Jean Alicia Elster Book Talk & Signing

December 30 2022 | 1:00pm to 2:30pm

Join us Friday, December 30 at 1p.m. for a special presentation and book signing by author Jean Alicia Elster on her books How It Happens, The Colored Car, and Who’s Jim Hines? in the Allesee Gallery of Culture.

 

 

About the books:

How It Happens

Focusing on three successive generations of African American women beginning during the turbulent post-Reconstruction period in Clarksville, Tennessee and ending in post-World War II Detroit, How It Happens is a story of race relations, miscegenation, and class. It explores how these women struggled to overcome the numerous racial and gender obstacles they faced as they staked their claim to the American dream.

The Colored Car

In the summer of 1937, after a train trip down south, a twelve-year-old African American girl discovers some life-changing truths about her world both in her hometown of Detroit and in America below the Mason-Dixon line.

Who’s Jim Hines?

Who’s Jim Hines? is a coming-of-age story about a 12-year-old African American boy coming to terms with the racial realities of Detroit in 1935.

 

About the author: A former attorney, Jean Alicia Elster is the author of the young adult novel How It Happens (Wayne State University Press, September 2021) which was honored as a 2021 Foreword INDIES Silver Winner for Young Adult Fiction and as a 2022 Midwest Book Award Silver Winner in Young Adult Fiction, as well as awarded the 2022 Bronze Medal in Young Adult Fiction by the Independent Publisher Book Awards. She is also the author of middle grade books Who’s Jim Hines and The Colored Car, bothpublished by Wayne State University Press and each selected as a Michigan Notable Book in 2009 and 2014, respectively. Her other books include the “Joe Joe in the City” series (Judson Press): I’ll Do the Right Thing, I’ll Fly My Own Plane, I Have a Dream, Too!, and Just Call Me Joe Joe.  Her essays have appeared in national publications including Ms.World Vision, Christian Science Sentinel and Black Child. In recognition of outstanding work, Elster was honored with a 2017 Kresge Artist Fellowship in Literary Arts and was awarded three residencies at the internationally acclaimed Ragdale Foundation.