Three Girls from Bronzeville: A Uniquely American Memoir of Race, Fate, and Sisterhood

 By Dawn Turner

Simon & Schuster     2021

336 pages     Memoir

When the positive reviews began flowing in about Three Girls from Bronzeville, I found that I had received the book from the publisher. I looked on a Chicago city map and realized that I had connections to the Bronzeville neighborhood. That made the thought of reading this book all the more appealing. Then when I saw that the subtitle of the book indicated it was “a uniquely American memoir of race, fate, and sisterhood", I dug it up on my Kindle and became enmeshed in this remarkably-written story. I’ll let you know my connections to the book, but first the story line.

Dawn Turner grew up in the Bronzeville neighborhood of Chicago, one of the first settlements in Chicago for African-American peoples who had headed north during the Great Migration. Turner’s grandmother was one who came in the first wave of new Black residents. She reminded Turner frequently that “We took a bunch of scraps and stitched together a world.” When Dawn was growing up, her family settled in a safe apartment complex near the notorious Ida B. Wells apartments, but she, her sister Kim, and her best friend Debra were products of the first wave of the Civil Rights movement. They had relatively intact and extended families with secure incomes.

What Turner probes in her memoir is how these three children ended up with such disparate lives. She has had a remarkable career as a novelist, journalist, and columnist for the Chicago Tribune, and a contributor to NPR, while her sister Kim became an alcoholic and died of a heart attack at 23. Debra’s life became very problematic, and as Turner probes Debra’s story, the narrative becomes absolutely engrossing.

She writes: “As children we had moved freely around our world of low-slung public housing and gated high-rise developments. But right around adolescence we have to start making a choice. If we choose right, a promising future lies within our grasp. If we choose wrong, the path is unforgiving. The ground has already begun to harden around each of us, and soon it will be impossible to undo who we have become.”

The Kirkus reviewer suggests that the narrative may be too long, but I was completely absorbed. Turner probes the concepts of grace, redemption, and forgiveness, as well as ideas of fortitude, perseverance, and luck. She has woven together some of her Chicago Tribune columns and her NPR reporting, as well as stories told her by her life-long friend Debra. What particularly intrigued me was the detailed information about the Bronzeville neighborhood. Although we only lived in Chicago during 1966-1967 when I was in graduate school, my husband taught middle school in the Bronzeville neighborhood, and my oldest son and his family lived just south of the neighborhood in Hyde Park for many years. Every time I went to visit, I went past the Hyde Park Academy where Dawn, Debra, and Kim went to high school. Maxwell, my oldest grandson, went to the Chicago Arts high school, which at that time was located in an elementary school building near Ida B. Wells. As a ninth grader, he read Our America: Life and Death on the South Side of Chicago, which is about the neighborhood, and he recommended it to me.  I then read and reviewed it on my blog.  Both Our America and Three Girls from Bronzeville have been life-changers for me. They have broadened my world view greatly.

Dawn Turner tells her compelling story beautifully, and I look forward to reading more of her writings. I am going to recommend the book to my book group as well as my Chicago daughter-in-law’s book group. Here is a terrific article about her life and her work.