Jewell Parker Rhodes

Jewell Parker Rhodes

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Jewell Parker Rhodes is the author of five novels: Voodoo Dreams, Magic City, Douglass' Women, Voodoo Season, and Yellow Moon; and a memoir, Porch Stories: A Grandmother's Guide to Happiness. A sixth novel, Hurricane Levee Blues, and a children’s novel, Ninth Ward, will be published in 2009.

She has also authored two writing guides: Free Within Ourselves: Fiction Lessons for Black Authors, and The African American Guide to Writing and Publishing Non-Fiction. Her play, Voodoo Dreams; was cited as "Most Innovative" Drama in the 2000-2001 Professional Theater Season by the Arizona Republic and she is currently at work on a theatrical version of Douglass' Women.

Her work has been published in Germany, Italy, Canada, Turkey, and the United Kingdom and reproduced in audio and for NPR's "Selected Shorts." Her literary awards include: Yaddo Creative Writing Fellowship, the American Book Award, the National Endowment of the Arts Award in Fiction, the Black Caucus of the American Library Award for Literary Excellence, the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Award for Outstanding Writing, two Arizona Book Awards, and a finalist citation for the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award. She has been a featured speaker at the Runnymeade International Literary Festival (University of London-Royal Holloway), Santa Barbara Writers Conference, Creative Nonfiction Writers Conference, and Warwick University, among others.

Recent fiction and essays have been anthologized in Rise Up Singing: Black Women Writers on Motherhood, (ed., Berry), In Fact: The Best of Creative Nonfiction, (ed. Gutkind), Gumbo, (ed., Golden and Harris) Children of the Night: Best Short Stories By Black Writers, (ed., Naylor) among others.

She has been awarded the California State University Distinguished Teaching Award, ASU's Dean's Quality Teaching Award, Outstanding Thesis Director from the Barrett Honors College, and the Outstanding Faculty Award from the College of Extended Education. She is a member of the Arizona/International Women's Forum and a Renaissance Weekend invitee.

Dr. Jewell Parker Rhodes is the Artistic Director for Global Engagement and the Piper Endowed Chair of the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing at Arizona State University.

She received a Bachelor of Arts in Drama Criticism (Honors) a Master of Arts in English, and a Doctor of Arts in English (Creative Writing) from Carnegie-Mellon University.

Yellow Moon
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Hardcover: 304 pages
Publisher: Atria (July 15, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1416537104

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A jazzman, a wharf worker, a prostitute, all murdered. Wrists punctured, their bodies impossibly drained of blood. What connects them? Why are they rising as ghosts?

Marie Levant, the great-great granddaughter of the Voodoo Queen, Marie Laveau, knows better than anyone New Orleans's brutal past -- the legacy of slavery, poverty, racism, and sexism -- and as a doctor at Charity Hospital's ER, she treats its current victims.

When she sleeps, she dreams of blood. Rain, never ending. The river is rising and the yellow moon warns of an ancient evil -- an African vampire -- wazimamoto -- a spirit created by colonial oppression.
The struggle becomes personal, as the wazimamoto is intent on destroying her and all the Laveau descendants. Marie fights to protect her daughter, lover, and herself from the wazimamoto's seductive assault on both body and spirit.

Echoing with the heartache and triumph of the African-American experience, the soulful rhythms of jazz, and the horrors of racial oppression, Yellow Moon gives us an unforgettable heroine -- sexy, vulnerable, and mysterious -- in Marie Levant, while it powerfully evokes a city on the brink of catastrophe.

Yellow Moon is part two of the New Orleans trilogy that began with Voodoo Season -- magical realist fiction that takes the legend of the voodoo priestess Marie Laveau, as imagined by Jewell Parker Rhodes in the bestselling Voodoo Dreams, into the present day.

Voodoo Season
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Paperback: 288 pages
Publisher: Washington Square Press (July 4, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0743483286

Voodoo Season is a sequel to my first novel, Voodoo Dreams. It is the start of a contemporary series set before, during, and after Hurricane Katrina. The trilogy includes Voodoo Season, Voodoo Jazz, and Hurricane Levee Blues.

I had always planned on writing a sequel to my first novel, Voodoo Dreams,

Voodoo Dreams has a special place in my heart, because the novel helped me grow up and taught me, like Marie Laveau, to appreciate truly the glory and wonder of being a woman; powerful; spiritual; in control of her life and body; valuing ancestors, family, and community.

Voodoo Season is the first novel in a contemporary trilogy in which Marie Laveau’s descendent grows stronger and also more vulnerable.

What’s the sense of living if we don’t open our hearts to love…accept our imperfections and recognize that life is a journey, never ending? Our spirits never die…and each of us has a responsibility to leave a legacy of grace, kindness, and mentoring to our children and the next generation.

Read Voodoo Dreams, the novel that started the journey; enjoy Voodoo Season; and look for Marie, healing and loving in the next novel of the trilogy, Voodoo Jazz.

Porch Stories: A Grandmother’s Guide to Happiness
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Hardcover: 176 pages
Publisher: Atria (September 12, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0743497112

Award-winning author of fiction and nonfiction Jewell Parker Rhodes is a master of her craft, under-standing how both real and imagined stories can serve as a pathway to enlightenment. Porch Stories is Rhodes's tribute to her beloved grandmother, a real account of the love she received and the lessons she learned.

Jewell Parker Rhodes was left in the care of her father and his mother when her own mother abandoned the family. Grandmother Ernestine's house in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was home to four other grandchildren as well. And while its crumbling bricks, lack of air-conditioning, and neighborhood rodents meant that life was anything but easy, the family house was filled with love. Everyone on their street knew and loved Grandmother Ernestine; men would tip their hats and children would rush up for a hug any time she was outside.

No one loved Grandmother Ernestine more than Jewell, who would pass up a movie with her cousins to sit outside on Ernestine's front stoop and listen to her stories and her words of comfort. Jewell would later move out West to live with her mother and father as they reattempted marriage. But that was a short-lived experience. Before long, she was back in the loving arms of her grandmother, whose wisdom and warmth gave all of her children the tools to overcome the ordinary and extraordinary challenges life brings. Porch Stories, described by Rhodes as "an intergenerational love song," is a loving tribute that is at once candid, courageous, and reverent -- a literary portrait of family love that readers from all walks of life can see in themselves.

Douglass' Women
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Format: Hardcover, 368pp.
ISBN: 0743410092
Publisher: Atria Books
Pub. Date: September 2002

Douglass' Women reimagines the lives of an American hero, Frederick Douglass, and two women - his wife and his mistress - who loved him and lived in his shadow. Anna Douglass, a free woman of color, was Douglass' wife of forty-four years, who bore him five children. Ottilie Assing, a German-Jewish intellectual, provided him the companionship of the mind that he needed. Hurt by Douglass' infidelity, Anna rejected his notion that only literacy freed the mind. For her, familial love rivaled intellectual pursuits. Ottilie was raised by parents who embraced the ideal of free love, but found herself entrapped in an unfulfilling love triangle with America's most famous self-taught slave for nearly three decades.

African American Guide to Writing and Publishing Nonfiction
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Format: Paperback, 368pp.
ISBN: 0767905784
Publisher: Broadway Books
Pub. Date: January 2002
Edition Desc: 1ST

In college and graduate school, Jewell Parker Rhodes never encountered a single reading assignment or exercise that featured a person of color. Now she has made it her mission to rectify the situation, gathering advice and inspiring tips tailored for African Americans seeking to express their life experiences. Comprehensive and totally energizing, the African American Guide to Writing and Publishing Nonfiction bursts with supportive topics such as:

·Finding your voice
·Getting to know your literary ancestors
·Overcoming a bruised ego and finding the determination to pursue your dreams
·Gathering material and conducting research
·Tapping sweet, bittersweet, and joyful memories
·Knowing when to keep revising, and when to let go

The guide also features unforgettable excerpts from luminaries such as Maya Angelou, Brent Staples, Houston Baker, and pointers from bestselling African American authors Patrice Gaines, E. Lynn Harris, James McBride, John Hope Franklin, Pearl Cleage, Edwidge Danticat, and many others. It is a uniquely nurturing and informative touchstone for affirming, bearing witness, leaving a legacy, and celebrating the remarkable journey of the self.

Magic City
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Format: Paperback, 288pp.
ISBN: 0060929073
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Pub. Date: June 1998

Based on true events, Magic City is the powerful story of two people who unwittingly lit the match that burned the community of Greenwood to the ground and erased it from the history books. Jewell Parker Rhodes imagines this tragedy through the eyes of Joe Samuels and Mary Keane, two people fundamentally divided by race but forever joined by fate. When Joe, a young man entranced by Houdini, is falsely accused of rape, he must perform his greatest escape by eluding a bloodthirsty lynch mob. Haunted by the mystery of his brother's death and the dark truth behind his father's success, Joe soon learns that he has been running all his life and that this may actually be the moment to turn and fight. Mary, the motherless daughter of a poor farmer who tries to marry her off to the farmhand who viciously raped her, is barely able to imagine what life could be like outside the prison of her own home. Now, however, she must unlock the courage to help exonerate the man she has accused with her panicked cry. Magic City, a mythic tale of violent revenge, is a portrait of an era, climaxing in the heroic but doomed stand that ultimately pitted the National Guard against a small band of black men determined to defend the town they had built into the "Negro Wall Street." Depicted against a backdrop of jail escapes, ghosts, family betrayal, and lost loves, it is a tale at once harrowing and redemptive.

Voodoo Dreams: A Novel of Marie Laveau
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Format: Paperback, 436pp.
ISBN: 0312119313
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Pub. Date: January 1995

The Institute for Studies in the Arts has completed preliminary work on the stage adaptation of Jewell Parker Rhodes novel Voodoo Dreams. Based on the life of Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau in 19th century New Orleans (click to read all about it),

New Orleans in the mid-nineteenth century is a city overflowing with white aristos, black creoles, and African slaves, a city that pulses with crowds, with commerce, and with the power and spectacle of the voodoo religion. At the center of the ritual is Marie Laveau, the notorious voodooienne, worshipped and feared by blacks and whites alike. Marie's followers claimed that she walked on water and sucked poison from a snake's jowls, that she raised the dead and murdered two men. Voodoo Dreams is the spellbinding story of the woman behind the legend. Raised by her Grandmere in the Louisiana bayou, Marie ventures to New Orleans and begins a journey of self-discovery, hoping to find her lost Maman and understand the visions that haunt her dreams. Instead, she runs headlong into the brutality of slavery and oppression, and into the arms of John, the voodoo doctor who promises to teach her what Grandmere will not. As she falls under his spell, John sweeps Marie into a world of voodoo ceremonies, of drama and manipulation, and of sometimes terrifying power. A mesmerizing combination of history and storytelling, Voodoo Dreams marks the debut of an important new voice in fiction.

Free within Ourselves; Fiction Lessons for Black Authors
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Format: Paperback, 352pp.
ISBN: 0385491751
Publisher: Doubleday & Company, Incorporated
Pub. Date: October 1999
Edition Desc: 1 ED

A top-notch writer's guide filled with practical guidance, ssays, journal exercises, and illuminating examples, as well as advice from E. Lynn Harris, Charles Johnson, Yolanda Joe, Bebe Moore Campbell, Rita Dove, John Edgar Wideman, and others.

Proverbs For The People: Contemporary African-American Stories
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Paperback: 512 pages
Publisher: Kensington (July 1, 2004)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0758202873

Forward by Jewell Parker Rhodes, Edited by Tracey Price Thompson and TeRessa Stoval with Pearl Cleage, Donna Hill, Parry "Ebony Satin" Brown, Omar Tyree and others

If you can walk, you can dance. If you can talk, you can sing." "Don't start none, won't be none." "If you don't stand for something you'll fall for anything." Whether it was in the church on a hard-shined wooden pew, or around the kitchen table after, listening to the wisdom of mothers and fathers, aunts and uncles, grandparents, friends, and leaders, the messages of the proverbs resonate in the souls of most African-Americans—a sweet refrain heard through striving, reaching, loving, and living. In this powerful collection of stories based on African, African-American, and Biblical proverbs, some of today's most exciting new African-American writers tackle the unifying themes, delicious wit and undeniable wisdom of the proverbs, making them sing for a whole new generation.

In the moving "Love Can Move Mountains," author Elizabeth Atkins Bowman explores the meaning of the African-American saying, "Mountain, get out of my way!" in a story about the miraculous, mysterious power of a mother's stand-firm love. In Arethia Hornsby's "My Momma Said…," two friends go out on the town and get schooled in a life lesson that proves the truth behind the ages-old African-American proverb, "Never judge a book by its cover." Town gossip gets the best of a loyal wife and gives credence to C.F. Pope's saying, "Never declare war unless you mean to do battle," in Gwynne Forster's wry tale of comeuppance, "First Thing Monday Morning." And in the flirty short story, "Something Special," Venise Berry shows what the Cape Verde Islands maxim, "Every week has its Friday" really means as one woman's weekly ritual promises seven days' worth of sensual satisfaction.

In addition to such established writers as Pearl Cleage, Omar Tyree, Margaret Johnson-Hodge, Timmothy McCann, Brandon Massey, Kambon Obayani, Earl Sewell, Maxine Thompson, and others, here, too, are rising stars in the African-American literary world, including fourteen-year-old Kharel Price and fifteen-year-old Tierra French, proving that the wisdom of the past lives on in the next generation.

From the struggle to break the chains of the past, (Pat G'Orge-Walker's "The Consequence") to the fight to keep hope alive in the face of injustice, (Robert Fleming's "A Crisis of Faith"), from the joys of loving an older woman (Parry "Ebony Satin" Brown's "Ain't Nobody's Business If I Do"), to an African man's discovery of his own America (Amanda Ngozi Adichie's "Women Here Drive Buses"), this triumphant, stirring anthology is a glorious reminder of the power of proverbs to heal, to provoke, to unify, and to inspire.

Related links

Official Web Site
http://www.jewellparkerrhodes.com/