Elise could mimic emotions she didn’t feel on command but had no ability to express the ones that were true. Discuss the complexities and tensions that arise from navigating societal expectations, familial legacies, and personal desires. Currently based in Los Angeles, Crystal works in e-commerce marketing for wellness and beauty brands, while she continues to pursue her passion for writing. I do think the contemporary perspectives are the weakest part of the book- they function more as a framing device than anything else and could have been better developed. With a Master’s degree in Journalism from New York University, Crystal has made her mark in the digital media landscape, with her writing featured in esteemed publications such as Salon, Jezebel, and The Huffington Post.

However, there was a large cast of secondary characters that came in and out of the story and were oftentimes hard to keep track of.

In the 1930s and 40s, Hazel is a black single mother raising a white-passing child in segregated North Carolina. Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published. My only real issue with this book was the early flashbacks of Kitty’s childhood story were a bit slow, but beyond that everything was great. Explore the relationships between mothers and daughters, sisters, and female friendships in the book. I had no idea what was going on the first chapter as Smith completely failed to set up the story and properly introduce the characters.

Together, we’ll explore the complexities of family, race, and gender, while discussing the thought-provoking book club questions that will leave us with so much to ponder. This weird, lovely and sweetly satisfying novel has a lot in common with the 1990s rom-coms Clover likes to sedate herself with after a patient dies. Her debut novel is a poignant multigenerational saga that explores the lasting effects of racism on American families. John, a modern-day celebrity, is caught up in scandals and controversies while trying to uncover the truth about Kitty’s past.

The book features dual timelines, with one focusing on Kitty Karr’s rise to stardom in Hollywood and the other centered around Elise St.

Sequestered for a week already, Elise found her stress now was compounded by her sisters’ pending arrival. The theme of passing is just as relevant as it was in the past, and people’s identities, backgrounds, and hardships are still just as valid and will never be overdone or tropey when the underlying causes, such as racism, permeate every facet of society and every Black American family tree. When the late White movie star, Kitty Karr Tate, leaves her multimillion dollar fortune and estate to the St. She is graced with her grandmother’s unusual blue-gray eyes, “proof of forced miscegenation generations before. That’s the crux of the story, told through different timelines and perspectives —mainly Kitty in the past and the eldest St.It’s just the story, didn’t have what it took to feel like the intention of Kitty’s journey, and how we ended up reading her story, really mattered in the end.