Welcome Readers!
It’s time for a new Online Reading Challenge! In 2024, we will be heading to different decades every month. This month the Online Reading Challenge travels to the 1800s. Our Main title for January is Libertie by Kaitlyn Greenidge. Here’s a quick summary from the publisher:
The critically acclaimed and Whiting Award–winning author of We Love You, Charlie Freeman returns with Libertie, an unforgettable story about one young Black girl’s attempt to find a place where she can be fully, and only, herself.
Coming of age in a free Black community in Reconstruction-era Brooklyn, Libertie Sampson is all too aware that her purposeful mother, a practicing physician, has a vision for their future together: Libertie is to go to medical school and practice alongside her. But Libertie, drawn more to music than science, feels stifled by her mother’s choices and is hungry for something else—is there really only one way to have an autonomous life? And she is constantly reminded that, unlike her light-skinned mother, Libertie will not be able to pass for white. When a young man from Haiti proposes to Libertie and promises she will be his equal on the island, she accepts, only to discover that she is still subordinate to him and all men. As she tries to parse what freedom actually means for a Black woman, Libertie struggles with where she might find it—for herself and for generations to come.
Inspired by the life of one of the first Black female doctors in the United States and rich with historical detail, Kaitlyn Greenidge’s new and immersive novel will resonate with readers eager to understand our present through a deep, moving, and lyrical dive into our past.
This title is also available in large print and as a Libby eBook.
Looking for some other books set in the 1800s? Try any of the following.
- Astoria by Peter Stark
- Frog Music by Emma Donoghue
- In the Heart of the Sea by Nathanial Philbrick
- Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
- The Good People by Hannah Kent
- The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
- The Patron Saint of Pregnant Girls by Ursula Hegi
- The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates
As always, check each of our locations for displays with lots more titles to choose from!