cover image Where I Must Go

Where I Must Go

Angela Jackson, . . Northwestern Univ., $24.95 (385pp) ISBN 978-0-8101-5185-7

Poet and playwright Jackson traverses the freshman year of protagonist Magdalena Grace, revealing the indignities that Maggie and her friends and family endure during the civil rights era. The loosely plotted narrative follows 17-year-old Maggie to Eden University in September 1967, where she is one of a few African-Americans on campus along with roommates Essie Witherspoon and Leona Pryor. Jackson portrays their youthful uncertainties, their desire to fight discrimination and their hesitancy about the future. In a series of vignettes, Maggie dips into black high culture, is a shaken observer to sudden violence, faces overt racism, is beset with family problems, learns the power of sexual attraction and, eventually, helps her friends mount a potentially dangerous protest. Overwritten and suffering from too large a cast of characters, the dazzling turns of phrase do not make up for a lack of cohesiveness. Admirers of Jackson will enjoy the poems that are sprinkled throughout the novel, but its sheer talkiness is a disappointment. (Sept.)