“Love, Rita: An American Story of Sisterhood, Joy, Loss, and Legacy” by Bridgett M. Davis

c.2025,

Harper                                   

$29.99                                                

367 pages

Take care.

Do it because you want to stay upright and away from illness. Eat right, swallow your vitamins and hydrate, maintain good hygiene habits, and cross your fingers. Take care as much as you can because, as in the new book, “Love, Rita” by Bridgett M. Davis, your well-being is sometimes out of your hands.

It was a family story often told: when Bridgett Davis was born, her sister, Rita, then four years old, stormed up to her crying newborn sibling and said, ‘Shut your… mouth!’

Says Davis, Rita didn’t want a little sister then. She already had two big sisters and a neighbor who was somewhat of a “sister,” this baby was an irritation. The feeling was mutual as Davis grew, although she always knew that Rita loved her.

Over the years, the sisters tried many times not to fight – on their own and at their mother’s urging – and though division was ever present, it eased when Rita went to college. Davis was still in high school then and admired her big sister. She eagerly devoured frequent letters sent to her in the mail, signed, “Love, Rita.”

When Davis was in college herself, Rita was diagnosed with lupus, a disease of the immune system that often left her constantly tired and sore. Davis was a bit unfazed but sympathetic to Rita’s suffering and also annoyed that the disease sometimes came between them. By that time, they needed one another more than ever.

First, they lost their father. Drugs then invaded the family, and addiction stole two siblings. A sister and a young nephew were murdered in a domestic violence incident. Their mother was devastated; Rita’s lupus was an “added weight of her sorrow.”

After their mother died of colon cancer, Rita’s lupus took a turn for the worse.

“Did she even stand a chance?” Davis wrote in her journal.

“It just didn’t seem possible that she, someone so full of life, could die.”

Let’s start here: once you get past the prologue in “Love, Rita,“ you may lose interest. Maybe.

Most of the stories that author Bridgett M. Davis shares are mildly interesting, nothing rare, mostly commonplace tales of growing up in the 1960s and ’70s with a sibling. There are a lot of these kinds of stories, and they generally melt together. After about 50 pages of them, consider putting the book aside.

But don’t. Not quite yet.

In between those everyday tales, Davis occasionally writes about being an ailing Black woman in America, the incorrect assumptions made by doctors, the history of medical treatment for Black people (women in particular), attitudes, and mythologies. Those passages are now and then interspersed but worth scanning for.

This book is perhaps best for anyone with the patience for a slow-paced memoir or anyone who loves a Black woman who’s ill or might be sick someday. If that’s you and you can read between the lines, then “Love, Rita“ is a book to take carefully.