Peterkin, J: Bright Skin

A dissection of social upheaval, Bright Skin is Julia Peterkin's most sophisticated book, dealing with urban migration, miscegenation, illegitimacy, and racism from the low country of South Carolina to the streets of Harlem. The story of Cricket and Blue - a woman who leaves and a man left behind - is at the heart of the African American experience. As technology replaced manual labor on the plantation, thousands of descendants of slaves made their way north to jobs in the cities, where black separatism flourished. Peterkin writes of these changing times with keen perception and descriptive brilliance in Bright Skin - a story of getting ahead by getting away, rejecting the past and embracing a new future.