A Gathering of Old Men, by Ernest J. Gaines.
I enjoyed this book more than I thought I would at onset. I’m always in awe of the ancestors who were able to take the very real experiences they lived through and use their imagination to reframe traumas and history in order to imagine a new, better, and broader world. It reminds me that imagination is, and will always be, a tool of resistance, and is one of the simplest and most accessible gateways we can use to create a better world right now.
It also had a brilliant depiction of your typical white liberal, found in the Candy character. Ernest was so ahead of his time.