num_pages: 336
description: Winner of the 2021 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction a thought-provoking and enchanting debut about a Black woman doing whatever it takes to protect all she loves at the beginning of the civil rights movement in Alabama. Its 1957 and after leaving the only home she has ever known Alice Young steps off the bus into the all-Black town of New Jessup Alabama where residents have largely rejected integration as the means for Black social advancement. Instead they seek to maintain and fortify the community they cherish on their side of the woods. In this place Alice falls in love with Raymond Campbell whose clandestine organizing activities challenge New Jessups longstanding status quo and could lead to the young couples expulsionor worsefrom the home they both hold dear. But as Raymond continues to push alternatives for enhancing New Jessups political power Alice must find a way to balance her undying support for his underground work with her desire to protect New Jessup from the rising pressure of upheaval from inside and outside their side of town. Jamila Minnickss debut novel is both a celebration of Black joy and a timely examination of the opposing viewpoints that attended desegregation in America. Readers of Brit Bennetts The Vanishing Half and Robert Jones Jr.s The Prophets will love Moonrise Over New Jessup.
language: English
title: Moonrise Over New Jessup
publisher: Algonquin Books