A review by librarymouse
Ida B. the Queen: The Extraordinary Life and Legacy of Ida B. Wells by Michelle Duster

emotional informative reflective slow-paced

3.75

Ida B the Queen is a familial exploration of the civil rights movement, the fight for suffrage, and Idea B Wells's hands on work fighting on behalf of individuals and alongside organizations. He great granddaughter does a wonderful job telling the story of Ida's life and work. I just wish that it went into more detail, though that detail might be available in the biography the author's grandmother wrote. I enjoyed the section about the author as a teen and young adults, and how her family encouraged her to live up to her own dreams and expectations for herself instead of aspiring to emulate her great-grandmother. The organization of the book with the timeline in the middle also kind of threw me off. I was listening to it as an audiobook and I thought that I'd accidentally skipped to the last section when I hit the timeline. I feel like it would have worked better as a part of the conclusion. The slow pacing of the timeline is it my preferred method of organization of historical events, but I did enjoy the side bars that further explained the individuals that Ida crossed paths with. Overall, Idea B Wells is a really cool woman and it was interesting to read about a sort of looming historical figure through the eyes of her descendant.
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