{ "item_title" : "Love, Rita", "item_author" : [" Bridgett M. Davis "], "item_description" : "A searing tribute of sisterhood and family, a moving memoir of profound love and loss from the acclaimed author of The World According to Fannie Davis.In Love, Rita Bridgett M. Davis tells the story of her beloved older sister Rita, who knew Bridgett before she knew herself. Just four years apart in age, as the two sisters grew into young adulthood they left behind their childhood rivalry and became best friends.Rita was a vivacious woman who attended Fisk University at age sixteen, and went on to become a car test driver, an amateur belly dancer, an MBA, and later a popular special ed teacher; in doing so, she modeled for her younger sister Bridgett how to live boldly. And in the face of family tragedy, the two sisters leaned on each other to heal; their closeness grew, until Rita's life was cut short by lupus when she was forty-four. This led Bridgett to ask the simple, heartbreaking question: Why Rita?Love, Rita is a brave and beautiful homage that not only celebrates the special, complex bond of sisterhood but also reveals what it is to live, and die, as a Black woman in America.This moving memoir, full of joy and heartbreak, family history alongside American history, uses Rita's life as a lens to examine the persistent effects of racism in the lives of Black women--and the men they love. This poignant, deeply resonant portrait of an unforgettable woman and her impact on those she left behind is essential reading on the Black experience in America.How does one woman's life reflect a nation's story?The Bond of Sisterhood: Follow Bridgett and Rita's journey from childhood rivalry to an unshakeable friendship that offered strength in the face of family tragedy.A Portrait of Black Womanhood: Celebrate Rita, a vivacious woman who lived boldly as a car test driver, an MBA, and a beloved teacher, modeling a life of boundless possibility.Grief and Healing: Navigate the heartbreaking question of Why Rita? and the author's search for meaning after her sister's life was cut short by lupus at forty-four.Sharp Social Commentary: Examine the persistent effects of racism through the lens of one family's story, revealing the deep connection between personal history and American history.", "item_img_path" : "https://covers1.booksamillion.com/covers/bam/0/06/332/208/0063322080_b.jpg", "price_data" : { "retail_price" : "29.99", "online_price" : "29.99", "our_price" : "29.99", "club_price" : "29.99", "savings_pct" : "0", "savings_amt" : "0.00", "club_savings_pct" : "0", "club_savings_amt" : "0.00", "discount_pct" : "10", "store_price" : "29.99" } }

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An acclaimed novelist, memoirist and filmmaker, Bridgett M. Davis is the author of the award-winning memoir The World According to Fannie Davis, which chronicled the life of her entrepreneurial mother. Her second memoir, Love, Rita: An American Story of Sisterhood, Joy, Loss and Legacy, is a riveting and often heartbreaking portrait of Davis’ beloved older sister. In Love, Rita’s introduction, Davis reflects on the pivotal role that numbers played in their upbringing in Detroit, where their heroic mother supported the family as a number runner (“the numbers” were an unsanctioned lottery played in Detroit’s Black community). “We understood intuitively that numbers contain energy,” Davis writes, “and if we let them, they provide insight.” Rita’s personal number was four; she was the fourth child, four years older than the author. Rita also died at age 44 from complications with lupus. Inspired by their sisterhood and Rita’s letters, always signed, “Love, Rita,” Davis tells a compelling story of growing up in 1960s Detroit. While Love, Rita keeps its spotlight on Rita, the memoir encompasses significant moments in the author’s life as well. It’s also a sober reflection on the impact that racism and the medical establishment have on the lives of Black Americans, especially women. Davis seamlessly weaves her family’s narrative with statistics about the ways in which racism and societal trauma impact Black women’s lives and medical outcomes, many of them devastating. For example, Black women with lupus die up to 13 years earlier than white women with the same disease.

Read our interview with Bridgett M. Davis, author of ‘Love, Rita.'

Davis brings a novelist’s sensibility to this homage to her sister, making effective use of the techniques of creative nonfiction storytelling, including dramatic scenes and dialogue. She also mines family treasures, including poignant handwritten letters the young Rita wrote and stuck into the family Bible. The first said, “Dear God, Please stop me from worrying.” Most of all, readers get to know Rita, a talented young woman who began college at Fisk University at age 16, then earned an MBA and became a special education teacher, a dedicated aunt and devoted friend, and a woman whose life was cut short by a devastating chronic disease. By the end, the reader will come to agree with the words Davis wrote in her sister’s obituary: “Rita was unforgettable.”