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A review by rebeccacider
Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward County: A Family, a Virginia Town, a Civil Rights Battle by Kristen Green
4.0
Picked this one up because it ended up on a Washington Post list of best 2015 nonfiction. This book, in addition to being super-depressing, was a really strange read for me, because I have a good friend from Farmville and have spent a fair amount of time there. If you haven't read a work of nonfiction in which a small town you know well is described in clinical detail, it's a disorienting experience.
Green, a Farmville native, accurately and compassionately summarizes the history of the school closures in Prince Edward County. I knew a little about this but had not just not realized how important these events were to the civil rights movement. It's painful history to read about (I alternated between binge-reading and putting it down for weeks at a time), but there's also a lot of bravery and determination in this story.
Green, who is white, also discusses her own family's involvement in the school closures. Green's grandfather was on the board of the Prince Edward Academy (later Fuqua) and her grandparents actively supported segregation. I thought her exploration of their family's complicity and guilt was a lot less compelling than the historical chapters, as was her analysis of the continued racial tensions in Southside Virginia. Here, I felt a black co-writer would have been really valuable, because Green just does not have the depth of knowledge or experience to push beyond her personal regrets about her family history and give us a meaningful picture of how race operates in this community now.
Near the end of the book, Green interviews an older black man she meets in Farmville. I found his words to be the most haunting line of dialogue in the book - he says that Prince Edward County is waiting for his generation to die so that Farmville can become an upscale post-racial community. Of course, generational trauma doesn't work that way, although the new segregation of gentrified communities might make that trauma invisible.
This book didn't completely fulfill its promise, but it is absolutely worth a read.
Green, a Farmville native, accurately and compassionately summarizes the history of the school closures in Prince Edward County. I knew a little about this but had not just not realized how important these events were to the civil rights movement. It's painful history to read about (I alternated between binge-reading and putting it down for weeks at a time), but there's also a lot of bravery and determination in this story.
Green, who is white, also discusses her own family's involvement in the school closures. Green's grandfather was on the board of the Prince Edward Academy (later Fuqua) and her grandparents actively supported segregation. I thought her exploration of their family's complicity and guilt was a lot less compelling than the historical chapters, as was her analysis of the continued racial tensions in Southside Virginia. Here, I felt a black co-writer would have been really valuable, because Green just does not have the depth of knowledge or experience to push beyond her personal regrets about her family history and give us a meaningful picture of how race operates in this community now.
Near the end of the book, Green interviews an older black man she meets in Farmville. I found his words to be the most haunting line of dialogue in the book - he says that Prince Edward County is waiting for his generation to die so that Farmville can become an upscale post-racial community. Of course, generational trauma doesn't work that way, although the new segregation of gentrified communities might make that trauma invisible.
This book didn't completely fulfill its promise, but it is absolutely worth a read.