When Louise Lloyd was 16, she was kidnapped. Unfortunately,
the police cared little about what happened to young women in Harlem in 1916. Fortunately
for Louise and the other imprisoned girls, Louise fought
back. “She lifts the pen and buries its razor-sharp tip into his shoulder. She
grabs the gun from his holster and aims it at him, then unties the other girls,
the idea of freedom giving them the strength they need to get out.”
In Dead DeadGirls by Nekesa Afia, Louise is 26 and once again the reluctant Hero of Harlem.
Little has changed and when a serial killer targets girls in Harlem, Louise is
drafted to stop him. After several plot twists, she gets her man. A surprisingly
upbeat story considering prohibition and the racism of the period.
Louise had a mean right hook and was not afraid to use it. When she attacked a cop who is abusing a showgirl, Detective Theodore Gilbert drafted her into the investigation of the serial killer. There were places she could go where he could not. He gave her the rules: “The first? Always trust your gut. The second? Assume nothing. The third? Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three is a pattern.”
In addition to racism, the book also explores the homophobia of the period.
Louise fought back against her situation. “She was so tired of him thinking he knew better than her because he had been gifted with a penis. … because he was white.” She never gave up.
“[AUTHOR’S] HISTORICAL NOTE
While it is true that the 1920s were an era of social change in the Western
world, with the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Amendments [prohibition and women’s
suffrage] to the Constitution of the United States of America, that change was
for white women. The New Negro Movement was started in direct opposition to
these inequalities, as a refusal to submit to laws outlined in the Jim Crow
era, laws that were active until 1965.”
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