The Darkest Child

A new edition of this award-winning modern classic, with new introduction, excerpt, and discussion guide

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?