Bibliographic Information
Title: All the Days Past, All the Days to Come
Author: Mildred D. Taylor
ISBN: 978-0-399-25730-8
Publisher: Viking Press
Copyright Date: January 7, 2020
Format: Hardcover
Genres
Fiction, Historical Fiction, Realistic Fiction
Awards
None
Reading Level/Interest Level
Young Adult
Plot Summary
The year is March 1944. Black people are still segregated. World War II was still going on. Cassie is in college in Jackson, Mississippi. Her little brother, Clayton Chester (Little Man) is about to go to war. Her brother Stacey moved north to Detroit, Michigan to get away from the South. Cassie graduated in the Spring and then headed north herself. However, she ran into the same segregation and racism issues in Detroit. When they got laid off, they headed back to Mississippi. The layoffs continued, and so the family moved out to California. They have a hard time getting jobs and head back east—except for Cassie, who gets an office job in Los Angeles and falls in love. When her lover dies, she moves to Boston. She ends up dating and living with a white man, and when her brother is in trouble, her brother Stacey comes to take her back with him to help the family and gets mad that she’s becoming part of white culture. Cassie chooses to stay. She gets her law degree. She chooses a different life.
The book chronicles their experiences with racism on the bus, in the military, at the doctor’s, in restaurants, with the law.
Author Background
Mildred D. Taylor is the award-winning author of numerous novels, including the famous Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, which was part of this series (Taylor, M.D., 2020). This series was a life’s work which took her forty-five years to write. Mildred was born in Jackson, Mississippi and grew up in Toledo, Ohio. After a stint in the Peace Corps, she created a Black Studies program at the University of Colorado and worked as a proofreader-editor. She now works as a full-time writer.
Critical Evaluation
This is the culminating book of a ten-part series that began with Song of the Trees in 1975. You don’t need to have read the other books to understand this one. It is character-driven, and the dialect gives a distinct voice to the characters. The author describes the lives of a Black family living through the Civil Rights Movement. She describes the nuances of what it’s like to experience systemic racism, what it’s like to be scared but also want to fit in and be successful and happy. She describes how happiness and success can be seen as abnegating your people and culture but how they don’t have to be mutually exclusive.
Programming Ideas
It would be interesting to have a compare and contrast book discussion around this book. We could create a chart with things that happened in the forties through the sixties and compare that with things that happen currently that we’ve heard of or seen in the news or experienced. We could talk about change and how it comes about. We could talk about the teens’ ideas for change.
Book Talk
Cassie is a Black person coming into adulthood at the very beginning of the Civil Rights Movement. She is trying to figure out how to balance family with trying to figure out where she fits in. She wants to love and learn and make a difference. Must she choose between that and her family?
Three words to describe this novel: absorbing, well-researched, compelling
Potential Challenge Issues and Defense Preparation
Although this book has some scathing depictions of racism in America, it is so well-researched that there is not anything to challenge. There is nothing gratuitous about the storytelling. This book is an important fictionalized historical perspective on the Civil Rights Movement.
Justification for Inclusion in Collection
Because the author has followed this family for ten books, the characters are all grown up. For this reason, it may not appeal to teens. However, it will appeal to teens who are interested in African American fiction, the Civil Rights Movement, prejudice, and racism. For that reason, it is an important inclusion in the library catalog. Additionally, if the child has read the whole series, they will have experienced the characters their whole lives and better relate to them as adults.
References
Taylor, M.D. (2020). All the days past, all the days to come. New York, NY: Viking
Image Sources Titlewave. (2020). All the days past all the days to come. Retrieved from https://www.titlewave.com/ebookpreview?flrid=543DJL6&inside_view_for=1170QZ2
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