Welcome to Wandaland
This is a test!
St. Louis Missouri, 1959, fourth grader Wanda Williams seeks to unlock the secrets of an intelligence test that has catapulted her older sister into a newly desegregated, “gifted” school. Her sister Paulette convinces Wanda that she will fail unless she learns everything there is to know in the world. As she pursues her quest, her desire to be heard and seen within her own family confounds her understanding. Civil rights and the Cold War, the Space Race and test mania collide with gender, color, birth order, race, social class, and, of course, her sister. Wanda’s search for intelligence, masking the simple need to feel loved, stirs up an internal tempest almost as ferocious as the turbulence just outside her door.
