I've been hesitant to post..trying to wrap my brain around how this book makes me feel. Sadly it paints a sad, honest picture of what Mississippi (and the entire South) was like during that time.
I was born in 1974 so unfortunately not long enough for tempers and feelings to really sort themselves out in Mississippi and so I can unfortunately remember stories very similar to the ones in the book. My parents don't talk much about what it was like to be teens and young adults during those years. My mom will occasionally remember when they finally desegregrated her school..(not until 1972!)
I do believe rascism is taught. My parents and their parents were raised in a society that was wrong in their beliefs..
But those same people..my parents and grandparents raised me to believe that all people are equal...so I like to think that most intelligent people around here just "got it"..they realized that how they were raised was wrong and they went about raising my generation to be better. Now that doesn't mean there aren't still ignorant rascist people here and everywhere else for that matter. But Mississippi today is nothing like Mississippi in the sixties.
But I loved this book...I loved the characters..I loved reading about things and places in my own "back yard"...and thinking of how this was really only 50 years ago and how much things have changed..in society, in the way women (white or black) were treated then and now.
Can't wait to see the movie
