Jones, Gayl

Corregidora

Here is Gayl Jones's classic novel, the tale of blues singer Ursa, consumed by her hatred of the nineteenth-century slave master who fathered both her grandmother and mother.

"Corregidora is the most brutally honest and painful revelation of what has occurred, and is occurring, in the souls of Black men and women."
—James Baldwin

Eva's Man (Black Women Writers Series)

Imprisoned for the bizarre murder of her lover, Eva Medina Canada recalls a life tormented by sexual abuse and emotional violence. Eva's Man is Gayl Jones's second novel.

"An American writer with a powerful sense of vital inheritance, of history in the blood."
—John Updike, The New Yorker

Mosquito

Depending on your tolerance for digression, Gayl Jones's Mosquito will either be hugely entertaining or absolutely crazy-making. The heroine and narrator of this hefty tome is Sojourner Jane Nadine Johnson--Mosquito, to her friends--an African American truck driver with a mind as flighty as the insect she's named for. You know what you're up against from the very first paragraph in which Mosquito expounds on Texas border towns, tanning products, cacti, a teacup shaped like a cactus, the town of Brownsville, and the Kiowa word for Brownsville (which she can't remember). All of this is delivered in lively dialect: "Am got a few of them cactus plants along Dairy Mart Road, though they ain't the archetypal cactus. I think it's Dairy Mart Road and some of that poverty grass. I guess it called poverty grass 'cause it the Southwest, you know. I'm going to have to find out the names of these grasses and plants and trees so's I can tell y'all what they is. I guess that's what I likes about the Southwest, though, the landscape. Well, I likes the people that I likes (the Perfectability Baptist Church would want me to say more about the likability of peoples and us commandments to love), but when you gets to the Southwest it got it own distinctive landscape." And obviously Sojourner Jane Nadine Johnson, a.k.a. Mosquito, has her own distinctive personality.

What sets the story rolling is Mosquito's discovery of a young pregnant Mexican woman in the back of her truck. Not surprisingly, it takes all of chapter 1 for her to actually get to this discovery as she is distracted numerous times by her mail, other people she's met along the road, a trip to an aquarium in Florida, and the relationship between yoga and yogurt--to name just a few of the many, many subjects she expounds upon before finally getting back around to the pregnant Mexican in the truck. From here on out, the novel concerns Mosquito's involvement in a "new underground railroad," a sanctuary movement for illegal immigrants. In addition to mother-to-be Maria, we meet Delgadina, a Chicana bartender and wannabe detective; Monkey Bread, a childhood friend; and Ray, a man Mosquito might just be willing to slow down for. What raises this novel above the merely picaresque is Jones's sophisticated political sensibility: as Mosquito makes her physical journey across the Southwest, she embarks on a cultural odyssey as well, examining the struggles of all the "second class peoples" to find a place for themselves in America. Letters, plays, poetry, and songs punctuate the narrative and Mosquito's distinctive voice always keeps the story "keepin' on." --Alix Wilber

Set in a south Texas border town, Mosquito is the story of Sojourner Nadine Jane Johnson (an African-American truck driver known as "Mosquito") and her accidental and increasing involvement in "the new underground railroad," a sanctuary movement for Mexican immigrants.

"Where African-American literature is heading as we approach the 21st century."
—E. Ethelbert Miller, Emerge

The Healing (Bluestreak Series)

Beautician, anthropologist's wife, rock-star manager, racetrack gambler, and now itinerant faith healer: the heroine of Gayl Jones long-awaited new novel has traveled a long and difficult road from her grandmother's Louisville beauty shop to the bus stops and "tank towns" of the rural South. As she spools back through her accumulated memories, Harlan Jane Eagleton weaves a complex stream-of-consciousness tale that at second glance turns out not to be chaotic at all. Jones has an unerring ear for dialogue and the rhythms of everyday speech, and Eagleton makes poetry out of even the detritus of pop culture--although her narrative is also rich in allusions from Chaucer to Gayl Jones herself. From Eagleton's grandmother, who believes she was born as a turtle, to the paranoid German-African businessman who becomes Eagleton's lover, the novel is filled with memorable characters and multilayered relationships. The Healing is the first book in more than 20 years from Jones, the reclusive author of two seminal narratives of violence, slavery, abuse, and black rage, Corregidora and Eva's Man. Like these two novels, The Healing has its fair share of violence and tragedy, but--as the title might suggest--here it's tempered with a surprising portion of humor, forgiveness, even faith.

Harlan Jane Eagleton transforms herself from a minor rock star's manager to a traveling faith healer in this lyrical and often humorous exploration of the struggle to let go of pain, anger, and even love.

"A major literary event . . . surprising, romantic, and wholly satisfying."
—Veronica Chambers, Newsweek

Liberating Voices

White Rat: Stories (Harlem Moon Classics)

Originally published in 1977, White Rat contains twelve provocative tales that explore the emotional and mental terrain of a diverse cast of characters, from the innocent to the insane.

In each, Jones displays her unflinching ability to dive into the most treacherous of psyches and circumstances: the title story examines the identity and relationship conundrums of a black man who can pass for white, earning him the name “White Rat” as an infant; “The Women” follows a girl whose mother brings a line of female lovers to live in their home; “Jevata” details eighteen-year-old Freddy’s relationship with the fifty-year-old title character; “The Coke Factory” tracks the thoughts of a mentally handicapped adolescent abandoned by his mother; and “Asylum” focuses on a woman having a nervous breakdown, trying to protect her dignity and her private parts as she enters an institution.

In uncompromising prose, and dialect that veers from northern, educated tongues to down-home southern colloquialisms, Jones illuminates lives that society ignores, moving them to center stage.

The Healing, Corregidora, Eva's Man

Song for Anniho

This exquisite book-length poem based closely on history and set in colonial Brazil, recounts the destruction of Palmares, the last of seven fugitive slave enclaves beset by the Portuguese. Amid the flight and re-enslavement of its inhabitants emerges the love store of Anninho and Almeyda, former African slaves.

Corregidora

Xarque and Other Poems