The Darkest Child, Delores Phillips
The Darkest Child, Delores Phillips
36 Rating(s)
List: $24.99 | Sale: $17.50
Club: $12.49

The Darkest Child

Author: Delores Phillips

Narrator: Bahni Turpin

Unabridged: 15 hr 23 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Recorded Books

Published: 01/30/2018


Synopsis

A new edition of this award-winning modern classic, with a new introduction In 1958 Georgia, the shade of a 13-year-old black girl's skin can make the difference in her fate. Tangy Mae is the smartest of her mother's ten children, but she is also the darkest-complected. The Quinns-all different skin shades, all with unknown fathers-live with their charismatic, beautiful, and tyrannical mother, Rozelle, in poverty on the fringes of a Georgia town where Jim Crow rules. Rozelle's children live in fear of her mood swings and her violence, but they are devoted to her. Rozelle pulls her children out of school when they are twelve years old so that they can help support her by going to work-as domestics, as field laborers, or down at "the farmhouse," where Rozelle takes her oldest daughters to turn tricks for her. Tangy Mae has been offered the opportunity to apply to an integrated high school, and might even have the chance to graduate if she can somehow avoid her sisters' fate. Can she break from Rozelle's grasp without violent-even fatal-consequences?

Reviews

Goodreads review by Debra on February 16, 2016

4.5 stars Whew! Wow what a book. What a beautifully written yet sad book. Why has this Author not written another book? Perhaps this was the only story she needed to tell. The writing was so wonderful and vivid that I could see/imagine what was happening. That is not always a good thing with this boo......more

Goodreads review by Zanna on January 26, 2016

This is a painful story told from the perspective of a girl, Tangy Mae, who suffers terribly at the hands of her mother, a woman with many children but no long term partner to support her. Tangy recognises that 'there was something terribly wrong with our mother' but is unable to escape from her inc......more

Goodreads review by Shawnaci on March 19, 2025

3/5 - This book was so sad and one that gave me all the feels. It’s definitely one of those books you have to be prepared and in the right headspace to read! - Reading this book really shed so much more light on that time period. My parents were born around this time so the emotional weight of all th......more

Goodreads review by Alysia on February 26, 2012

I read this book with my book club Mocha Girls Read and it was our selection for Black History Month. I have to say this was a hard read for me. I had a hard time getting caught up in all the craziness of the characters especially Rozelle aka Mama. Rozelle's character is an over dominating, bipolar......more

Goodreads review by Alisa on May 07, 2012

This is an EXCELLENT book. I say that because I felt a range of emotions as I turned the pages...rage, sadness, happiness, pity...I laughed, I cried. In reading this book I saw through its characters different ways people learn and/or choose to survive the hardships of life. A person can go through t......more