The Reformatory by Tananarive Due

[james_davis_nicoll]

Robert Stephens, Jr.'s brief lapse in relentless vigilance provides Jim Crow era authorities with a pretext to sentence the African American boy to six months in a notorious reformatory, quite possibly a life sentence.

The Reformatory by Tananarive Due

Comments

[duskpeterson]

The system is definitely not dead. In the US county where I grew up, there was a nineteenth-century reform school for Black boys that has evolved into a youth detention center that - entirely by coincidence, of course! - has a majority-black population. Because of the prison's history of boys being mistreated, families and other concerned citizens have been trying to shut down this place for over a century now, without success.

(I chose that place as an appropriate setting for a historical youth prison story set in my state, checked it out in Google Maps, and found myself staring in astonishment at my old school, which was located on the detention center's grounds. I ended up writing a 1910s story about places I remembered from my 1970s schooldays.)

[mecurtin]

I've circled this book reluctantly because I feel like I need solace more than knowledge. Will there be any solace?

[james_davis_nicoll]

It works out OK in the end, but it's hard getting there.