In Love, Rita Bridgett M. Davis tells the story of her beloved older sister Rita, a vivacious woman who attended Fisk University at age sixteen, and went on to become a car test driver, an amateur belly dancer, an MBA, and later a popular special ed teacher. In doing so, she modeled how to live boldly. And in the face of family tragedy, the two sisters leaned on each other to heal; their closeness grew, until Rita’s life was cut short by lupus when she was forty-four. This led Bridgett to ask the simple, heartbreaking question: Why Rita?
This memoir, full of joy and heartbreak, traces family history alongside American history. Rita’s life becomes a lens through which Davis examines the persistent effects of racism in the lives of Black women—and the men they love. This is a poignant, deeply resonant portrait of an unforgettable woman and her impact on those she left behind.