Ida, in Love and in Trouble
by
Veronica Chambers

| Description

• Young Adult Historical Fiction

As the eldest child of freed Black parents who’d thrived in a community full of hope and possibility after the Civil War, young, courageous, and flirtatious Ida B. Wells navigates society parties and society prejudices to become a civil rights crusader.

| My Thoughts

Although this work of historical fiction has been published in the young adult category, it’s important to know that Ida isn’t a teenager in this novel. She’s a grown woman, the story spanning her early twenties to her early thirties. (With some information about her later years toward the end.)

Womanhood, Activism, and Danger

The flashes of irony caught my attention as I observed the social complexities Ida would face throughout the book.

She’s a Black woman—a career woman at that—who desires marriage but doesn’t see it as the ultimate point of womanhood. While she moves among society’s Black Elite during America’s Gilded Age and even travels and speaks around Europe, she isn’t the Victorian ideal many of the Black women of her time look to embody. Ida’s activism and journalistic work are too untidy and dangerous for that.

Literally dangerous—especially when her speaking out against the horrific practice of lynching Black Americans draws blatant, direct threats from murderous ruffians looking to lynch her too.

Switching into Biography Mode

Now, admittedly, as a lover of historical fiction, I didn’t have the smoothest reading experience with this book. The narrative tells rather than shows, and much of it reads like an overview, with so many events passing by in only brief portions. And there isn’t much character development for the many people Ida meets. So, with the exception of one atrocity involving one of Ida’s friends, I couldn’t feel along with her emotions about characters I hardly knew.

Because I found the reading to have a disjointed feel as a novel, I eventually switched to thinking of it more like a biography. That helped me to maintain my overall interest as I read, given that I’ve been reading and hearing nuggets about Ida B. Wells since my childhood.

American History

One honor regarding Ida in this book’s Coda filled me with bittersweet pride, particularly as a Black woman and a writer myself. More readers with an interest in American history would do well to pick this book up.

| Content Note

• many reports of violence, particularly against Black Americans
• no explicit sexual content
• language kept to a “PG” level