Dawn Turner is a journalist and novelist. A former columnist for the Chicago Tribune, she spent a decade and a half writing about race and people whose stories are often overlooked and dismissed. Her commentary has appeared in the Washington Post and on PBS NewsHour, CBS News's Sunday Morning, NPR and elsewhere. She has held fellowships at Harvard University, the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, and the University of Chicago. Three Girls from Bronzeville (Simon & Schuster, September 7, 2021) is her memoir about growing up on Chicago's South Side.
On your nightstand now:
The World According to Fannie Davis by Bridgett M. Davis is a daughter's gorgeous homage to her extraordinary mother. The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw is another stunner, a sleeper cell of a book that's devastatingly riveting.
Favorite book when you were a child:
Hands down, the Pippi Longstocking series. When my best friend (whom I write about in my new memoir) told me that we could be what we read, we, like Pippi, became adventurous girls who scoured our neighborhood for discarded items that we believed could be made whole and new again.
Your top five authors:
I loved James Baldwin because his brain was as big as God's. Gwendolyn Brooks and Toni Morrison taught me that language was lyrical and that images could be rendered with a breathtaking economy. Richard Wright reflected the moment with a piercing truth. Ernest Gaines wove high-stakes stories that were dense and filled with lessons.
Book you're faked reading:
I keep threatening to re-read some of the "classics" from high school and college to understand why they are "classics."
Book you're an evangelist for:
There are two: I view Isabel Wilkerson's Caste and Heather McGhee's The Sum of Us as companion books that could be foundational for any course on the insidious reach of race.
Book you've bought for the cover:
I loved the cover to Educated by Tara Westover. I thought the idea of the pencil mimicking the mountain was sublime. And the cover for Tressie McMillan Cottom's Thick displayed a subtle ferocity. I didn't know what I was in for when I picked up both books--but they both dazzled.
Book that changed your life:
Gwendolyn Brooks's Maud Martha taught me the value and beauty of writing about regular folks, especially those who form the heartbeat of beleaguered communities.
Favorite line from a book:
From Carter G. Woodson's The Mis-Education of the Negro:
"When you control a man's thinking you do not have to worry about his actions.... He will find his 'proper place' and will stay in it. You do not need to send him to the back door. He will go without being told. In fact, if there is no back door, he will cut one for his special benefit. His education makes it necessary."
Five books you'll never part with:
These five feed my love of history, great storytelling and stories about divergent paths: Ernest Gaines's A Lesson Before Dying; Jeff Hobbs's The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League; Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward; Slavery by Another Name by Douglas A. Blackmon; The Good Lord Bird by James McBride.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
Alex Kotlowitz's There Are No Children Here instructs us on the inhumanity of our zip code dictating our life outcomes.