Brian Keith Jackson, author of
several critically acclaimed novels, lives in New York City.
Photo Credit: Douglass Levere
The Queen of Harlem
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Read
A Review by Brian Egeston
Format: Hardcover, 272pp.
ISBN: 0385502958
Publisher: Doubleday & Company, Incorporated
Pub. Date: April 2002
An African American Breakfast at Tiffany's'a hip, refreshingly
candid tale of identity and self'discovery from the critically acclaimed
author of The View from Here and Walking Through Mirrors.
Mason Randolph, a black preppie of impeccable Southern pedigree, is bound for
Stanford Law School after graduating from college. Before embarking on the path
to his golden future, however, he takes a detour through Harlem, where he
intends to live "authentically" with "real black
people."
Mason takes the name "Malik" and moves into the orbit of the
ever'fabulous Carmen, uptown diva and doyenne of Harlem. Carmen, always ready
to have a handsome young man at her fabulous soirees and to add to her devoted
entourage, happily takes him under her wing. Fueled by his parents' money and
dodging the people who remember him as Mason Randolph, "Malik"
masquerades as a "ghettonian," exploring the wonders and pleasures of
a Harlem in the midst of a second Renaissance. But his odyssey takes a different
turn when he meets Kyra, whose world mirrors the one he has abandoned. As he
contemplates the choices Kyra has made, and begins to reexamine his own
presumptions about identity and authenticity, Mason realizes that everyone has
something to hide and that to get what we want, we have to be willing to let go
of our secrets.
People compared Brian Keith Jackson's remarkable first novel, The View
from Here, to the works of Alice Walker and Toni Morrison, and Publishers
Weekly called it "an extraordinary debut...[by] a formidable craftsman
and exceptionally gifted storyteller." A novel rich in humor and insight, The
Queen of Harlem will earn Jackson a much'deserved place in the center of
today's literary landscape. - (from http://www.randomhouse.com)
Walking Through Mirrors
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Format: Paperback, 272pp.
ISBN: 0671568949
Publisher: Pocket Books
Pub. Date: July 1999
A new novel by the author of the award-winning "The View From Here." When Jeremy, a successful New York photographer, is summoned back to Louisiana to bury his father, he finds a suicide, a murder, and a mysterious cardboard box.
The View from Here
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Format: Paperback, 229pp.
ISBN: 0671568965
Publisher: Pocket Books
Pub. Date: January 1998
Set in an environment of casual prejudice and
commonplace poverty, this remarkable novel opens with one of Anna's rambling,
poignant letters - missives she can never mail - to Ida Mae Ramsey, her best
friend since they sat together dangling their legs near the soft waters of the
creek, where Ida Mae spiked Anna's lemonade. Desperate to escape the trap of
marriage and children and find an independent life, Ida Mae packed up and headed
north, flitting from job to job, city to city, her infrequent letters arriving
with no return address. Anna stayed home and married Joseph Henry Thomas, her
beloved J.T., raising her five boys and stepping softly around her husband's
vast silences. Now Anna is pregnant again - a girl this time, she is sure - a
girl J.T. says they can't afford to keep. As spring swells inexorably toward
summer, Anna misses Ida Mae's comfort and support almost more than she can bear.
With remarkable insight and compassion, The View from Here illuminates the
universal, unspoken bonds - so strong, yet so easily damaged - that pulse
through families, and the twisted skeins of memory and desire that linger only
in our most secret hearts.
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