 Sarah Fleming | Happy Valentine's Day! Our second Weekend Picks for February is brought to us again by blog contributor Sarah Fleming. Sarah is an assistant professor in the Curriculum & Instruction department at SUNY Oswego in upstate New York. A former high school English teacher for twenty-one years, she now teaches courses in English methods, literacy, and young adult literature. Sarah particularly enjoys reading and teaching about texts that can be used to forward antiracist and antibias teaching, and she engages in research that looks to support teachers in their redesign of ELA curriculum for such efforts. |
Tangleroot by Kalela Williams
| Noni Reid isn’t supposed to be here in “Nowhere,” Virginia. She’s supposed to be spending her last summer before college with her best friends back in Wellesley, waiting to attend Boston University in the fall and spending her days working in a prestigious internship doing Elizabethan costumes for the “Bards in the Burbs”program. But that all changes when her brilliant scholar mother, Dr. Radiance Castine, announces that Noni would be moving with her back to her hometown of Magnolia, Virginia and living at Tangleroot, a real former southern plantation house. Noni’s mother has taken a position as the new president of Stonepost College, and they move into the house that her great-great-great-grandfather Cuffee Fortune built. An enslaved field hand and foreman, Cuffee oversaw the construction of Stonepost College, and so Noni and her mother were returning to their legacy. Noni knows that as his descendant, she should be proud to return to the place her ancestors built. But she can’t bear the thought of leaving her life in the theater behind her, and she resents her mother for making the move to Tangleroot. |  |
 Author Kalela Williams | Nevertheless, Noni finds herself in Magnolia for the summer, exploring the plantation grounds and working part-time waiting tables at Blondell’s restaurant. In the plantation’s graveyard, she discovers the grave of a young woman named Sophronia Dearborn who shares Noni’s birthdate, and she is accordingly intrigued (and actually, Noni’s given name is also Sophronia). She wonders, what befell this girl, that she and her infant son died so young? How is she related to the Tangleroot plantation owners, the Dearborns, and did she ever know or interact with any of Noni’s ancestors? Noni begins a quest to learn more about the young woman, as well as her own connections to the plantation and her ancestor Cuffee. Despite not wanting to follow in her mother’s scholarly footsteps, Noni finds herself on a research mystery to discover everything she can about the white family who owned Tangleroot and her Black ancestors who worked there. |
Noni’s mother explains, “I hope living in Magnolia can tell you who you are.” Noni’s story is one of self-discovery amidst an exciting and fascinating tale of history and justice. I highly recommend this text for students who are interested in reclaiming what history has denied those oppressed by systemic racism, as well as those students who are just interested in a really captivating mystery. Noni’s story, as it related to her ancestors, the Dearborns, and the modern inhabitants of Magnolia, VA, is full of twists and turns, and is rewarding in her pursuit of justice.
Enjoy!
Enjoy!
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