2023 Kentucky Book Club discussion

Hey all, I finished the book earlier this week. The ending made me cry and the entire book was equal parts touching and gutting. The book tells us the story of, largely, relationships within the Goode-Brown family and the four generations of women that make up that family. Themes of mental illness, loss, coming of age, womanhood and the concept of generational trauma permeate the book.

As someone who grew up in a small, Eastern Kentucky town I often found myself relating the most to parts of the book where Minnie Mae, Tookie and Lucy found themselves lost in conversation about the sort of before times in Opulence, the side-eyed stares of people at church and the family's connection and history to the land. It made me think of the many times my mom and aunts have traveled into conversation about so-and-so who married such-and-such and how this store used to be here and this man was pastor of the church back then, and so on and so forth.

I'll open it up for all of us here to share any thoughts you had, thanks!

This is my second time reading The Birds of Opulence and each time it strikes me how much Mona and Yolanda kind of fade out of the narrative by the end. Even though they aren't lost in the same way as the other three women, even though they're still very much alive, they're still lost and gone from the homeplace, and that feels just as sad as anything else.