Growing up Clae, narrator of Charlene Allen's My Fairy God Somebody, has been told that her father skipped out when she was just a baby. In their Gloucester, Massachusetts (just a few cities by train from where I grew up in Beverly) home it's been her and her mom for family. She's discovered that a mystery person in New York--someone she has come to call her Fairy God Somebody--has covertly been helping her mom out. Maybe if she can discover this person's identity she can find the larger family that she's always longed for.
Now she'll have her chance. She's been accepted for a prestigious journalism summer program in the Big Apple. When she arrives she bonds with two other Black girls in the program. It turns out they have challenges of their own. Nze is coping with the early onset glaucoma that is already stealing her vision and her parents' frantic search for a cure. Joelle is trying to arrange the perfect wedding that will bring her mother on board with her marriage.
As they provide support for each other it's a summer of discovery and learning set in one of this nation's most fabulous cities.
On a purrrsonal note, I too was deprived of extended family as a child. I longed for cousins, aunts, uncles--especially at Thanksgiving and Christmas when it was only me, Harriet, and the parents. My Uncle Ken, whom I adored, and his family only visited once. My father looked down on him because Ken never went beyond high school and was a contractor. I was a young adult when I learned that my mother had a cousin with 4 kids close to me in age. When I finally met them we hit it off so well. I still mourn being deprived of extended family growing up. It's probably one reason why community is so important to me.
A great big shout out goes out to the professors and my peers in the higher education program who are very much an extended family.
Jules Hathaway
Sent from my U.S.Cellular© Smartphone
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