Dear Mama: I’ve been in Meadow a year and a month. It isn’t like Hinckley, my pretty little place. I miss you. I miss the straight streets, the trees and gardens. The dry farm acres are brushed and planted now and my hands have almost healed. I won’t work brushing and burning ever again without gloves. I was so foolish. I lost my wedding band in that brush and though Lewis hunted two days, he never found it. Lewis got tired of me crying about it but didn’t say much. He just let me get it out of my system, I guess. We’re still thinking about driving our stock to your fields next summer. I’ll write when we’ve made up our minds. The doctor says I am fine and the baby’s okay too. Thank you, Mama, for letting me come to your home, and mine, in February to have my baby. I shudder, thinking of having my baby without you beside me. Are you well, Mama? How’s Luke doing in college? I’m so glad he got to go. Mama, I love you. I miss our buggy rides and us sleeping together, although sleeping with Lewis isn’t half bad. Love, Ruby

Suffering from a terminal illness, Miss Honey Gillette is a world famous/blues singer who believes God has sent her home to die. Or, has God sent Miss Honey home to Plattstown to meet Ruby Martinson, a ten-year-old miracle child? Eventually, Ruby Martinson becomes Miss Ruby Midnight, a jazz singer who in the 1940s sends the jazz world into a tailspin with her vocal gifts. But more importantly, Ruby has come to Chicago to establish herself, and where she is to meet Jimmy “Darkboy” Slade,” a jazz drummer of excellence. They fall in love, Miss Ruby Midnight and Jimmy “Darkboy” Slade. But how, then, can love and jazz coexist in a profession where fame demands so damn much for those who want it?

In this poignant and heart wrenching true story, Regina Louise recounts her childhood search for connection in the face of abuse, neglect, and rejection. What happens to a child when her own parents reject her and sit idly by as others abuse her? In this poignant, heart wrenching debut work, Regina Louise recounts her childhood search for someone to feel connected to. A mother she has never known--but long fantasized about-- deposited her and her half sister at the same group home that she herself fled years before. When another resident beats Regina so badly that she can barely move, she knows that she must leave this terrible place-the only home she knows. Thus begins Regina's fight to survive, utterly alone at the age of 10. A stint living with her mother and her abusive boyfriend is followed by a stay with her father's lily white wife and daughters, who ignore her before turning to abuse and ultimately kicking her out of the house. Regina then tries everything in her search for someone to care for her and to care about, from taking herself to jail to escaping countless foster homes to be near her beloved counselor. Written in her distinctive and unique voice, Regina's story offers an in-depth look at the life of a child who no one wanted. From her initial flight to her eventual discovery of love, your heart will go out to Regina's younger self, and you'll cheer her on as she struggles to be Somebody's Someone.

“A spicy mixture of family scandal, mother-daughter betrayal, and good-for-nothing men” from the New York Times bestselling author of God Don't Like Ugly (Publishers Weekly). Everyone from Louisiana to Florida knows Mama Ruby—a small-town girl who became one of the South's most notorious and volatile women. Now Mary Monroe reveals how Mama Ruby's past haunts the family she's left behind . . . Mama Ruby has died, and Maureen Montgomery is finally taking charge of her own life. With her beautiful teenage daughter, Loretta, by her side, she returns to Florida and settles into a routine any other woman would consider bland. But for Maureen and her brother, Virgil, after Mama Ruby's hair-trigger temper and murderous ways, bland is good. Yet Loretta has other ideas . . . Set on becoming rich and famous, Loretta convinces Maureen to let her start a modeling career with the help of a Miami photographer. But even as they move in promising new directions, they can't escape Mama Ruby—including Virgil, who's concealed one of her most shocking acts for most of his life. To make a future that's truly hers, Maureen will have to take on a bit of Mama Ruby's strength, forge new bonds—and face down the past. Praise for Mary Monroe “An exceptional writer and phenomenal storyteller!” —Kimberla Lawson Roby, New York Times bestselling author “A remarkable talent.” —Chicago Sun-Times “Monroe is a masterful storyteller.” —Philadelphia Inquirer

In this unforgettable debut novel, twenty-seven-year-old Tessa, pregnant with her third child and living in a trailer on her mother-in-law’s property, encounters the woman she used to love—leading Tessa to question the very foundations of the life she’s built Abandoned first by her father and then her mother, as a girl Tessa is left to live with her abusive stepfather and stepbrother. She survives by finding reserves of strength in herself, and by the surprising, transformative love of another teenage girl, Mel, who sees through Tessa’s tough exterior to the vulnerable, scarred, loving woman inside. When she suddenly loses Mel, too, Tessa stumbles into a saving grace of a different kind with Henry and his mama, Angie, becoming a mother and finding herself in a familial existence that somehow carries her into adulthood—until the day she runs into Mel, who has just returned to Perris after years away. Filled with violence, tragedy, tenderness, longing, and the unvarnished courage of women living in a mostly unseen America, Perris, California is the utterly gripping story of Tessa’s journey from trauma to healing, and it introduces us to one of the most indelible female characters since Bone Boatwright in Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina or Ruth Langmore in Ozark.

"A novel about deeply entrenched conflicts between a white mother and her biracial daughter"--Provided by publisher.

When Luna's best friend Mason dies, she's determined to hold onto his memory. Moving in with Mason's mentally disabled mother, Ruby Day, Luna takes over the cooking and cleaning. But trouble arrives in the form of Ruby Day's aunt, who wants her niece put away in a mental institution. It will take all Luna's willpower to defeat the aunt, and along the way she'll learn what it means to lay down one's life for a friend.

“Blazes a new trail in Africana literary criticism by providing an insight into the soul and spirit of Africana womanhood.” --Anthonia Kalu, The Ohio State University, author of Women, Literature, and Development in Africa This is the revised and expanded edition of Teresa N. Washington's groundbreaking book Our Mothers, Our Powers, Our Texts: Manifestations of Aje in Africana Literature. In Yoruba language and culture, Aje signifies both a phenomenal spiritual power and the human beings who exercise that power. Aje is the birthright of Africana women who are revered as the Gods of Society. While Africana men can have Aje, its owners and controllers are Africana women. Because it is an African female power, and due to its invisibility, ubiquity, and profundity, Aje is often maligned as witchcraft. However, as Teresa N. Washington reveals in Our Mothers, Our Powers, Our Texts, Aje is central to the Yoruba ethos, worldview, and cosmology. Not only is it essential to human creation and artistic creativity, but as a force of justice and retribution, Aje is vital to social harmony and balance. Washington analyzes forms, figures, and forces of Aje in the Yoruba world, in the Caribbean Islands, in Latin America, and in African America. Washington's research reveals that with the exile and enslavement of millions of Africans, Aje became a global force and an essential ally in organizing insurrections, soothing shattered souls, and reminding the dispossessed of their inherent divinity. From her in-depth exploration of Aje in Pan-African history and orature, Washington guides readers through rich analyses of the symbolic, methodological, and spiritual manifestations of Aje that are central to important works by Africana writers but are rarely elucidated by Western criticism. Our Mothers, Our Powers, Our Texts includes innovative readings of works by many Africana writers, including Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, Ben Okri, Wole Soyinka, Jamaica Kincaid, and Ntozake Shange. This revised and expanded edition of Our Mothers, Our Powers, Our Texts will appeal to scholars of Africana literature, African religion and philosophy, gender studies, and comparative literature. Devotees of Africana spiritual systems will find this book to be indispensable.

A raw, gripping, authentic, and boldly original novel about a fifteen-year-old Texas girl set to stand trial for murder—and the one person who might be able to help her clear her name. A wealthy businessman is dead, and fifteen-year-old Ruby Monroe is in a Dallas jail awaiting trial for his murder. Ruby has no one she can count on—no one, except her state-appointed caseworker, a woman named Cadence Ware. In Ruby’s experience, that’s not anyone she can trust. Cadence is familiar with the cold reality of Ruby’s situation, even before Ruby was arrested. Angry and alone, homeless and hungry, breaking the law just to survive, she is the kind of girl no one wants to listen to, especially not the prosecutor who wants to put her away for life. But no one knows the story—the real story—of what happened the day Ruby met the man who would end up dead. As the layers of truth are peeled away and time is running out, Ruby and Cadence will both have desperate choices to make—choices that could mean the difference between Ruby spending her life in prison or her name being cleared. Told through a collection of letters, meeting notes, news articles, court transcripts, and more, Girls Like Her is a riveting and unflinching tale of the truths so often lost in the American justice system, and one girl’s fight to be heard.

Sisters Lulu and Merry share a terrible past. When Lulu was only a child, she let her drunken father into the family home and watched him kill her mother - and then turn on six-year-old Merry. Years later, clinging to the wreckage of their childhood, the sisters try to make sense of what happened. Bound by their love for each other but divided by private grief, forgiveness comes at a higher price than either could have imagined. The Murderer's Daughters is a gripping and moving story of the ramifications of one violent act and the endurance of family loyalty - even when it is stretched to the very limit.