Belonging to the Air

Honest "Bird" Bennett is a young, Black girl with a hunger to learn what lies beyond the walls she shares with her mother, Maddy, and her grandmother, Odelia. Their home is governed by the hum of Maddy's sewing machine, echoes of Bird preparing supper, and Odelia's stories of times past. The women live in Bennettsville, Illinois, a freedman's town established by Bird's great-grandfather, where rural life pulses with church song and where peace is fragile with the neighboring white town, Tuckersville. As Bird comes of age, she must reckon with turbulence at home and with what it means to fall in love with a childhood friend. As an adult, rejecting a life of self-denial, Bird spreads her wings and plants roots in Harlem. After a decade of growth and loss, she is summoned back to Bennettsville to confront her family and her past as Tuckersville residents try to drive their Black neighbors from their land._x000D_In Belonging to the Air: A Novel, author Avery Irons imagines stories of resilience among Black Queer folks during the early 20th century. This skillfully woven narration follows one family's intergenerational experience of the Great Migration—from an escape from slavery, through the settling of a freedman's town, and to one young woman's journey to New York City and back. Irons' evocative and lyrical prose builds a world in which complicated characters try to care for one another in a country that does not care about them. The novel's dialogue jumps off the page and rings with a truth that lingers._x000D_Among the novel's cast of characters are a blind matriarch, a healing herb woman, and queer lovers. History talks to and through itself as elders confront youngsters and as racism shapeshifts in rural and urban settings across the decades. Belonging to the Air requires that readers think about how the United States' constructions of race, love, and freedom has, or has not changed, over time. And it demands that we consider the wisdom of our inner selves while we listen to that of our elders.