NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at for further information. She begins her book with music and ends it on a perfect note.Ĭopyright © 2019 NPR. Jacqueline Woodson's writing is spare and beautiful and often reads like poetry. NEARY: "Red At The Bone" is a slim novel that has all the heft of a family saga. I must have heard it a hundred times by the time I was school age. God rest her soul, but if she was alive, she'd tell anyone listening the story. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Reading) Those white men brought in their war planes and dropped bombs on my mama's neighborhood. NEARY: This multigenerational story goes back and forth in time, incorporating both the terror attacks of 9/11 and the Tulsa race massacre of 1921, which wiped out one of the country's most prosperous black communities and drove Iris' mother's family out of Oklahoma. But I wanted to push against that idea that there is only one way to be a mother. WOODSON: She realizes after the baby is born that, no, this is not the end for me. But then she lets them, and Aubrey raise Melody while she goes to college and a different life. NEARY: Iris decides to have the baby against her parents' wishes. JACQUELINE WOODSON: What does it mean to be a family, you know? What does it mean to be a family that comes together suddenly through the birth of a child by two children? In an interview with NPR, Woodson said she wanted to explore the idea of family. Her boyfriend Aubrey was raised by a single mom in less comfortable circumstances.
NEARY: "Red At The Bone" is the story of two families brought together by this unexpected teenage pregnancy. NEARY: Melody is wearing the same dress her mother Iris was supposed to wear when she turned 16, but Iris never got the chance because, by that time, she was pregnant with Melody. (SOUNDBITE OF PRINCE AND THE REVOLUTION'S "DARLING NIKKI") As she heads downstairs to the waiting guests, a band begins playing Prince's "Darling Nikki," minus the raunchy lyrics. LYNN NEARY, BYLINE: As Jacqueline Woodson's novel "Red At The Bone" begins, a young black girl named Melody is getting ready for her 16th birthday party. We asked NPR books and publishing correspondent Lynn Neary to tell us about one of her favorites from 2019. We call it the Book Concierge, and now you can not only browse through more than 300 titles from this year, but also check out the lists from years gone by. You know, for seven years now, your friends here at NPR have been recommending books of the year just in time for the holidays.
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