A review by meaganmart
I Thought My Soul Would Rise and Fly: The Diary of Patsy, a Freed Girl, Mars Bluff, South Carolina, 1865 by Joyce Hansen

4.0

It shames me to admit that although we "learned" about the Reconstruction Era during my formal education, I realized after reading this book that we focused almost entirely on what the Reconstruction Era looked like for *white* Southerners and none of the prejudices and challenges faced by newly freed enslaved people. I Thought My Soul Would Rise and Fly will be a springboard for me to learn more about the experience of African American people during this time period and the struggles of fighting for their freedom, building lives of their own in the face of incredible racism and laws trying to restrict them at every passage, and just the general experience of being Black in the United States between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of the Civil Rights Era.