Gayl Jones was born in Kentucky in 1949. She attended
Connecticut College and Brown University, and has taught a Wellesley College and
the University of Michigan. Her other books include THE HEALING (1998 National
Book Award Finalist and New York Times Notable Book of the Year) and many
others.
Jones was voted one of AALBC.com's 50 Favorite Authors of the 20th Century.
Fiction
Corregidora
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Paperback: 192 pages
Publisher: Beacon Press (February 15, 1987)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0807063150
ISBN-13: 978-0807063156
Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.3 x 0.6 inches
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."
Eva's Man
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Paperback: 192 pages
Publisher: Beacon Press (March 5, 1987)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0807063193
ISBN-13: 978-0807063194
Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 0.5 inches
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
White Rat
(short stories)
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Paperback: 176 pages
Publisher: Harlem Moon (November 22, 2005)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0767922131
ISBN-13: 978-0767922135
Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.6 inches
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
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Paperback: 304 pages
Publisher: Beacon Press (January 1, 1999)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0807063258
ISBN-13: 978-0807063255
Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 0.8 inches
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
Mosquito
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Paperback: 624 pages
Publisher: Beacon Press (February 1, 2000)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 080708347X
ISBN-13: 978-0807083475
Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 1.4 inches
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
Poetry collections:
Song
for Anninho
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Paperback: 136 pages
Publisher: Beacon Press (April 30, 2000)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0807068551
ISBN-13: 978-0807068557
Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.4 x 0.3 inches
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.
The Hermit-Woman
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Paperback: 75 pages
Publisher: Lotus Pr; 1st edition (April 1983)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 091641843X
ISBN-13: 978-0916418434
Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.3 inches
Xarque and Other Poems
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Paperback: 70 pages
Publisher: Lotus Press (MI); 1st edition (September 1985)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 091641860X
ISBN-13: 978-0916418601
Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 0.2 inches
Other works
Liberating
Voices: Oral Tradition in African American Literature
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Hardcover: 228 pages
Publisher: Harvard University Press (May 1, 1991)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0674530241
ISBN-13: 978-0674530249
Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.4 x 0.9 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates
Gayl Jones: The Language of Voice and
Freedom in Her Writings
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by Casey Clabough
Paperback: 216 pages
Publisher: McFarland (August 15, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0786433795
ISBN-13: 978-0786433797
Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.5 inches
Gayl Jones is dedicated to the art of "verbal authenticity," stemming from
her identification with her African American heritage. Amid widespread
critical praise as well as pointed attacks for her controversial first two
novels, Jones has shown a constantly evolving cultural consciousness.
This first single-author study of Gayl Jones recovers the work of an
under-examined yet immensely skillful contemporary writer. It offers a
thorough examination of her technical innovations as well as her willingness
to explore controversial subject matter.
The book addresses such crucial themes as Afrocentrism, diasporas,
mythopoesis, post-colonialism and globalization, and offers close readings
of the aesthetic and political interchanges within Jones's fiction, drama,
poetry, and criticism. Two interviews with Gayl Jones are included.
About the Author: Casey Clabough is an associate professor of English at
Lynchburg College in Lynchburg, Virginia. He serves as the literature editor
for the Encyclopedia Virginia, a project of the Virginia Foundation for the
Humanities. He lives in Appomattox.
Chile Woman (1974 play)
Related Links
Salon | Media Circus: The terrible mystery of Gayl Jones
http://www.salon.com/media/1998/02/26media.html
http://voices.cla.umn.edu/artistpages/jonesGayl.php
