A nuanced collection thoughtfully commemorates, rather than celebrates, the 50th anniversary of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision. Each piece, by a luminary who was young in 1954, offers a piercing glimpse into black-white relations, and the best carry that glimpse forward to today. While no part of this collection falls flat, some are more effective than others. Katherine Paterson and Jean Craighead George search their own souls, writing honestly about their responses as white women to Brown. Quincy Troupe and Ishmael Reed offer angrier and more political essays, the former recalling his own experience as a minority black student in a newly desegregated white high school, and the latter mourning the loss of the black community institutions that had been fostered by segregation. No one has the temerity to claim that Brown was a cure-all for our nation’s ills; perhaps this offering’s greatest strength for young readers is the sense that Brown was part of a historical process—and so, now, are they. (Anthology. 10+)
