The Activist's Daughter (Coming of Age Series)
Books / Paperback
History: United States › African American Studies
ISBN: 1883523184 / Publisher: Spinsters Ink, May 1997
Beryl, embarrassed by her mother's notoriety as a civil rights activist, flees her mother and enrolls in the University of North Carolina, where she encounters paradoxes and prejudices that force her to come to terms with her own values
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The year is 1963, the peak of the U.S. civil rights movement. A quarter of a million people have just marched on Washington, D.C., where they have been galvanized by Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech. In rebellion against her unconventional mother's passionate involvement in the struggle for racial equality, 17-year-old Beryl Rosinsky flees Washington and enrolls at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Here, in the heart of the segregated South, Beryl enters a strange world of paradoxes: a culture in which southern gentility masks deep-seated prejudice; a place in which protesters politely march single file on the sidewalks outside of "whites-only" shops; a "liberal" university that imposes a gender-based double standard of behavior upon its students. Though Beryl struggles to blend in, to conform, to reject her destiny as her mother's daughter, her encounters with racism, bigotry, and hypocrisy ultimately force her to come to terms with her family's values - and teach her who she really is.
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