Your Plantation Prom Is Not Okay

by Kelly McWilliams

Genres: YA Contemporary Romance

Synopsis

This sharp-witted, timely novel explores cancel culture, anger, and grief, and challenges the romanticization of America's racist past with humor and heart—for readers of Dear Martin by Nic Stone and Grown by Tiffany D. Jackson.
 
Harriet Douglass lives with her historian father on an old plantation in Louisiana, which they’ve transformed into one of the South's few enslaved people’s museums. Together, while grieving the recent loss of Harriet’s mother, they run tours that help keep the memory of the past alive.
 
Harriet's world is turned upside down by the arrival of mother and daughter Claudia and Layla Hartwell—who plan to turn the property next door into a wedding venue, and host the offensively antebellum-themed wedding of two Hollywood stars.
 
Harriet’s fully prepared to hate Layla Hartwell, but it seems that Layla might not be so bad after all—unlike many people, this California influencer is actually interested in Harriet's point of view. Harriet's sure she can change the hearts of Layla and her mother, but she underestimates the scale of the challenge…and when her school announces that prom will be held on the plantation, Harriet’s just about had it with this whole racist timeline! Overwhelmed by grief and anger, it’s fair to say she snaps.
 
Can Harriet use the power of social media to cancel the celebrity wedding and the plantation prom? Will she accept that she’s falling in love with her childhood best friend, who’s unexpectedly returned after years away? Can she deal with the frustrating reality that Americans seem to live in two completely different countries? And through it all, can she and Layla build a bridge between them?
 

Release date: May 2, 2023

Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Print pages: 320

Sample

LET’S START BY getting one thing straight: I do not live on a plantation.

Not the kind you mean.

Once upon a time, enslaved people did work sugarcane in Westwood’s fields, but years ago, Mom, Dad, and I restored it into an enslaved people’s museum—and that’s a totally different thing.

Of course, there is a Big House at Westwood, white with columns like thick marble teeth, poised to devour everything in sight… but we don’t sleep there. Dad and I live in a new home in the woods, because we’re not about to be the Black family in the horror movie that doesn’t leave the haunted house.

I’ve been a Westwood tour guide since my fifteenth birthday, when Dad gave me an ID card and his blessing to teach the hard truths we learned while restoring this place. I love what I do, but guiding tours can really take it out of you. It’s the proximity to suffering, to a history that should feel ancient, but doesn’t. In the long grasses, amidst the orchards and bare-floor cabins and whispering live oak trees, time collapses like a wormhole. Yesterday is today and tomorrow feels impossible. You know what I mean, especially if you’re Black or Indigenous or otherwise marginalized. You don’t even have to live on a plantation museum to breathe air soaked with history you can’t escape.

At the end of today’s long shift, I’m sitting slumped at my desk in the Welcome Center, vaguely staring at our exhibit on the Middle Passage. My last tourists have finished buying their books and postcards, the parking lot’s emptying out, and I’m stuck here manning the phones, wishing to God that we’d invested in central air. Southern summers don’t mess around.

But my biggest problem right now is a jackhammer.

Last year, a mystery woman purchased the plantation next door: a neglected cane farm called Belle Grove. All summer, they’ve been doing endless construction. It feels like I can hear every hammer striking every nail.

If I know anything about River Road, which is plantation central on this stretch of the Mississippi, there’s zero chance that Belle Grove’s being transformed, like Westwood, into a memorial. More likely than not, it’s about to be some awful bed-and-breakfast—and I’d bet my right thumb the proceeds will benefit somebody white.

And the jackhammering. It goes on and on. I’ve never been so ready to clock out, get home, and fall into a Netflix-shaped hole.

With two minutes until closing, I slip a sweaty lanyard off my neck. The ID tag reads HARRIET DOUGLASS, VOLUNTEER GUIDE. Outside, a high voice spirals out of control, and that’s when a bad feeling sinks its claws into me, familiar to anyone who’s ever held a customer-service position. You get a kind of premonition that some bull’s about to go down—especially when it’s bound to make you late.

In my case, the premonition takes the form of a stout white woman—one of my four o’clock tourists—making her way across the grounds, a surly preteen in tow.

Please don’t come in here, lady. I am not in the mood.

A silver bell rings, and she’s arrived. Her hand’s wrapped around her phone like a claw, and her kid, maybe twelve or thirteen, looks utterly resigned. Like he knows his mom’s about to make a scene. I don’t want to stereotype, but her Ritz-Carlton visor totally screams Vacation Karen.

Behind the desk, my spine snaps straight. Customer-facing systems engaged.

Meanwhile, I rack my brains, trying to remember if she looked this pissed on tour. But honestly, I didn’t pay her much mind. I was too focused on Mr. Goodman, a Black retired janitor who came to our museum looking for his ancestors.

Long ago, he’d heard a rumor that one of his kinsfolk passed through Westwood. He wore an old-fashioned camera slung hopefully around his neck, and every time I looked at it, I felt like the red heart emoji, cracked in half. The group held their breath while he examined our memorial wall, inscribed with the name of every enslaved person who worked this land. The green-black marble shone, shivering like water… and there it was, his family name. Mr. Goodman let out a surprised huff, and then broke down in big, gulping sobs. Black men, tough all year long, often weep at Westwood, but I never get used to it. The sweet older white couple from Florida started crying right along with him, snuffling into their matching flamingo shirts.

But this lady I’m facing now? She looked straight-up inconvenienced—and she didn’t shop like the other tourists. I bet she’s been sitting in her rental car this whole time, just stewing.

“Excuse me, young lady! Where is your manager?”

I hate this part. “Ma’am, what seems to be the problem?”

She jabs a finger at me. “You are the problem. This isn’t a plantation tour. It’s an ambush.”

Between my ribs, a critter I call the rage monster wakes up, flexing sharp claws. Ever since Mom died, I suck at controlling my temper.

“I mean, the nerve of trying to make us feel guilty for something that’s not even our fault!”

“We never intended—”

“And what about the Westwood family, hmm? They built this country, but you don’t have a kind word for them. Don’t you know slavery used to be normal? There were good owners, too.”

That phrase, good owners, explodes behind my eyes like a firework.

It’s a tale as old as time: A white woman who’s read one too many historical southern romances takes a vacation to Louisiana, then shows up at Westwood expecting to see the plantation from Gone with the Wind. She wants nothing more than to visit rooms full of antique furniture, maybe buy a cute parasol from the gift shop and call it a day.

But what we do here isn’t like that at all. Westwood is more like the Holocaust Museum—or the 9/11 Memorial. Some ex-plantations will sell you a fairy tale, but here, we tell it like it is.

Why can’t this lady see that?

Dr. Maples says that when I feel overwhelmed, I should look around. Remind myself what’s real.

Outside the window, a willow sways in the swampy breeze, and the chickens nap in their coop. Dad’s scared of chickens—I know, right?—but Mom always wanted fresh eggs in the morning. Now that she’s gone, I take care of the flock.

I turn back to my angry tourist.

“At Westwood, we focus on the perspectives of enslaved people. I’m sorry you feel guilty, but that wasn’t our intent.”

The woman throws her son in front of her like a shield. “Look at my Brayden. Just look at him. He’s traumatized.”

Brayden slouches, obviously wishing he were anywhere but here.

Like I’ve been dunked in freezing water, I suddenly miss Mom.

As a museum operator, she never blamed white folks for the feelings they brought to our tours. She’d know exactly how to reach out to Brayden—how to calm his mother, too.

My mouth opens and closes, but nothing comes out. I just don’t have my mother’s irresistible calm. Don’t have anything of hers, really, unless you count the tiny upturn of my nose.

“I know it’s cool these days to be the victim, but this was a bit much. Those creepy statues of African children. This is not what we signed up for at all.”

Though my smile stays stitched in place, fury mounts behind it.

Unlike Brayden, the enslaved children memorialized in statues throughout Westwood were actually traumatized—their childhoods stolen forever. One of the Lost Girls stands outside the office, overlooking the chicken coop. She’s dressed in sackcloth, and her eyes are open, iron-forged sores.

Her name is Louisa.

In a snap, I tumble off script. “What exactly were you expecting from a plantation tour, ma’am?”

She’s thrown. “You know—Civil War heroes and the antebellum lifestyle. The real history.”

“Our mission, as clearly stated in our brochure, is to fight present-day racism with historical education. If we don’t study the past, we’re doomed to repeat it. There’s no reason to be ashamed by what you don’t know about this country’s racial—”

“Are you calling me racist? My best friend is Black, young lady!”

Karen takes a threatening step toward me, smelling of sweat and sunscreen.

“Where’s your manager?” She cranes to see behind me, then starts banging on the call bell. “Hello? Is anybody there?”

My “manager” is my dad, and he’s a historian with a doctorate from Stanford. Right now, he’s busy working on his new book. I’m not about to bother him for this Real Housewife of Wherever.

I snatch the bell away. “It’s just me today.”

“Well, I don’t accept that.”

“You’re welcome to put your complaint in the comment box.”

Her eyes drop to the old shoebox we keep as a decoy for aggressive guests. She snatches up a piece of paper and scribbles intently, sweat clinging to the hairs on her upper lip. Past her shoulder, the sailcloth of the Middle Passage exhibit shudders in the breeze, beckoning to those who care.

Brayden rolls his eyes upward, examining our ceiling—and my heart goes out to him. His mother’s a lost cause, but Westwood might be a formative experience for this kid. He could use what he’s learned to grow up differently from his mom. It’s a slim chance, but not impossible. And it’s one of the reasons Westwood exists.

While far-off construction workers holler, I try to catch his eye.

What would Mom say to him?

She always found grace under pressure. Even for racists. Especially for them.

Just then, my very favorite chicken, Rosemary, pecks the back door. Tippity tap. She’s notorious for flying the coop.

“There.” Red-faced, Karen punctuates her letter. “Don’t be surprised if you find yourself out of a job. It’s completely inappropriate to discuss whippings and—” She lowers her voice to a stage whisper. “And sex around children.”

I blink. “What?”

She scowls. “That woman.”

Face heating, I rear back. We don’t talk about sex on the tour, obviously, but we do tell the truth about the women Westwood purchased specifically for the purpose of bearing children.

I think it’s Anna’s history that she objects to.

Poor freaking Anna.

I always save her story for the end, as I’m leading the group across the Freedom Bridge. According to Dad’s findings, Anna was a teenaged girl who bore five children in five years—all of them sold away from her. Just think about that: She birthed her babies, held them, nursed them, and then handed them over to a stranger who would never, ever love them.

Anna ran from slavery three times. Louisiana plantations followed a very specific protocol for those who tried to escape. As punishment, she suffered ear cropping, whipping, and branding with the fleur-de-lis. But she never stopped running. Eventually, Westwood’s enslavers sold her to a plantation in Barbados as a “breeder.” They wrote her up like cattle, in scratchy, evil penmanship: Anna, strong-willed, but an excellent breeder.

Dad doesn’t know what happened to Anna in Barbados. The historical trail went cold. Today, her sculpture stands proudly on museum land, her gold-brown back sprouting a pair of gigantic angel’s wings.

“That woman was a human being,” I grind out. “I only told her story.”

“That’s a fine way to spend your time, telling unsuspecting people nasty stories like that. What must your mother think?”

At the back of my throat, I taste blood. “Keep my mother out of your mouth.”

“Are you threatening me?”

Deadass we’re threatening you, lady! the rage monster crows. You are everything that’s wrong with this country! NOW SIT DOWN. BE HUMBLE.

Self-preservation holds me back. Some women actually do find me physically threatening. Never mind that I’m only five foot four. Sometimes, I feel like white people live inside a video game.

“I want the price of our tickets returned. Right now.”

“No refunds.”

Rosemary pecks louder, clucking for corn.

“Well, make an exception.”

I hesitate. “Hang on.”

Karen smiles triumphantly, but I’m not about to return her money. I open the back door and let Rosemary in. She nips grumpily at my ankles. That’s my girl. I pick her up—her white feathers velvety against my cheek—and carry her to the desk.

Brayden makes a sound in the back of his throat.

I think hard at Rosemary: Do it for Anna.

Like a good attack chicken, she spreads her wings and launches herself at my disgruntled tourist.

Vacation Karen stumbles back, hollering, “What is wrong with you people!”

And there it is: plain-as-day racism.

For the first time, Brayden looks directly at me.

“Come on, Mom,” he whines. “I want to go back to the hotel.”

On impulse, I reach for one of Dad’s books—Oral Histories of the Transatlantic Slave Trade—and offer it to Brayden, whose preppy-ass name is not his fault. My heart’s pounding. All that anger transformed into need. The rage monster rolls over, whimpering and showing her belly. After all, we don’t run this museum for our health. We have a mission. Mom’s mission.

“Take the book. Free of charge.”

Brayden’s mother is running from the now-grounded chicken, clutching her purse like the bird might steal it.

“Don’t you speak to him! Brayden, come here.”

In the end, Brayden doesn’t take the book. Sadness pinches my heart, watching him follow his mother out the door. Behind them, glass slams, shuddering.

I groan, regretting setting Rosemary on my unhappy tourists. Wishing I were more like Mom. After a while I glance out the window, making sure Vacation Karen’s really gone.

Then I pull her letter out of the stupid comment box.

Our tour guide should be FIRED for the way she spoke to me, and I WILL be leaving a Yelp review!!! Westwood Plantation doesn’t deserve one more tourist. What a WASTE of an afternoon.

Poisoned by the toxic fumes of this white lady’s rage, I sink helplessly back into my chair. A negative Yelp review would be trash, because we need tourists now more than ever. Restoring a plantation’s not cheap—my parents took out over two million dollars in loans. We could lose money we don’t even have.

At this rate, I’ll never be out of therapy.

I don’t know why I keep letting the rage monster win—except, I guess, that anger feels better than the sadness that yawns beneath. Sadness for Brayden, for his mom’s closed-mindedness. And sadness for me, because Vacation Karen’s whole attitude means that I failed to make her understand the meaning of this place.

Outside, a sunray glances off Louisa’s bronze, sculpted cheek. I wonder if it’s weird that I feel more strongly about a little girl who died over three hundred years ago than I do about most living people. If there’s maybe even something a little bit wrong with me.

Then again, what did Mom and Dad expect, raising a Black girl on a plantation turned slavery museum?

The jackhammer drones on, endlessly puncturing my sanity. I lift my best chicken, nuzzling her soft feathers.

She stinks, of course. Most chickens do.

I consider giving Rosemary a bath. But I’m just putting off the moment when I’ll have to tell Dad about impending Yelp doom.

IN THE KITCHEN, Dad unpacks sacks of Zaxby’s, a southern fast-food chain specializing in “chicken, zalads, and zappetizers.” Dad ordered the meal on Uber Eats, because he’s crazy busy with work. It took the poor delivery guy forever to figure out where we live, here in a small woodsy cabin behind the towering white Big House. He had to pass just about every memorial in the place, and at night, those statues of enslaved children look full-on alive.

For the delivery guy’s ordeal, Dad tipped 30 percent.

I plant myself on a kitchen stool. Dad pops open my buffalo wings.

“Hey, kid.”

He’s wearing the dorky history T-shirt Mom bought him when they were at Stanford. It says (brace yourself):

I AIN’T SAYIN’ SHE A GOLD-DIGGER…

HOWEVER

SHE DID COME TO CALIFORNIA IN 1852

So, yeah, that’s the kind of dude I’m dealing with here.

I can tell it’s been a good writing day because Dad’s eyes are glazed like he’s just woken from a dream. He’s already written three books, all histories. This one’s different: a memoir about restoring the plantation with Mom. He’s pouring his whole heart into it; it’s also supposed to pay off some of our loans.

“How were tours today?”

It takes me half a second to decide to lie to him.

“Great. Mr. Goodman found his people.”

Dad lights up. “Fantastic! Got his number?”

“He knows you’ll be calling.”

“And you finished your college spreadsheet this morning? Safety, target, and reach, like we talked about?”

On the calendar behind him, today’s date is circled in red: College Plans Finalized.

I start senior year in a week, and applications aren’t due until, like, January. But Dad lives for these made-up mini-deadlines. Getting me into a top college has been his hobby since I was in diapers. Deadass he used to sing me nursery rhymes about the Ivy League.

The thing is, my transcript isn’t as strong as we’d hoped. Since Mom died, I’ve been struggling to breathe, let alone turn in my homework on time.

“I already know my first-choice school. So, yes?”

Dad puts his biscuit down. “If you’re talking about Brown University, Harriet, you can’t bet on it. You need to find at least six more realistic options.”

My stubborn streak ignites. “So you think Brown will reject me. Is that it?”

“Your grades could be better, your attendance is poor, and you have zero extracurriculars. Brown’s one of the most competitive schools in the world. You know this.”

“I was in plenty of clubs and stuff before Mom. In the personal essay, I’ll explain what happened.”

Dad shakes his head. “You’re tilting at windmills. What about LSU?”

Two years ago, Dad wouldn’t’ve let me settle for anything less than a top-tier school. I mean, I finished ninth grade with a 4.1 and a bouquet of résumé-friendly activities: I wrote op-eds for the school newspaper, competed on the cross-country team, even founded the St. Anne’s chapter of the Red Cross. I was a textbook overachiever… right up until the day Mom’s cancer turned terminal.

Now, I look like a slacker on paper. But my record doesn’t reflect the real me—the me I should be, if death hadn’t come knocking.

I’m not ready to give up on one of my oldest dreams. Haven’t I given up enough already?

Dad narrows his eyes. “Where did this obsession with Brown come from, anyway?”

Honestly, I don’t have a great answer to that. Brown’s one of the only colleges that doesn’t make you take any prerequisites, which means that me and my nemesis—math—can finally part ways. And it’s in the North, far away from neglected plantations and statues of Robert E. Lee. I have to believe the rage monster will chill out on the other side of the Mason-Dixon Line. Especially at a place like Brown. I’ve pictured myself walking its drop-dead gorgeous campus since I first Google Image–searched the word college. Even now, it’s a stubborn dream I can’t shake.

Considering Dad left a tenured position at Carnegie Mellon to restore a plantation, you’d think he’d understand a thing or two about unshakable dreams. But he’s old—he has that whole salt-and-pepper thing going on. Maybe he forgot.

I change the subject. “So, I’m thinking of resurrecting Westwood’s Twitter.”

“Yeah?”

Dad can’t hide his eagerness. He’s hella jealous of those professors with a bajillion followers. Unfortunately for him, he doesn’t know a tweet from a text message, so Mom always handled Westwood’s social media, posting special events news and deleting comments from spelling-challenged trolls.

“I’m thinking of it, anyway,” I say softly.

The truth is, Mom’s old accounts, bursting with love for all things Westwood, never fail to devastate me.

Dad nods, but he’s frowning, not really listening.

“Uh—Dad?”

“Sorry.” He shakes his head. “I got a call today. About Belle Grove.”

I brace myself. “What’s the deal with all that construction? Did you find out what’s going on?”

“I found out.”

“And? Dad, the suspense is killing me.”

I swear to God, when he looks at me, it’s like he’s telling me Mom died all over again. It happened in the middle of the night and neither of us was there. The hospital didn’t call us like they promised. They said she just slipped away.

What’s messed up is that to this day, I can’t remember the last thing she said to me. I’ve searched every file inside my head, but it’s 404s.

“An actress—Claudia Hartwell—is moving into Belle Grove Plantation. That’s why we’ve been hearing all that construction. My friend at the county clerk’s office says she purchased it under a commercial license.” He squints at me. “Do you understand what that means?”

I don’t, but Dad’s just started talking to me like I’m a grown-up, and I want to keep that going.

“It’s bad?”

“According to Toni at city hall, they’re turning it into an event venue.”

Shit. I’d guessed Belle Grove might become a bed-and-breakfast, but this is worse. It’s one thing to stay in a not-so-woke historical hotel; it’s a whole other thing to go to an old plantation, once home to thousands of enslaved people, to party.

“Are you sure?”

“It’s registered as a wedding venue, specifically.” He reaches for another wing. “Some celebrities are getting hitched there.”

A special kind of cold drips into my veins, sludgy as antifreeze. It’s the same feeling I get when I see a Confederate flag billowing from the back of someone’s truck, or when “Sweet Home Alabama” comes on the radio. The feeling is hopelessness. The conviction that despite all the work we do at Westwood, nothing will ever, ever change.

Racism will keep thriving. Police will keep brutalizing. Black people will keep dying. You can draw a straight line between what happened at plantations like Westwood and Belle Grove to the racial violence of today.

“So you’ll stop them. Won’t you, Dad? You’ll call the mayor or something—”

“It’s not so easy.”

“Why not?”

“This actress is about to be our neighbor, and what she does with the property is up to her. She’ll inherit Belle Grove’s historical legacy, just like we inherited Westwood’s.”

I gape at him. “That can’t be right.”

“I’m afraid it is.”

In my stomach, the zappetizers congeal into zludge.

“What if we buy Belle Grove? We’ll expand the museum, tell new stories—”

“We can’t possibly take out any more loans. And besides, it’s no longer for sale.”

“But an event venue? How can that happen? People can’t just do what they want to the 9/11 Memorial. They can’t just up and buy it to throw parties.”

Dad winces like he’s swallowed a needle. “There’re thousands of plantations across the South. We can’t possibly save them all.”

“But this one’s right next door! Our people would’ve known those people. Anna and George and Samuel and Louisa… they wouldn’t want this. Right?”

“There’s nothing I can do about this actress’s plans.”

“It’s an atrocity.”

“Yes. And we’ve got to make our peace with it.”

How can he give up so easily?

“But—Dad—”

He reaches for my hand. “You’ve got to be smart. . .