A good read for the weekend: “Libertie – A Novel”
If you’re looking for a book to read this weekend, Moonshot News recommends Kaitlyn Greenidge’s new novel “Libertie – A Novel”. The critically acclaimed and Whiting Award–winning author of “We Love You, Charlie Freeman” returns with a wonderful story about the meaning of freedom.
Coming of age as a free-born Black girl in Reconstruction-era Brooklyn, Libertie Sampson was all too aware that her purposeful mother, a practicing physician, had a vision for their future together: Libertie would go to medical school and practice alongside her. But Libertie, drawn more to music than science, feels stifled by her mother’s choices and is hungry for something else – is there really only one way to have an autonomous life? And she is constantly reminded that, unlike her mother, who can pass, Libertie has skin that is too dark.
When a young man from Haiti proposes to Libertie and promises she will be his equal on the island, she accepts, only to discover that she is still subordinate to him and all men. As she tries to parse what freedom actually means for a Black woman, Libertie struggles with where she might find it – for herself and for generations to come.
Inspired by the life of Susan Smith McKinney Steward, the first Black woman doctor in the state of New York, and rich with historical detail, Kaitlyn Greenidge’s new novel is about an heroine coming to terms with how to live in freedom as a dark-skinned Black woman during Reconstruction.
“The spirit I wanted to explore in ‘Libertie’ is that a person in a limited environment can still make a deep, strange, wonderful world for herself, a world that is not really in conversation with an oppressive structure that thinks it knows everything about her,” said Greenidge in a recent interview with The Los Angeles Times.
You can also read: ‘Glass Half-Broken’
Moonshot News is an independent European news website for all IT, Media and Advertising professionals, powered by women and with a focus on driving the narrative for diversity, inclusion and gender equality in the industry.
Our mission is to provide top and unbiased information for all professionals and to make sure that women get their fair share of voice in the news and in the spotlight!
We produce original content, news articles, a curated calendar of industry events and a database of women IT, Media and Advertising associations.
