The Watsons Go to Birmingham – 1963

It's funny to think about which parts of books stick with you. I'd read The Watsons Go to Birmingham – 1963 a long time ago. So long ago that I didn't remember ever having actually read it. Heck, I didn't even know what it was about, save for the brief description we were given on the first day of class.

When I opened the book, I knew what it was about. The book was written in memory of four girls who died on the same day. I'd seen the Spike Lee movie Four Little Girls. I was expecting the book to fictitiously frame that event. When I started reading, I was surprised.

The book takes the form of a first-person narrative in an episodic format. Rather than being about the murder of four innocent girls, it is about a relatively normal family in Michigan. The children get into antics that are in many ways tame by some of today's standards. It isn't until the end of the novel that the historic incident occurs and impacts the lives of the novel's characters. In fact, race plays a relatively minor role for the first part of the book, and it isn't until the end that the reality of racism is fully realized for the characters.

What is funny to think about is which parts of a book like this stick with you. Just last week, before picking this book up, I was thinking about “some book” that I couldn't remember where a bully-like character insisted that the narrator give him a dollar that he found because of an illogical argument that the bully lost 50 cents the week before and that 50 cents and another 50 cents must have met up to make the found dollar. It sounded like something from The Wayside Stories of Wayside School, not a serious piece of historical fiction. Yet just a few minutes into the book, I run into this exact scene. The memories of having read this before flowed back to me: the fake garbage truck that picked up frozen people, the mom's story about her house getting burned down, the clever chapter titles, the Brown Bomber and the Ultra-Glide, overly-bundled kids and the mom's overreaction to the weather in Michigan. These were the kind of things I remembered (Even if I didn't know where Michigan (or Alabama, for that matter) were when I read it. What's funny is I didn't remember the ending. I knew what happened historically, but I didn't remember reading about it in a YA novel.

What struck me about this novel was the way it compared to The Book Thief. While both are historical fiction, The Book Thief takes place in a specific setting with specific conditions for it's purpose, but is relatively light on actual historical events. The Watsons Go to Birmingham, on the other hand, seems like it takes the opposite approach to the genre. The first two-thirds of the book could be written anywhere, in any time. The chapters largely read like something from a sitcom like Boy Meets World more than a work of historical fiction. It isn't until they ultimately reach Birmingham that the problems of the day become real for the characters.

A large portion of the book is light-hearted and fun. However, the tie in with historical events of racially-motivated violence shattered that image. Writing this now, I've realized that was probably the point that Curtis was trying to convey in writing the novel. I can't help but wonder why that didn't stick with me the first time I read this.