How It Happens\u00a0<\/i>follows the story of author Jean Alicia Elster\u2019s maternal grandmother, Dorothy May Jackson. Born in Tennessee in 1890, Dorothy May was the middle daughter of Addie Jackson, a married African-American housekeeper at one of the white boardinghouses in town, and Tom Mitchell, a commanding white attorney from a prominent family. Through three successive generations of African-American women, Elster intertwines the fictionalized adaptations of the defining periods and challenges\u2014race relations, miscegenation, sexual assault, and class divisions\u2014in her family\u2019s history.<\/p>\n
A continuation of the plots begun in Elster\u2019s two novels\u00a0Who\u2019s Jim Hines?<\/i>\u00a0and\u00a0The Colored Car<\/i>,\u00a0How It Happens<\/i>\u00a0continues the story for an older audience and begins with Addie\u2019s life before the turn of the century in the South as a married Black woman with three biracial daughters navigating the relationship between her husband and Tom Mitchell. Later the story shifts to Addie\u2019s daughter Dorothy May\u2019s experiences both as a child and later, as a teacher who, choosing between her career and marriage to a man she barely knows, moves to Detroit. The story moves along with Dorothy May\u2019s daughter Jean, who, with the support of her mother and the memory of her grandmother, confronts and comes to terms with her role in society and the options available to her as a college-educated Black woman in the post\u2013World War II industrial North. While there is struggle and hardship for each of these women, they each build off one other and continue to demand space in the world in which they live.<\/p>\n
Written for young adult readers,\u00a0How It Happens<\/i> carries the heart through the obstacles that still face women of color today and persists in holding open the door of communication between generations.<\/p>\nSigned copies are available now, and will be filled as supplies last, please designate “signed copy” when you check out.<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
How It Happens\u00a0follows the story of author Jean Alicia Elster\u2019s maternal grandmother, Dorothy May Jackson. Born in Tennessee in 1890, Dorothy May was the middle daughter of Addie Jackson, a married African-American housekeeper at one of the white boardinghouses in town, and Tom Mitchell, a commanding white attorney from a prominent family. Through three successive […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":14839,"template":"","meta":[],"product_brand":[],"product_cat":[364,293,105,104,369,124],"product_tag":[],"class_list":["post-14840","product","type-product","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","product_cat-detroit-lit","product_cat-detroit-writer","product_cat-fiction","product_cat-history-biographies","product_cat-signed-by-author","product_cat-young-adult","first","instock","taxable","shipping-taxable","purchasable","product-type-simple"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/bookshop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product\/14840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/bookshop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/bookshop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/product"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/bookshop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/bookshop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"product_brand","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/bookshop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_brand?post=14840"},{"taxonomy":"product_cat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/bookshop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_cat?post=14840"},{"taxonomy":"product_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/bookshop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_tag?post=14840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}