 Message from Myron
As she grapples with her mortality, Mabel is dealing with the impact of a severe illness at an age that should be carefree. She is a teenager, but she has to answer questions – or ask questions – few her age must consider.
“To survive on this earth, we escape into ourselves,” Junauda Petrus writes. “Hide in plain sight. Finding solace, advice and lovers. No light. No air. No need. All this is a dream anyway. Mysteries only the ancestors know how to swim to the bottom of.”
This book has themes of spirituality and love and longing. This book has themes that center the complexities of sexuality. This book focuses on care and tenderness. It talks about our connection to past and future generations. It discusses healing.
But I also think this book focuses on home. For Audre and Mabel, their lives had been disrupted by situations that were not in their control. They had – in their individual and connected journeys – been thrust onto a path that did not always make sense.
But they also had home, which in this book, is not a place always but is often people, moments and relationships. Home is a feeling – that feeling one can have when they’re in the presence of love, a genuine and unbreakable love.
They had in their own way found home in a new home.
I think that theme is one that this book reveals. It’s the one that meant a lot to me. Because I do not live where I am from, and I understand the disarray that can entail. And I also understand what happens when you build a new world. That matters in this book.
Home can mean so many things.
Discussion question
The title of The Stars and the Blackness Between Them and the memoir within the story speak to two major themes of the novel: Blackness and the cosmos. What ways do you see these themes interwoven within the book? What do these themes mean for you in your life and your experience?
Events
Mary Ann Key Book Club Discussion: The Stars and the Blackness Between Them
Multiple dates and locations
Join your neighbors in a discussion of our 2025 season selection: The Stars and the Blackness Between Them by Junauda Petrus. Learn more and register online.
Mary Ann Key Book Club: A Conversation with Junauda Petrus
Wednesday, April 23, 2025, 6:30pm
Minneapolis Central Library
Join the Mary Ann Key Book Club for an exclusive evening featuring Junauda Petrus. Petrus will be joined in conversation by Star Tribune columnist and book club partner Myron Medcalf. The conversation will conclude with a Q&A and book signing with the author. Media partner: Star Tribune. Sponsor: Friends of the Hennepin County Library.
Register to attend in-person.
Register to watch the Zoom livestream.
Teen Lit Con: A Conversation with Junauda Petrus
Saturday, April 26, 12:30 p.m.
Two Rivers High School, 1897 Delaware Ave, Mendota Heights, MN
For teens. Connect with Junauda and engage in activities centered around the book at Teen Lit Con, an event where YA authors, books, teens, and fun collide. The free event runs 10 a.m.-3 p.m. and is open to the public, but the event and activities are focused on teens. The goal is to give teens the opportunity to meet authors, learn about writing and publishing, and enjoy the literary fun. All readers of YA literature are welcome, but we want teens to feel that this event is for them.
Resources for reading, listening, and learning
The Bond: Our Babies, Our Voices is a limited series podcast that shares the stories of Black, Native, and Latina women in Minnesota. The podcast explores how women worked to have optimal birth outcomes but met challenges within the healthcare setting.
OutFront Minnesota’s mission is to build power within Minnesota’s 2SLGBTQIA+ communities and address inequities through intersectional organizing, advocacy, education, and direct support services. They envision a safe and equitable world where all members of our communities are free to lead lives of opportunity, autonomy, and full self-expression.
QUEERSPACE collective, launched in April 2021, is the first mentorship program created specifically for LGBTQ+ youth in Minnesota. QUEERSPACE collective creates space for LGBTQ+ youth to feel safe and empowered to be their true selves.
Upcoming library programs
Protest Music
Multiple dates, times, and locations
Music has the power to join people together in a cause, to the point where governments have banned particular songs out of fear that music will inspire rebellion or revolution. Part of a 4-part series. Attendance at all four sessions not required. Collaborator: MacPhail Center for Music. This program is funded with money from Minnesota’s Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund. Learn more here.
Shifting Perspectives Exhibit: Closing Reception
Sunday, April 27, 3-4:30pm
Minneapolis Central
Join us for the closing celebration of the Shifting Perspectives exhibit at the Cargill Gallery on the second floor of Minneapolis Central. The exhibit, curated by the non-profit organization Art from the Inside, showcases thought-provoking pieces from talented artists currently serving time in Minnesota and reflects on the power of art to transform lives and challenge narratives. The exhibit is open to the public from March 1 to April 27. This program is funded with money from Minnesota’s Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund. Learn more here and here.
About the Mary Ann Key Book Club
The book club was inspired by a Star Tribune column written by Myron Medcalf – the great-great-great-grandson of Mary Ann Key.
“I’m honored to partner with Hennepin County Library to launch the Mary Ann Key Book Club, named after the matriarch of my family, who was enslaved in Georgia in the 1850s. Purchased for $1,000 at the age of 14, Mary Ann Key persevered. Her body was in bondage, but slavery never stole the freedom of her heart, mind and soul. This book club is about focusing on the truths of the past, our challenges in the present and the possibilities of the future…”
– Myron Medcalf
This program is supported by Friends of the Hennepin County Library. Their generous financial support is helping to provide greater access to print and eBook copies of the featured books. Media partner: Star Tribune.
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