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. She is also the author of Another Way to Dance, which won the Coretta Scott King Genesis Award for Best First Novel. She received a 2002 New York Foundation for the Arts grant and has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Bread Loaf Writers Conference. Her non-fiction articles have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, O, Premiere, and Essence. She was the Associate Chair of the Writing Department at Eugene Lang College at New School University and has taught there as well. She now teaches in the Brooklyn College MFA program. She lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband and two children.

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 divorcée 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: 08/12/2009

 

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