Elizabeth and hazel book club questions

David Margolick

I took a vacation to New York City lovely and have been on a mental vacation ever since, perhaps recovering from my vacation, perhaps recovering from the strain of living every day. The documentary was a good companion piece for the book because, rather than focusing on the picture and on the microstory of Elizabeth and Hazel, the documentary focused on Little Rock Central High, how it had changed in fifty years, and what still needs to change. Frankly, by the end of the book, I was done with both Elizabeth and Hazel, so I welcomed the related but different subject matter. If one looks only at that percentage, one could smugly assume that desegregation was successful, that black students won, so to speak. There are, after all, more black students than white at Central High. Here are some other figures. One could conclude all sorts of awful things: are the black students at Central High simply unprepared, are they deficient in some way, or does it have more to do with wealth than with race?

The most fascinating thing about this book is that Elizabeth and Hazel came together again after more than thirty years to reconcile and form a relationship. He explores how the haunting picture of Elizabeth and Hazel came to be taken, its significance in the wider world, and why, for the next half- century, neither woman has ever escaped from its long shadow. But when Alice' s grandmother, the reclusive author of a cult- classic book of pitch- dark fairy tales, dies alone on her estate, the Hazel Wood, Alice learns how bad her luck can really get: Her mother is stolen away - by a figure who claims to come from the Hinterland, the cruel supernatural world where her grandmother' s stories are set. Together, with the help of friends, family, and a goofy pack of mixed breed dogs, they confront and overcome the challenges of being misjudged and bullied. All adults welcomed! Book reviews and recommendations?

Who were the two fifteen-year-old girls from Little Rock—one black, one white—in one of the most unforgettable photographs of the civil rights era? From what worlds did they come? What happened to them? How did the picture affect their lives? The names Elizabeth Eckford and Hazel Bryan Massery may not be well known, but the image of them from September surely is: a black high school girl, dressed in white, walking stoically in front of Little Rock Central High School, and a white girl standing directly behind her, face twisted in hate, screaming racial epithets. This famous photograph captures the full anguish of desegregation—in Little Rock and throughout the South—and an epic moment in the civil rights movement. In this gripping book, David Margolick tells the remarkable story of two separate lives unexpectedly braided together.