Dreamland Burning

Dreamland Burning by Jennifer Latham, published in 2017, is a young adult novel that melds historical fiction with mystery, connecting the history of racialized violence in Tulsa, Oklahoma to contemporary issues of racism. The novel has won several awards, including Amazon Editor’s Picks: Best Books of the Year for Young Adults (2017), Best Books for Teens (2017), and Best of the Best Books in Teen Fiction (2017).

Plot Summary

The novel is a dual narrative, told in alternating chapters by two mixed-race teens nearly a century apart. Rowan Chase is a biracial black 17-year-old from a wealthy family whose life changes when the skeleton of a murdered man is discovered underneath the home that her family has owned for nearly a century. The mystery of the dead man connects Rowan to William Tillman, born to a white father and an Osage Indian mother and 17 years old in 1921. Dreamland Burning juxtaposes Rowan and Will’s narratives, revealing parallels and the ways that, as Rowan explains, “History only moves forward in a straight line when we learn from it. Otherwise it loops past the same mistakes over and over again” (10).

Latham explores the largely forgotten history of the Tulsa race riot in 1921. During the era of Jim Crow segregation, Tulsa was home to Greenwood, a thriving African American community that was the wealthiest black neighborhood in the United States. Conflict began when Sarah Page, a white 17-year-old girl, accused Dick Rowland, a black 19-year-old boy, of assaulting her in an elevator during Memorial Day weekend. Mobs of white citizens fought to exact extrajudicial justice and lynch Rowland while black citizens of Greenwood armed themselves and showed up to stop them. In retaliation, white mobs directly attacked Greenwood in one of the deadliest race riots in US history, looting and burning about 35 blocks, including over 1,200 black-owned homes and businesses, to the ground. Additionally, about 6,000 black citizens were forcefully detained for as long as eight days.

Although no actual death count is known, historians estimate that up to 300 people were killed. While some of the casualties were white, the vast majority were black men, women, and children who were brutally murdered. Many who were not even involved in the conflict were dragged from their homes and killed. However, after the riot ended, none of the white perpetrators faced charges for violence. The massacre coincided with the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan and multiple race riots all over the country beginning in 1919. Despite its significance, the riot was systematically erased from the historical narrative immediately afterward. For the next 50 years, there was no reference to the massacre in schoolbooks or curricula.

As multiple historic societies and organizations have attempted to piece together the events of the Tulsa massacre, Dreamland Burning imagines and humanizes an unrecoverable history. Even separated by 100 years, Will and Rowan traverse similar terrain, both geographically and metaphorically. They both come to understand the true nature of bigotry and racial violence, both learning to set aside their own privilege and stand up with those who are oppressed. For centuries, the victims of racial violence in the United States have been silenced and forgotten. Latham’s novel suggests that the only way to break the patterns of painful histories is to investigate them, to ask why atrocities happened, how they might have been stopped, and how we can move forward.