This is the most recent Jacqueline Woodson novel, and like her other recent novel Another Brooklyn, this is a novel for adults. Like that novel, this is also a short, smallish novel that jumps from consciousness to conscious among a few different characters and time periods in the same family.
We meet a young couple having a child together in their teens, and as the baby is coming, they are drifting apart. These changes in their life prove to be too much and they can’t stay together. But in other moments in the novel, we get their various perspectives along with the perspectives of their child, her grandmother, the grandfather, and other voices that circulate this story.\
What this most reminds me of is James Baldwin’s If Beale Street Could Talk in part because of the short length, the direct and terse narration, and the obvious plot elements of young Black women pregnant facing the world. But unlike that novel, this isn’t about a partnership formed in the face of adversity, but more about the ways in which young women often have to look elsewhere for support in the face of pregnancy. It also reminds me of my own experience as a high school teacher and community college teacher talking with my students who are pregnant or have had kids and their experiences not just with the stress and pressure of that already nearly impossible situation but facing down the pressure and stress of everybody else watching them and judging them and blaming them, but not helping them.
(Photo: https://www.amazon.com/Red-at-Bone-Jacqueline-Woodson/dp/0525535276/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2USBN1EH6MVLV&keywords=red+at+the+bone+jacqueline+woodson&qid=1572116246&sprefix=red+at+%2Caps%2C138&sr=8-1)