Firstborn Girls: A Memoir

Firstborn Girls: A Memoir - Hardcover

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Firstborn Girls: A Memoir
  • Firstborn Girls: A Memoir
Firstborn Girls: A Memoir - Hardcover

Firstborn Girls: A Memoir - Hardcover

by Bernice L. McFadden
$30.00
$30.00

Book Overview

From award-winning author and creative writing professor at Tulane University comes an intimate and powerful memoir exploring inherited trauma, family secrets, and the enduring bonds of love between mothers and daughters.

On her second birthday in 1967, Bernice McFadden died in a car crash near Detroit, only to be resuscitated after her mother pulled her from the flaming wreckage. Firstborn Girls traces her remarkable life from that moment up to the publication of her first novel, Sugar.

Growing up in 1980s Brooklyn, Bernice finds solace in books, summer trips to Barbados, and boarding school to escape her alcoholic father. Discovering the works of Alice Walker and Toni Morrison, she finally sees herself and her loved ones reflected in their stories of "messy, beautiful, joyful Black people."

Interwoven with Bernice's personal journey is her family's history, beginning with her four-times enslaved great-grandmother Louisa Vicey Wilson in 1822 Hancock County, Georgia. Her descendants survived Reconstruction and Jim Crow, joined the Great Migration, and mourned Dr. King's assassination during the Civil Rights Movement. These women's wisdom, secrets, and fierce love are passed down like Louisa's handmade quilt.

A memoir of many threads, Firstborn Girls is an extraordinarily moving portrait of a life shaped by family, history, and the drive to be something more.
ISBN9780593184974
Author Bernice L. McFadden
PublisherDutton
GenreBiography
FormatHardcover
PublishedMarch 2025
LanguageENG- English
Pages400
Weight1.0 lb
Target AudienceAdults
Print SizeStandard Print

Related Subjects

Biography & Autobiography Nonfiction

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More by Bernice L. McFadden

Firstborn Girls: A Memoir

Firstborn Girls: A Memoir - Hardcover

Firstborn Girls: A Memoir - Hardcover

By Bernice L. McFadden

About Bernice L. McFadden

Bernice L. McFadden is an associate professor of English at Tulane University and the author most recently of the memoir Firstborn Girls, and of several critically acclaimed and prize-winning novels, including Sugar, Gathering of Waters, The Book of Harlan, and Praise Song for the Butterflies. She is the winner of the American Book Award and the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work, as well as the recipient of three awards from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association.

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