About This Book
"This bittersweet tale of 7 generations in a family . . . weaves together essential historical facts and profound emotional truths. . . . glorious in its scope." —Booklist (starred)
Award-winning writer Ntozake Shange and real-life sister, award-winning playwright Ifa Bayeza achieve nothing less than a modern classic in this epic story of the Mayfield family.
Opening dramatically at Sweet Tamarind, a rice and cotton plantation on an island off South Carolina's coast, we watch as recently emancipated Bette Mayfield says her goodbyes before fleeing for the mainland. With her granddaughter, Eudora, in tow, she heads to Charleston. There, they carve out lives for themselves as fortune-teller and seamstress. Dora will marry, the Mayfield line will grow, and we will follow them on an journey through the watershed events of America's troubled, vibrant history—from Reconstruction to both World Wars, from the Harlem Renaissance to Vietnam and the modern day.
Shange and Bayeza give us a monumental story of a family and of America, of songs and why we have to sing them, of home and of heartbreak, of the past and of the future, bright and blazing ahead.
"Lyrical . . . Think of it as Roots with a treble clef—a confident, lively account of love, art and what falls between." —Kirkus Reviews
"Vibrant. . . . Shange and Bayeza at their poetic best." —Essence
"Solid gold . . . a lyrical and epic novel." —Ebony
"A sweeping African-American saga. . . . a provocative fictional history." –Publishers Weekly
"A richly detailed and boldly colored account of one family's experience in slavery and its legacies for the generations that followed. . . . both moving and arresting." –Annette Gordon-Reed, author of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner The Hemingses of Monticello
