The Swans of Harlem

I'm not a ballet person, I can't say that I have even a passing interest in it, that would be overstating my level of interest in the topic, I picked up this book because it was one of last week's new nonfiction titles at my library and went in with no idea of what it was about.

There's a rather big chunk of this book that I found a bit meandering and sometimes a little hard to follow (even though these ladies are really bad ass and I assume that someone who has an interest in dance company dynamics and is better at remembering names than me might feel differently about just how meandering that part is) and that I was therefore not crazy about. That being said, the last 20/25% of the book is so packed with poignancy it made the more meandering part worth sticking with. The parts about remembering the dance partners they lost to the AIDs epidemic and the reunion between the older ballerinas and Misty Copeland were so beautifully and impactfully described that it was downright devastating.

Seriously though, this book would make a fantastic movie or show.

I liked that at the end the author shows that even when people do want to remember it's easy to lose track of people who paved the way and that it's important to share the duty to remember and honor them especially when they are part of a marginalized group which is routinely erased from their own history.