"The Best American Novelist Whose Name You May Not Know"—Calvin Baker, The Atlantic
“Corregidora’s survey of trauma and overcoming has become even better and more relevant with the passage of time. It remains an indispensable point of entry into the tradition of African American writing that Gayl Jones reshaped and enriched.” —Paul Gilroy, author of The Black Atlantic
“Corregidora is a breathtaking novel that stands as one of the most important twentieth-century works of African American literature. Jones captures the web of inheritances that shaped the lives of Black women in slavery and freedom, from trauma to resilience, and from flesh to spirit. Corregidora is deeply affecting and endures in the heart and mind of readers.”
—Imani Perry, author of Looking for Lorraine
Praise for the first edition
“Corregidora is the most brutally honest and painful revelation of what has occurred, and is occurring, in the souls of Black men and women.”
—James Baldwin
“Gayl Jones has concocted a tale as American as Mount Rushmore and as murky as the Florida swamps.”
—Maya Angelou
“Gayl Jones is an American writer with a powerful sense of vital inheritance, of history in the blood.”
—John Updike
“A first novel of great power, so emotionally raw that some readers may find it embarrassing. Corregidora has a sense of life not filtered through art . . . . Gayl Jones’s special gift is to shape experience and make it seem unshaped.”
—John Alfred Avant, The New Republic
“A fiercely concentrated story, harsh and perfectly told . . . . Original, superbly imagined, nothing about the book is simple or easily digested . . . . Gayl Jones has presented problems that are living, historical and important additions to the current American—not just black—scene. Her novels are genuinely imaginative creations.”
—Darryl Pinkney, The New Republic
Small Worlds by Caleb Azumah Nelson is a novel of family and freedom as one young man navigates coming of age as a Londoner born to Ghanian parents. Nelson joins us to talk about the change and growth in his second book, visiting Ghana while writing, the importance of place and more. In her short […]
Classic adjective. clas· sic | \ ˈkla-sik \ 1a: serving as a standard of excellence: of recognized value Some things never go out of style and when it comes to Black classics, there are so many categories we could talk about: music, movies, food, hairstyles, the list goes on. This has nothing to do with color (well, mostly) — it’s about culture. Often, we have so many […]
Poured Over is a show for readers who pore over details, obsess over sentences and ideas and stories and characters; readers who ask a lot of questions, just like Poured Over’s host, Miwa Messer, a career bookseller who’s always reading. Follow us here for surprising riffs, candid conversations, a few laughs, and lots of great book recommendations […]
[Drumroll, please!] The National Book Foundation has announced the five finalists in each of five categories for the 2022 National Book Awards, and there is some GREAT reading on this list, starting with two of our own Discover Prize finalists. Winners will be announced live in New York on November 16, 2022, but until then… […]