Dawn Turner - "Three Girls from Bronzeville" - Chicago Humanities Festival

Dawn Turner will discuss her memoir, "Three Girls from Bronzeville: A Uniquely American Memoir of Race, Fate, and Sisterhood." She will be joined in conversation by Dahleen Glanton.

Presented in partnership with the Chicago Humanities Festival

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Limited signed copies are available at both stores and online. 

About the Book: They were three Black girls. Dawn, tall and studious; her sister, Kim, younger by three years and headstrong as they come; and her best friend, Debra, already prom-queen pretty by third grade. They bonded—fervently and intensely in that unique way of little girls—as they roamed the concrete landscape of Bronzeville, a historic neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side, the destination of hundreds of thousands of Black folks who fled the ravages of the Jim Crow South. In the vein of The Other Wes Moore and The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace, Three Girls from Bronzeville is a piercing memoir that chronicles Dawn’s attempt to find answers. It’s at once a celebration of sisterhood and friendship, a testimony to the unique struggles of Black women, and a tour-de-force about the complex interplay of race, class, and opportunity, and how those forces shape our lives and our capacity for resilience and redemption.

About the Author: Dawn Turner is an award-winning journalist and novelist. A former columnist and reporter for the Chicago Tribune, Turner spent a decade and a half writing about race, politics and people whose stories are often dismissed and ignored. Turner, who served as a 2017 and 2018 juror for the Pulitzer Prize in commentary, has written commentary for The Washington Post, PBS NewsHour, CBS Sunday Morning News show, NPR’s Morning Edition show, the Chicago Tonight show, and elsewhere. Turner has been a regular commentator for several national and international news programs. She spent the 2014–2015 school year as a Nieman Journalism fellow at Harvard University. In 2018, she served as a fellow and journalist-in-residence at the University of Chicago Institute of Politics. Turner is the author of two novels, Only Twice I’ve Wished for Heaven and An Eighth of August and the memoir Three Girls from Bronzeville. In 2018, she established the Dawn M. Turner and Kim D. Turner Endowed Scholarship in Media at her alma mater, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

About the Interlocutor: Dahleen Glanton is a syndicated columnist who writes about issues that affect our everyday lives. She encourages dialogue on race, poverty, violence and human relations. She recently retired from The Chicago Tribune, where her work was recognized as a 2017 Pulitzer Prize finalist. She is the recipient of the 2018 American Society of News Editors MIke Royko Award, as well as several other local and national media awards. She holds a journalism degree from the University of Georgia. She grew up in Georgia and resides in Chicago.