Lies We Tell Ourselves
1950, Virginia. Five Black pupils, including Sarah Dunbar, are starting at the previously all-white Jefferson High School, and Segregationist protesters are out in force. Feelings are running high, and the Black students run the gauntlet of taunts, spitting, and assaults. Sarah swiftly realizes that the white pupils will do whatever it takes to get rid of them.
Linda is the white daughter of the influential Segregationist, Mr Harrison, and she has absorbed all her father’s ideas on race. She is forced to work with Sarah on a school project, and they find themselves confronting some ugly truths about race and influence. But, underneath the hostility, they gradually sense an attraction which they both find much more frightening.
I found this book totally absorbing. I was particularly struck by the intelligent softly, softly way that Robin Talley gradually exposes the flaws in Linda’s arguments for Segregation. Linda’s ‘logic’ rests on a number of hidden, and immensely powerful, assumptions about Black intelligence and how Black people live and think. As she comes to understand that her assumptions are wrong, her case unravels. Is she brave enough to face up to where her new thinking will lead her? Sarah, too, has her own different challenges to face. Brought up in a God-fearing, Christian family, she believes that her feelings for Linda, which she dare not acknowledge, are sinful and wicked.
This book is about discovering that what you have been taught to believe may be wrong, and that, ultimately, all of us must decide for ourselves what is right. This is no polemic; there is no crude thrusting of the author’s views on race and sexuality down our throats. She’s much more subtle than that, and it pays off. This book packs a very powerful punch. Highly recommended for girls of 13 plus.
