"The Girl Who Fell From The Sky" by Heidi Duro


Heidi W. Durrow (born June 21, 1969) is an American writer, author of best-seller The Girl Who Fell From the Sky, and the winner of the 2008 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially-Engaged Fiction.

This novel tells the story of Rachel, the daughter of a Danish mother and black father. When Rachel, her mother, and her younger brother fall nine stories from an apartment building, Rachel is the only survivor, and she’s taken in by her black grandmother in a predominantly white Portland neighborhood. With her brown skin and blue eyes (a white girl’s eyes in a Black girl’s face) Rachel faces the challenge of learning what it means to be biracial in a black-and-white world. Duro offers a masterful novel that interrogates the cultural construction of race in America and challenges us to confront our own prejudices.




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