Red at the Bone: Longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2020

Jacqueline Woodson

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THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER BY THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD-WINNING AUTHORTHE TIMES '100 BEST SUMMER READS' 2020

LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE 2020

'Sublime' Candice Carty-Williams'An epic in miniature' Tayari Jones

'A banger' Ta-Nehisi Coates

'Generous and big-hearted' Brit Bennett

'A true spell of a book' Ocean Vuong

'A proclamation' R.O. Kwon

'Pure poetry' Observer'A sharply focused gem' Sunday Times'Will remind you why you love reading' Stylist'Haunting' Guardian

'Prose that sings off the page' Mail on Sunday

'As seductive as a Prince bop' O, The Oprah Magazine

'Urgent, vital insights into questions of class, gender, race, history, queerness and sex' New York Times

Brooklyn, 2001. It is the evening of sixteen-year-old Melody's coming of age ceremony in her grandparents' brownstone. Watched lovingly by her relatives and friends, she wears a special custom-made dress - the very same dress that was sewn for Melody's mother, for a celebration that ultimately never took place.

Unfurling the history of Melody's family - from the 1921 Tulsa race massacre to post 9/11 New York - Red at the Bone explores sexual desire, identity, class and parenthood, as it looks at the ways in which young people must so often make fateful decisions about their lives before they have even begun to figure out who they are.

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Jacqueline Woodson

Jacqueline Woodson

Jacqueline Woodson is one of the US's most acclaimed contemporary authors for young people. She first came to attention with her multi-award-winning book Brown Girl Dreaming, a memoir in blank verse of her childhood and family life moving between the American South and New York. She was the Young People's Poet Laureate from 2015 to 2017 and the National Ambassador for Young People's Literature for 2018-19. She was awarded the Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 2020.

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