A book for these times.

Ashley Woods
Jan 23, 2017
2 min read

A short review because this book is a must-read, but it doesn't feature a strong female fictional character. It's an auto-biography of a strong female person and the subject matter is too important not to talk about. Carolyn Maull McKinstry was attending the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church when a bomb went off inside on September 15, 1963. Four of her friends were killed in the event and this book is her testimony of the times. It covers race relations through the Civil Rights movement and the impact of the great leaders of the era, as well as the influence of local persons throughout the south. The pages are peppered with excerpts from Martin Luther King Jr's powerful oratory as well as quotes from the likes of JFK, Bobby Kennedy, various Alabama church leaders and lessons from the Bible. But what's more eye-opening is Carolyn's personal, painful struggle as she strove to digest the events happening around her and to her. From one of the most tumultuous times in this country's history, the reader get an intimate glimpse into not just the people of the movement, but how the movement affects one person. It takes the Civil Rights era beyond the realm of abstract ideas into the real life of a citizen who lived it. In this current new presidential term where most of the country is struggling to reunite and find common ground, this book is so important in allowing one woman of color to tell her story (because representation matters). And for page after page, we realize that perhaps we have not come so far as we would like to imagine. If we don't know and understand history - all sides of the story - we are doomed to repeat it.