Grown Women

by: Sarai Johnson
published: July 9, 2024
genre: Historical Fiction, Contemporary
392 Pages, E-Book
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Maybe because her heart had been broken a few times since then, always by her mother, of all people.

I don’t think I’ve read a better book this year—and honestly, I’m not even sure I can fully put into words everything I felt while reading it.

It’s 1974, and Charlotte finds herself in Chilly Springs, Tennessee—a far cry from the home she once shared with her mother in Atlanta. She’s running from her past, unsure of where her pain and trauma will lead, but hoping this quiet town can offer a place to start over and raise her daughter—the daughter she wasn’t even sure she wanted to keep. Unwilling and unprepared to be a mother, Charlotte’s first major decision for her daughter, Corinna, is to find her a father.

Corinna isn’t a difficult child, but the space between her and her mother is heavy. They live more like roommates—moving around each other instead of together. Corinna doesn’t understand why her mother seems to hate her or how to show up in the world as a young Black girl without guidance. Desperate for affection and direction, she looks for love in a high school football star—and ends up with a baby girl at eighteen. Her partner wants nothing to do with fatherhood because it might ruin his future. (Whatever the f*ck that means.)

With baby Camille in the house, three generations of women live under one roof. Two of them are deeply wounded, and neither has the tools to offer Camille the love and stability she needs. When Corinna is emotionally shattered during her next relationship—and after already leaving Camille in Charlotte’s care—she decides she can’t stay and risk hurting her daughter more. So, Charlotte and Corinna agree to send Camille to Washington, D.C., to live with her great-grandmother, Evelyn, now a renowned author and professor at Howard. Evelyn, burdened with guilt from how she treated Charlotte, vows to give Camille the life they couldn’t.

My Final Thoughts:

As someone with my own mother wounds—and likely my mother carries her own wounds—this book was both triggering and illuminating.

Every word in Grown Women is crafted with care, and each woman’s voice is honest and vivid. Grandpa David was a standout—flawed but present, honest, and emotionally available in ways no other man in the book managed to be. He reminded me of my own grandfather, and I regret not asking more questions before he passed. The story doesn’t offer a tidy resolution, which I appreciated. Life rarely wraps up in a neat bow. These women—Charlotte, Corinna, Camille, and Evelyn—carry scars, avoid hard conversations, and struggle to forgive, even when the person they need forgiveness from is gone. But they each begin a journey toward healing, however imperfectly.

This book is a raw portrayal of generational trauma, the burden Black women often carry, and how survival sometimes has to be enough. If there is a Black woman out there who didn’t have to “beat the odds,” (whatever those odds may be) I love that for her—but for most of us, this book will feel painfully, beautifully familiar.

Read it.