Praise for 1959
“Willie Tarrant recalls both Scout in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird and Nel in Toni Morrison’s Sula ... A captivating heroine...1959 is not merely the story of one girl’s loss of innocence.... Ms. Davis... [shows] the consequences of integration on a single family and community with insight, sympathy, and grace.” —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
“Davis’s novel captures the dizzying excitement of the civil rights era with subtle exactitude... [A] perfectly measured mixture of innocence and suffering, knowingness and triumph... [and] an absolute joy, so much so that one can almost forget the pain that gave birth to it.” —Geoffrey Stokes, The Boston Globe
“Like the Bottom in Toni Morrison’s Sula or Willow Springs in Gloria Naylor’s Mama Day , the town of Turner, Virginia, is as important a character as any in 1959 ... [An] historical fiction that is as important and enduring as the events it describes.” —Suzanne Samuel, San Francisco Examiner
"1959 evokes the cool echoing voice of a storytelle... Davis’s novel has an uncanny capacity to enthrall the reader.” —Carolivia Herron, Los Angeles Times Book Review
“Powerful and unassuming, piercing and poignant... Evoking elements of Go Tell It on the Mountain , To Kill a Mockingbird , and Coming of Age in Mississippi , Ms. Davis paints a vivid portrait of small-town life... [A] rich, refreshing novel that is itself a quiet storm.” —Valerie Boyd, The Atlanta Journal/Constitution
“Extremely thoughtful and extremely fine... The fight for integration becomes a community claim for identity, and galvanizes the close-knit black circle of friends into intense life... Davis... remind[s] us of history that we can’t afford to discard–unless we want that tide to turn again.” —Carolyn See, New York Newsday
“A marvelously rich and fluid novel.” —Ishmael Reed
“Accomplished and captivating... Willie’s intelligence and youthful naïveté inform the stations of America’s past with humor and humanity. Her voice–frank, amusing and passionate by turns–insists on being heard. A powerful, impressive debut.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“What was it that got the civil rights movement going back in the 1960s? The journalist and poet Thulani Davis seeks to track the source of that fire in her deeply felt first novel... A raw and moving testament to the power that rests within a community.” —Beth Levine, New York Times Book Review
“[A] vivid and rewarding novel... a rich mix of characters, of differences within an African-American community, a subtle sense of how people change and move and grow, join a central voice that is poignant, flip, engaging, provocative, and utterly unsentimental.” —Adrienne Rich
“In 1959 [Thulani Davis] has combined a coming-of-age story with an evocative portrait of a segregated community on the cusp of the “60s... A microhistory of the civil rights movement, and even a grimly prophetic emblem of the entire African-American experience.” —David Gates, Newsweek
“Davis celebrates everyday heroes whose defeats and triumphs she describes with hypnotic dexterity.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“To get into the upbeat spirit of this atmospheric story... one need only listen to the tender and humorous voice of narrator Willie Tarrant.” —Laura Mathews, Glamour
“Impressive... The ideal girlish narrator must be precocious enough to glimpse adult realities... Harper Lee and Maya Angelou were early practitioners of this particular magic art. Josephine Humphreys, Kaye Gibson, and Ellen Gilchrist–Southerners all–continue the proud tradition. Thulani Davis can step forward and join their ranks.” —Joyce R. Slater, Chicago Tribune
“Deftly drawn... The author is gifted and the characters strong.” —Melissa Fay Green, The Washington Post Book World
“Sad and engaging... By the end of this remarkably fluid first novel, it feels as if... the changes taking place in Turner, and in Willie, have happened not only on the page but in the world.” —Jane Mendelsohn, The Village Voice
“Unforgettable... Davis writes about a world on the brink of change with humor, love, and great insight.” —Jessica Hagedorn
"Davis is an artful observer and scene maker, creating and resolving tension while exploring moral issues, the nuances of anger and conviction, and the joy of right action.” –Booklist
“Lyrical, self-assured... Davis’s book spills over with lushness and generosity of spirit.” —Margaria Fichtner, Miami Herald
“An excellent first novel... 1959 is an affirmation. It embodies the spirit which sparked that historic period and which will help sustain the future... Thulani Davis’s historical imagination will help to keep us mindful, memory burning and hope alive.” —Gloria T. Hull, The Women’s Review of Books
“Compassionate... A moving portrait of a town inspired to activism.” —Margot Mifflin, Entertainment Weekly
In this resonant debut novel, 1959 is the year that Willie Tarrant, a young black girl in Turner, Va., turns 12. Civil rights activism, coming to this small town in the form of sit-ins, boycotts and voter registration drives, shatters the false peace between black and white inhabitants. The decision to integrate galvanizes the black community, but it also terrifies Dixon, Willie's beloved father, as the girl is among the handful of blacks chosen to attend the white school. Dixon knows that in a county where a black teenager is murdered because he asks a white man for a match, Willie's safety isn't guaranteed. Turner's black residents, whether or not they are involved in the Movement, endure beatings and daily harassment by the Klan (aka the police department). Willie learns the subtle art of subversion from her elders as church services become civil rights rallies; housewives joke about dodging attack dogs; young and old go to jail together. Witnessing the changes in her community and, internally, in her pubescent body, Willie develops a crush on the new boy at school and discovers the writings of James Baldwin, all the while registering her neighbors to vote and secretly reading her great-aunt Fannie's diary. The depiction of a woman who lived in the Virginia of the 1800s is as vivid as that of Willie living a century later. Davis celebrates everyday heroes whose defeats and triumphs she describes with hynotic dexterity. (Feb.)
Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly
YA-- What could be just another rite-of- passage or adolescent-discovery book is much more here. Set in Turner, Virginia, it's the story of Willie Tarrant, who lives with her elder brother and her widowed father. Dixon has immersed himself in academia, nearly ignoring his children, since his wife's death. The Tarrants are African-American, and 1959 is a pivotal year in their community. There is an awakening to the latent prejudices that have been status quo for so long, prejudices that become blatant when an African-American is shot. The ensuing events mobilize the black community; Dixon wakes up to life again, and Willie turns 13. For students who want action, Davis's book offers little, but for those interested in a fine piece of fictionalized history told through a splendid voice, it offers a great deal.-- Diane Goheen, Topeka West High School, KS
A black girl comes of age amidst rising interracial unrest—in an accomplished and captivating first novel by a poet, playwright, and native of Virginia. In 1959 Billie Holiday died, rhythm and blues played day and night on the airwaves' "race stations," Martin Luther King, Jr., raised political consciousness in black churches across the South, and Willie Tarrant, this novel's nosy, bright and imaginative heroine, turned 12. Teetering wildly on the brink of adulthood, Willie is more concerned with whether she'll be able to roller- skate in a straight skirt on her first date than in the increasingly aggressive anti-discrimination activities her widowed father, a college professor, and his adult peers are up to. Nevertheless, history and circumstance catch up with her as Willie is singled out as a possible test case in the black community's push for school integration and finds herself forced to conceal her normal 12-year-old personality beneath proper Sunday clothes and Mary Janes. Aware for the first time of the existence of a hostile white community just next door, Willie is caught between her embittered grandmother's tales of the terrible past and her own hopes for a happy future, and she alternately wonders about and celebrates her widowed father's sudden zeal for confrontation with local racists. Before the year is over, Turner, Virginia, experiences its first instance of civil-rights-inspired violence and Willie learns that growing up black in America means something different from simply growing up. Throughout, Willie's intelligence and youthful naivet‚ inform these familiar stations of America's past with humor and humanity. Her voice—frank, amusing and passionate byturns—insists on being heard. A powerful, impressive debut.
