Introduction

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.

It’s 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 Jessup’s longstanding status quo and could lead to the young couple’s expulsion—or worse—from the home they both hold dear. But as Raymond continues to push alternatives for enhancing New Jessup’s 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 Minnicks’s 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 Bennett’s The Vanishing Half and Robert Jones, Jr.’s The Prophets will love Moonrise Over New Jessup.

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Excerpt

Part One
I.
The moon rises and sets, stitching eternity together, night by night. Love-spun thread binds family when even years, or blue skies, stand between one and another’s touch. Generations travel the same footprints, reach hands to the same climbing branches, and warm the same brown skin under the Alabama sun. Maybe “family” brings to mind only blood, marital relations, and it’s easy to understand that way of thinking. Love by my hand tethered generations to generations, as well as kin by skin, in this place where all in me, and of me, can thrive. ... view entire excerpt...

Discussion Questions

From the Publisher:

1. At the very beginning of the book, Alice says, “I had never planned, or wanted, to leave Alabama,” although she grew up outside of New Jessup. But she also longs to find Rosie throughout the novel. Were you surprised to learn that she never wanted to leave Alabama? Why or why not? Were you surprised to learn the details of Rosie’s life? Why or why not?

2. How would you describe Alice when she steps off the bus for the first time in New Jessup? Why do you think Alice sobs when she first realizes that she’s ended up in what appears to be a thriving, all-Black community? What did you think of the way she is embraced into the town by the Browns, Miss Vivian, and Mr. Marvin?

3. Though Alice, her friends, and family refer to New Jessup as a “town,” it was never formally incorporated as a municipality after the 1903 riot. Technically, this would make it a Black settlement. Why do you think it was important to Raymond and the rest of the members of the New Jessup NNAS to incorporate New Jessup into its own city?

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