Martha Southgate, with AALBC.com Founder Troy Johnson
Photo Taken 2006 National Book Club Conference
Martha Southgate is the author of Third Girl from the Left which was published in paperback by Houghton Mifflin in September 2006. It won the Best Novel of the year award from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. It was shortlisted for the PEN/Beyond Margins Award and the Hurston/Wright Legacy award. Her previous novel, The Fall of Rome, received the 2003 Alex Award from the American Library Association and was named one of the best novels of 2002 by Jonathan Yardley of the Washington Post.
Read an Interview with Martha Southgate [September 29, 2011] "Writers Like Her" by Stacia.Brown for inreads.com
The
Taste of Salt
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Paperback: 288 pages
Publisher: Algonquin Books (September 13, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1565129253
ISBN-13: 978-1565129252
Award-winning novelist Martha Southgate (who, in the words of Julia Glass, 'can
write fat and hot, then lush and tender, then just plain truthful and burning
with heart') now tells the story of a family pushed to its limits by addiction
over the course of two generations.
Josie Henderson loves the water and is fulfilled by her position as the only
senior-level black scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. In
building this impressive life for herself, she has tried to shed the one thing
she cannot: her family back in landlocked Cleveland. Her adored brother, Tick,
was her childhood ally as they watched their drinking father push away all the
love that his wife and children were trying to give him. Now Tick himself has
been coming apart and demands to be heard.
Weaving four voices into a beautiful tapestry, Southgate charts the lives of the
Hendersons from the parents' first charmed meeting to Josie's realization that
the ways of the human heart are more complex than anything seen under a
microscope.
Third Girl from the Left
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Hardcover: 288 pages
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin (September 7, 2005)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0618470239
My mother believed in the power of movies and the people in them to change a life, to change her life.' So explains Tamara, daughter of Angela, granddaughter of Mildred'the three women whose lives are portrayed in stunning detail in Martha Southgate's accomplished third novel, Third Girl From The Left.
Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1970 is not a place a smart black girl wants to linger in long. For Angela, twenty years old and beautiful, the stifling conformity is unbearable. She heads to L.A. just as blaxploitation movies are pouring money into the studio and lands a few bit parts before an unplanned pregnancy derails her plans for stardom.
For Mildred, movies have always been a blessed diversion in a life marked by the legacy of the 1921 Tulsa race riot. In the Dreamland Theater, she and Angela sat in rare harmony, enthralled by the images on the screen. But when Angela herself appears onscreen, dancing naked, it breaks Mildred's proper heart, and a rift ensues. It falls to Tamara, a budding documentarian, to help mother and grandmother confront all that has been left unsaid in their lives.
"Erotic love, mother love, movie love: whatever form of desire she describes,
Martha Southgate has come up with a voice to adore."
' Time Out New York
The Fall of Rome
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Reading level: Young Adult
Hardcover: 224 pages
Publisher: Scribner (January 1, 2002)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0684865009
Read an
AALBC.com Book Review
The Fall of Rome is a beautiful, full-bodied novel. 'Thumper,
AALBC.com
Latin instructor Jerome Washington is a man out of place. The lone
African-American teacher at the Chelsea School, an elite all-boys
boarding school in Connecticut, he has spent nearly two decades trying
not to appear too "racial." So he is unnerved when Rashid Bryson, a
promising black inner-city student who is new to the school, seeks
Washington as a potential ally against Chelsea's citadel of white
privilege. Preferring not to align himself with Bryson, Washington
rejects the boy's friendship. Surprised and dismayed by Washington's
response, Bryson turns instead to Jana Hansen, a middle-aged white
divorc'e who is also new to the school -- and who has her own reasons
for becoming involved in the lives of both Bryson and Washington.
Southgate makes her debut as a writer to watch in this compelling,
provocative tale of how race and class ensnare Hansen, Washington, and
Bryson as they journey toward an inevitable and ultimately tragic
confrontation.
Another Way to Dance
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Reading level: Ages 9-12
Mass Market Paperback: 208 pages
Publisher: Laurel Leaf; Reprint edition (January 12, 1998)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 044021968X
Another Way to Dance (Delacorte, 1996) is the story of 14-year-old Vicki Harris, an aspiring ballerina who has just been accepted into the summer program at New York City's prestigious School of American Ballet. It will be hard work and highly competitive, but Vicki feels ready. She is totally committed to dancing. But Vicki isn't prepared to be one of only two African-American students in the program. Nor is she expecting the racism she finds within the school. And Michael, a new friend from Harlem, takes Vicki completely by surprise. He shakes up her dream world and shows her that real life is bigger than a stage.
An ALA Best Book for Young Adults
Winner of the Coretta Scott King Genesis Prize for Best First Novel
Related Links
Southgate Official Website
http://www.marthasouthgate.com
page created: 07/01/2007
page updated:
08/23/2012
