Two Generations of Growing Up Black and Female

We decide to offer these books as a set to compare and contrast the experience of young black girls coming of age at different times and in different states.  Both celebrate telling the stories of our lives. 

Growing Up in The Ville in St. Louis, MO Paperback – November 2, 2022
by Pauline E Merry (Author), John M Goodman (Designer)
Five mostly autobiographical short stories are about a little colored girl who grew up in St Louis during the 1940s and 50s, with her observations about her safe, middle-class, upbringing in a segregated city that allowed her to develop the intellectual and social skills that served her so well as an adult. These personal insights into the life of a smart, curious, adventuresome little girl who wanted never to be "ordinary" are augmented by the author's social commentary about how colored people were treated during those years and how white control and dominance dictated the behaviors of everyone, blacks and whites alike.
Paper, 127 pages, pub. 2022

Warriors Don't Cry by Melba Pattoillo Beals - one of the Little Rock Nine
Drawn from her diary, the author writes a riveting account of her experience integrating Central High School. Her account reveals telephone threats, brigades of attacking mothers, rogue police, fireball, and acid-throwing attacks, economic blackmail, and finally a price of her head.
Paper, 222 pages, pub.1994