Grown Women
A Novel
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4.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
A New Yorker Best Book of the Year · NAACP Image Award Winner for Outstanding Debut Literary Work
“This is a tender, deeply perceptive tale of what kin owes kin, and how we might work to mend old wounds together.”—Elle
In this stunning debut novel, a moving multi-generational family saga, four generations of complex Black women contend with motherhood and daughterhood, generational trauma and the deeply ingrained tensions and wounds that divide them as they redefine happiness and healing for themselves.
Erudite Evelyn, her cynical daughter Charlotte, and Charlotte’s optimistic daughter Corinna see the world very differently. Though they love each other deeply, it’s no wonder that their personalities often clash. But their conflicts go deeper than run-of-the-mill disagreements. Here, there is deep, dark resentment for past and present hurt in this compelling work of Southern fiction.
When Corinna gives birth to her own daughter, Camille, the beautiful, intelligent little girl offers this trio of mothers something they all need: hope, joy, and an opportunity to reconcile. They decide to work together to raise their collective daughter with the tenderness and empathy they missed in their own relationships. Yet despite their best intentions, they cannot agree on what that means.
After Camille eventually leaves her mother and grandmother in rural Tennessee for a more cosmopolitan life in Washington, DC with her great-grandmother, it’s unclear whether this complex and self-contained girl will thrive or be overwhelmed by the fears and dreams of three generations she carries. As she grows into a gutsy young woman in this powerful coming of age story, Camille must decide for herself what happiness will look like.
In masterful, elegant prose, debut novelist Sarai Johnson has created a rich and moving portrait of Black women’s lives today, perfect for readers of contemporary Black women's fiction.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Johnson debuts with a deeply satisfying multigenerational saga of a Black family. Evelyn was brought up in 1940s Atlanta with the expecation that she succeed. As a young mother and widow in the 1970s, her success in academia comes at the expense of her daughter, Charlotte, who only feels her mother's coldness and resentment. When Evelyn erupts at the news of 18-year-old Charlotte's unexpected pregnancy in 1974, she flees home and builds a new life in rural Tennessee. Charlotte struggles with alcoholism and the effects of assorted bad decisions, which have an acidic effect on her daughter, Corinna, who doesn't feel accepted by her mother. Searching for love, Corinna has a brief relationship with a high school football star and becomes pregnant at 17. She vows to provide her daughter, Camille, with the love she yearned for as a girl, but soon becomes overwhelmed and makes the difficult decision to send Camille to Evelyn, who is now a professor at Howard University. Johnson brings new life to the age-old theme of a family's cyclical dysfunction, and the narrative is packed with stunning self-reflections, such as Charlotte's reason for naming her daughter after the song "Corrina, Corrina" ("It had always made her sad, like looking at this baby"). This is a revelation.
