"Your Plantation Prom Is Not Okay"

Kelly McWilliams is a mixed-race writer. Agnes at the End of the World was a finalist for the Golden Kite Award, and Mirror Girls was a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection and Target Book Club Pick. She’s written for Time, Bustle, and Publishers Weekly among other outlets.

McWilliams applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Your Plantation Prom Is Not Okay, and reported the following:

On page 69 of my novel, my main character, Harriet Douglass, has just walked into the old plantation house next door to argue with the actress planning to turn it into an offensive prom and wedding venue. The actress is in the middle of a party, but Harriet doesn’t care. She must confront her, and tell her that what she’s doing is wrong. The scene cuts straight to the core of the story, which is about a contemporary teenaged girl’s struggle to protect a sacred historical place from grave misuse.

In the South, only a few plantation museums teach the history of human enslavement from the perspective of the enslaved. Most of them champion fine furniture and architecture, while underplaying the horrible fact of enslavement—if they bother to mention it at all. Harriet, who grew up on a museum doing the hard work of telling the truth with her professor father, finds this so abominable that she struggles to control her temper at this point in the story. It’s a fine snapshot of the novel as a whole, because Harriet’s character arc is all about learning to channel her overwhelming anger into powerful activism. It’s the very essence, in this young adult book, of her coming-of-age.

From the top of the page:

There are too many white people in this house, nibbling tiny canapés. I cannot—repeat, cannot—wig out. I struggle to relax my chest. Breathe in, out.

There’s also an interesting conversation, below that, between Claudia Hartwell—the actress-turned-wedding-planner—and her daughter Layla (who disagrees with her mother’s choices, and is allied, for now, with Harriet), about social media. When Layla objects to her mother’s pandering to the movie star who hopes to get married there soon, her mother snaps back:

“Watch your tone, young lady. Sunny’s been dreaming of her fairytale wedding since she was a little girl, and she won’t let anything ruin it. Not allergies, or internet trolls, or anything.”

Trolls? Is it too much to hope that Sunny Blake and Randy White are already getting dragged online?

“Those weren’t trolls,” Layla says heatedly. “People have every right to be mad about a movie star’s plantation wedding!”

In the end, it will be through social media, and especially TikTok, that Harriet puts the heat to Claudia Hartwell’s plans—though she doesn’t know it yet.

All in all, I have to say, the Page 69 Test performs exceptionally well for Your Plantation Prom Is Not Okay. Both the main argument of the book and its eventual solution are made reference to in one conversation!

Visit Kelly McWilliams's website.

The Page 69 Test: Agnes at the End of the World.

Q&A with Kelly McWilliams.

--Marshal Zeringue