Sunny Wellness of Honey

When I chose this book Good Dirt by Charmaine Wilkerson, I did not realize how heavy it would be. I also did not realize how perfectly suited it was for my first foray in reviewing books from a clinical perspective. This is a book about grief not just due to a horrible loss of one individual. It is about intergenerational loss and trauma. It is a story about how grief is pervasive. A story about how family and social mores teach us how to handle grief. How family and social narratives have quiet rules about grief such as what can be spoken about, mourned, and remembered. Good Dirt excited me because it provided an accurate portrayal of how grief and intergenerational trauma intertwine. In doing so, it shows how emotional repair moves slowly, imperfectly, and interpersonally. Grief influences decisions and we move through life long after the loss has passed and Good Dirt shows us that.

I admit that I do not naturally enjoy books with a wide cast of characters. I also struggle with chapters that move between multiple perspectives. In this novel, it was especially jarring. I would be getting to know one character. Then, suddenly, I was thrown into not just another character but also into another time period altogether. I read in a very relational way, similar to how I work. I want to stay close to one emotional thread, understand it, rather than constantly shifting. The structure in this novel is intentional. We can see how inheritance is not just objects passed down. It can also be how we process life.

What really stood out to me in this book was the illusion of doing fine. Wilkerson repeatedly wrote throughout the book how some of the “main” characters carried themselves in public and even in private. This is what stuck out to me the most. Grief had to live quietly. The family was so invested in appearing intact. Never let others see your pain seemed to be the unspoken mantra in this novel. Carry that pain with grace.

In this book, grief is quiet like it is for so many people. It is also high functioning as not all grief is visibly painful and grief can learn how to behave. For the family in this novel, it coexists with beauty. The family is well-known for how they present themselves publicly. With poise and elegance. This creates a particular tension; a place where a person struggles to feel or be themselves. There is very little room for grief to be messy and inconvenient. This is often why grief gets missed. When it looks composed, competent, or even beautiful, it doesn’t register as something that needs care. Grief that looks put together rarely gets recognized as grief at all.

What Good Dirt does well is show that grief rarely stays with the person who first experienced the loss. It travels especially when the pain isn’t acknowledged or integrated. It becomes embedded in how the families function; what is emphasized, what is avoided, and what is protected. Over time, these patterns are passed down as emotional habits rather than stories. This is how grief becomes intergenerational, not through memory alone, but through ways that form around unspoken loss. The book does not offer closure, it offers recognition, which is often the first real step toward repair.