passion for activism stirs something in her she didn’t think she would ever feel again

My Review 

I listened to the narration on audio by Joneice Abbott-Pratt who does an outstanding job. I thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the eBook in exchange for my honest review.

“My husband and child haven’t even been dead a year. I can’t think about any relationship beyond Jasper. He is my husband and I plan to remain true to him.” She was only twenty two years old, that she was still in her good graces with her grandmother in heaven, but more importantly, in the good graces of God. For the first time in a long time, Rose’s soul began to release some of the turmoil and heartbreak she had been carrying.

I adored the warmth of the family.  A close knit family that hugged, kissed foreheads, linked arms, gave squeezes, and had laughter in the house. Opal (Mama) taught all of her children, the boys and the girls, how to make Great-Grandma Birdie’s peach jam as well as other food items. Rose liked helping her Dad at the store and he loved her being there with him.

The antisemitism so prevalent in this current day and time, it’s magnified by the Jewish faith, culture, and beliefs that the author presents in the novel. The characters in the novel for reference are a reflection of our current time and situations. The reference to the inequality of the black soldiers who served in the Vietnam War was touched on by the author.

The characters and the storylines were reminiscent to ‘Soul Food’ the movie, but set in a different era, and more religiously infused. During the civil rights movement era, blacks needed the help of whites to get through the fight. The civil unrest is in this country, has resurfaced in recent years all around America, back in the civil rights movement it was most prevalent in the south, places like Mississippi, Georgia, and Alabama.The novel has drama, romance, second chances, historical significance, and courage, Living in small rural town of a martyre (Jimmie Lee Jackson) who died during a push for black Americans to register to vote, brought me instant relatability to this story. This is a great southern fiction sprinkled with raw and truthful accounts of our history that needs telling and retelling so that history does not repeat itself.

Historical Facts:

Albany Movement - November 17, 1961... Nine Black students attempt to use the The Albany bus terminal's "white-only" facilities. https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/albany-movement

Freedom Riders and the work they trying to do to integrate the buses and the lunch counters. 

John Lewis, one of the founding members of SNCC.

SNLC (Southern Negro Leaders Conference) 

Little Rock Nine

Brown versus the Board of Education

Julian Bond, wife Alice. the communications director of SNCC.

James Forman, our executive secretary at SNCC,

Leflore County Mississippi where Greenwood was situated. That place was known for its lynchings and other acts of violence toward Negroes.

Charles “Chuck” McDew, the chairman of SNCC,

Vernon Jordan. the field director for the NAACP

“Rev. George Lee. Brother Lamar Smith. Brother Herbert Lee. Brother William Lewis Moore.” died for the cause of ending segregation.

Mohandas K. Gandhi, Gandhi, a Hindu man who fought for India’s independence from British rule. was the originator of the nonviolent movement. 

Vivian Malone and James Hood, integrated The University of Alabama

Hamilton Holmes and Charlayne Hunter, integrated the University of Georgia.

Bull Connor

Medgar Evers, thirty-seven years old, shot and killed in Mississippi. murdered him in front of his wife and three children.

Byron De La Beckwith Jr., charged with Medgar Evers murder.

Judaism - Judaism is the religion and the way of life of the Jewish people. It is the oldest of the monotheistic faiths in the Abrahamic tradition which include Christianity and Islam. 

Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, and Carol Denise McNair were brutally murdered in a bombing at 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama.

If We Must Die

BY CLAUDE MCKAY

If we must die, let it not be like hogs

Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,

While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,

Making their mock at our accursèd lot.

If we must die, O let us nobly die,

So that our precious blood may not be shed

In vain; then even the monsters we defy

Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!

O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!

Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,

And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!

What though before us lies the open grave?

Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,

Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

Angela Jackson-Brown is an award-winning writer, poet and playwright who is an Associate Professor in the creative writing program at Indiana University in Bloomington. She also teaches in the graduate program at the Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing at Spalding University in Louisville, KY. She is a graduate of Troy University, Auburn University and the Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing at Spalding University. She has published her short fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry in journals like The Louisville Journal and the Appalachian Review. She is the author of Drinking From a Bitter Cup, House Repairs, When Stars Rain Down and The Light Always Breaks. Her novels have received starred reviews from the Library Journal and glowing reviews from Alabama Public Library, Buzzfeed, Parade Magazine, and Women’s Weekly, just to name a few. When Stars Rain Down was named a finalist for the 2021 David J. Langum, Sr. Prize in American Historical Fiction, longlisted for the Granum Foundation Award, and shortlisted for the 2022 Indiana Authors Award. In October of 2023, Angela’s next novel,Homeward, a follow-up to When Stars Rain Down, will be published by Harper Muse.