In 1959 Virginia, the lives of two girls on opposite sides of the battle for civil rights will be changed forever.
Sarah Dunbar is one of the first black students to attend the previously all-white Jefferson High School. An honors student at her old school, she is put into remedial classes, spit on and tormented daily.
Linda Hairston is the daughter of one of the town’s most vocal opponents of school integration. She has been taught all her life that the races should be kept “separate but equal.”
Forced to work together on a school project, Sarah and Linda must confront harsh truths about race, power and how they really feel about one another.
Boldly realistic and emotionally compelling,Lies We Tell Ourselves is a brave and stunning novel about finding truth amid the lies, and finding your voice even when others are determined to silence it.
Release Date: Sept 30, 2014 (U.S.), October 3, 2014
This is going to be more of a recommendation than a review, but y’all. I read this book in a day. I couldn’t put it down, even though I wanted to at times—and not because it’s bad, but because it’s such a tough read, particularly whenever the story shifts to Linda’s point of view.
It’s not an easy book. It’s not easy to read, not about the racism Sarah faces or Linda’s own beliefs about race. It’s harder still to read this and know that racism is still very much alive and well today, that so much and so little has changed.
There were so many times when Sarah or Linda were thinking about their sexuality, too, that I wanted to reach through the book and hug them—particularly Sarah. Because I’ve had those feelings, particularly being religious and queer, about if being both is okay or if it isn’t. And I think, to me, that was such an important narrative to see Sarah decide that she could be both, that God wouldn’t hate her.
But that’s what makes LIES WE TELL OURSELVES such an important book, and such a necessary one. Because these issues—race and sexuality and everything in between—they’re still important today, they’re still relevant today. Is LIES WE TELL OURSELVES difficult to read? Yes, but only because it strikes a chord, an all-too-necessary one that no matter how far we’ve come, we still have a long way to go.
In short, go. Go read this. It’s unflinching and honest and brave, and hard to swallow, but that’s what makes it so important.
