His father, a ghost to drug-use, silently haunts his mother, and forces her to carry the burden of raising a new generation of Black man alone. In contrast, Aubrey and his mother wander the country, barely surviving, just the two of them. Po’Boy and Sabe’s solid, committed relationship anchor their family-amidst its complicated, painful history-and their genuine love and loyalty serve as a keel to stabilize them in turbulent waters as they navigate towards safe harbor. Woodson’s characters embody various faces of African American experiences, and emphasize the importance of a stable family. And here lies much of Red at the Bone’s power it is at once a well-crafted, moving story, but it also inspires us to live the pain of American racism, to recognize its multi-generational impact, and to engage in conversations about things we, as readers, might not personally face on day-to-day basis. Through masterful storytelling, this family drama becomes every family’s drama, and we, as readers, might-for a moment-occupy the pain and generational trauma affiliated with this country’s racist history, even if we were born white and never experienced those hurts firsthand. Every character comes to life with their unique, first-person voices and as the novel progresses, I found their losses personal and deeply touching. As Woodson’s prose jump between characters in Melody’s family tree, the reader empathizes, suffers, and laughs with each of them. The novel opens in 2001 as Melody prepares to come-of-age in a traditional ceremony, one her conception interrupted for her own mother sixteen years prior. Red at the Bone alternates in point of view between sixteen-year-old Melody, her parents, and her grandparents. At the same moment, loyal, loving, at-risk Aubrey finds his way into their family by loving Iris and fathering her baby at age sixteen. Grand/father, Po’Boy, and Sabe provide a comfortable, respectable home to their only child, Iris, which her teenage pregnancy shatters then uproots. Grand/mother Sabe’s two-year-old mother was left scarred as a child from the fires of Tulsa in 1921, and forced with her family to migrate north eighty years later, Sabe swears she will never return to Oklahoma.

The family central to Red at the Bone is three generations deep, and it carries even more generations’ trauma and stories, including the Tulsa race massacre of 1921, the great migration north, teenage pregnancy, and the importance of saving for the future.

Set amidst the Brooklyn brownstones (similar to previously reviewed A Woman is No Man), but in Woodson’s family drama novel, the families are African American.

Jacqueline Woodson’s Red at the Bone (2019) is gut-punch of a book.

Red at the bone woodson