Redwood Court

REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK - "[A] richly textured and deeply moving debut" (The New York Times Book Review, Editors' Choice) about one unforgettable Southern Black family and its youngest daughter's coming of age in the 1990s.

"Mika, you sit at our feet all these hours and days, hearing us tell our tales. You have all these stories inside you: all the stories everyone in our family knows and all the stories everyone in our family tells. You write 'em in your books and show everyone who we are."

So begins award-winning poet DéLana R. A. Dameron's debut novel, Redwood Court. The baby of the family, Mika Tabor spends much of her time in the care of loved ones, listening to their stories and witnessing their struggles. On Redwood Court, the cul-de-sac in the all-Black working-class suburb of Columbia, South Carolina, where her grandparents live, Mika learns important lessons from the people who raise her: her exhausted parents, who work long hours at multiple jobs while still making sure their kids experience the adventure of family vacations; her older sister, who in a house filled with Motown would rather listen to Alanis Morrisette; her retired grandparents, children of Jim Crow, who realized their own vision of success when they bought their house on the Court in the 1960s, imagining it filled with future generations; and the many neighbors who hold tight to the community they've built, committed to fostering joy and love in an America so insistent on seeing Black people stumble and fall.

With visceral clarity and powerful prose, Dameron reveals the devastation of being made to feel invisible and the transformative power of being seen. Redwood Court is a celebration of extraordinary, ordinary people striving to achieve their own American dreams.

1. Which character resonated with you the most? Why?

2. What through-lines did you see across the generations?

3. What did 154 Redwood Court represent for Weesie and Teeta? For Rhina? For Mika?

4. "One of the things Weesie brought with her to Redwood Court that had been instilledin her in Georgia was an overwhelming sense that where systems fail, people prevail." How did this sense influence Weesie's actions? How did those actions influence their neighborhood?

5. We see through various characters' points of view throughout the novel, but it's really Mika's coming-of-age story. How would you characterize Mika? What was it like getting to know certain characters through her-and then through their own thoughts?

6. What do you imagine Sasha's interior world was like? What were her hopes and dreams?

7. What does Redwood Court have to say about the idea of family? Of community? How did the characters support each other throughout their lives? Where, if at all, did this support fall short?

8. "You have all these stories inside you-that's what we have to pass on-all the stories everyone in our family knows and all the stories everyone in our family tells," Mika's grandparents tell her. What family stories will you pass on?

9. The novel is suffused with nostalgia, from the lyrics of The Spinners and The O'Jays to decidedly '90s popular culture. What was this part of the reading experience like for you? How might these nostalgic moments enable a reader to connect even more deeply with the characters and story?

10. "You understand a thing differently when it's called something else, maybe closer to what it's about or what it's doing," Cousin Daisy says. "I think we do [have to call our neighborhoods ghettos]. It changes the relationship we have with our understanding of what has been allowed to us." Discuss the conversation Cousin Daisy sparks during her visit. How do the other characters react? What is your point of view on the argument? Does this conversation dull the shine of Redwood Court for Weesie, Mika, and the others? Why or why not?

11. Teeta and Major are both veterans. How are their experiences similar? How are they different? How does Teeta's advice to Major change the trajectory of his life?

12. Teeta and Major choose their battles when it comes to confronting racism- sometimes they choose to ignore it, or to play the supplicant role the white person in question expects. What did you think about these scenes?

"A triumph . . . Redwood Court is storytelling at its best: tender, vivid, and richly complicated."—Jacqueline Woodson, New York Times bestselling author of Red at the Bone

FINALIST FOR THE WILLIE MORRIS AWARD FOR SOUTHERN FICTION

"Dameron is a prizewinning poet and it shows: She does a beautiful job weaving in local vernacular and casting a fresh gaze on an engaging, though flawed, cast of characters. . . . This novel delivers the kind of choral experience that I have savored in books as disparate as James McBride's The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store and Elizabeth Strout's Olive Kitteridge."-Charmaine Wilkerson, author of Black Cake, for The New York Times Book Review

"Redwood Court exquisitely paints a portrait of Black Southern life, and in her debut novel, DeLana R.A. Dameron meticulously orchestrates a leading cast of characters that leap right off of the pages of this book! In this coming-of-age novel, readers get a glimpse of life through the eyes of the family's youngest daughter. The writing is nuanced, succinct, and brilliant."-Essence

"Redwood Court is big in every way. It's a paean, a praise-song to this family, and others like them, spreading love and goodwill and community in a society that still sorely needs love and goodwill."-Southern Review of Books

"A blueprint for writing about complicated, nuanced people and places with dignity and grace . . . DeLana R. A. Dameron's relentless love for Columbia, South Carolina, is palpable, and her exquisite storytelling brings us a story of lineage and legacy from unforgettable characters who grab your heart and make you laugh, weep, and hope with them, and for them."-Renee Watson, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Piecing Me Together

"A generously transportive novel, one that thoughtfully renders not only each of its characters but also the nuances of its geographies . . . The language within it echoes, feels familiar and warm. This book carried me to a joyful elsewhere."-Hanif Abdurraqib, author of National Book Award finalist A Little Devil in America

"A beautiful exploration of a family putting down roots despite the world being against them, and choosing to love one another-the broken parts and the whole-with every breath in their lungs and every beat of their enormous, powerful hearts . ... I found this family's story deeply moving."-Ann Napolitano, New York Times bestselling author of Hello Beautiful

"DeLana R. A. Dameron expertly weaves threads of grace, grit, and grief into a tapestry that captures the beauty of not just one particular family but family in general. This novel is a heartrending celebration of the ties that bind, and a poetic one at that."-Christine Pride, co-author of We Are Not Like Them

"Redwood Court is a beautiful and riveting novel of generational reckoning. DeLana Dameron offers with tenderness and a lyrical sensitivity, an insider's insight into the "big love" of the abundantly rich black southern life of tribe, community, and family."-Kwame Dawes, author of UnHistory

"The lives of several generations of a southern Black family are dramatized in interconnected stories in poet Dameron's captivating fiction debut."-Booklist