The Reformatory

The Reformatory by Tananarive Due

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I read this book for a book group I'm in. As one of the members of my group said at our recent meeting, "this is a book you read because you have to, not because you want to." The book takes place over a few weeks in the summer of 1950 in the Florida panhandle. Robert Stephens Jr., a black 12-year-old, kicks a white boy in self-defense and gets sent to the reformatory for 6 months.

This is the start of a harrowing experience of casual brutality, sadism and racism. While he's in, his sister Gloria, sixteen, attempts to get him out, dealing with her own threats of rape and beatings. The story is an unflinching look at how everybody, including whites, were oppressed by a pseudo-feudalistic Southern society. Their are ghosts or "haints" but those are not the source of horror - the horror comes from humans.

This is not a pleasant book to read, but an important one.



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