Smelling Herself

Eleven-year-old Black girl takes on the night! Told through the voice of Bernadine, a precocious eleven-year-old wordsmith. Being an African American girl and living in West Oakland projects in 1964 can be a vulnerable and scary affair. Bernadine’s convinced that the solution to her predicament is to grow up. But she soon discovers that growing up is more complicated than she expected. Her precarious sense of well-being begins to unravel when Jessie Mae, a girl not much older than she, moves into the apartment above hers with her mother and “the Sheik,” her mother’s boyfriend, a door-to-door preacher who abuses the child. Fearless Bernadine makes it her mission to save Jessie Mae as though she’s saving herself and every other child who lives with constant threats, though the harder she tries to save Jessie Mae, the more her loved ones are put in danger. Smelling Herself is imbued with Bernadine’s humor, intelligence, and kindred love, as Terris McMahan Grimes unflinchingly investigate—through the eyes of a quick-witted child—what it means to navigate dangerous times without fully understanding the world she lives in. It’s the story of childhood’s brazen hopes and hindrances.