I am wrapping up Black History Month and easing into Women's History Month by reading a historical fiction novel that's been on my to-read pile for awhile.
Stella by Starlight, by Sharon M. Draper, is the story of Stella, a young Black girl living in a small segregated North Carolina town. It opens with a Klan gathering, cross burning and white sheet-clad men spied by Stella and her brother from a distance late at night. Stella is well aware of the prejudice against Blacks and the inequality that accompanies such bigotry, but she has never witnessed Klan activity before. Upon Stella's discovery, her father immediately rounds up the men in the community for a meeting; Stella is put out on the doorstep with her friend, Tony, left to ponder what this means for her family and her town.
Just a few chapters in, I know that Stella's family is poor--the children have no shoes, and the house is insulated with newspapers glued to the walls. Her father reads three newspapers a day, and so does Stella, who sees the papers as her window to the world outside her town. Stella is a writer, too, but I am just finding out about that; it will be interesting to see if that plays a bigger part in the story.
It's Monday, and I'm reading a historical fiction novel that has the same title as a popular song of the 1940s; I wonder if that will play a part in the story, too! What connections have you found while reading a book lately?
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