Corregidora

By Gayl Jones

Book Overview

Selected by The Atlantic as one of THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVELS. ("You have to read them.")

One of The New Yorker's "The Best Books We Read in 2020" picks

"Jones's great achievement is to reckon with both history and interiority, and to collapse the boundary between them."--Anna Wiener, The New Yorker

The new edition of an American masterpiece, this is the harrowing story of Ursa Corregidora, a blues singer in the early 20th century forced to confront the inherited trauma of slavery.

A literary classic that remains vital to our understanding of the past, Corregidora is Gayl Jones's powerful debut novel, examining womanhood, sexuality, and the psychological residue of slavery. Jones masterfully tells the story of Ursa, a Kentucky blues singer, who, in the wake of a tragic loss, confronts her maternal history and the legacy of Corregidora, the Brazilian slave master who fathered both her mother and grandmother. Consumed and haunted by her hatred of the man who irrevocably shaped her life and the lives of her family, Ursa Corregidora must come to terms with a past that is never too distant from the present.

Selected, edited, and first edited by Toni Morrison, it 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) and "a tale as American as Mount Rushmore and as murky as the Florida swamps." (Maya Angelou).

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0807061093
• ISBN13: 9780807061091
• Release Date: January 2019
• Publisher: Beacon Press
• Length: 184 Pages
• Weight: 0.68 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.5" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

FABULOUS

Excellent price and book arrived in record time and flawless condition even though it was used.

Feminism with a Twist.

Don't be fooled by the cover of this book, this it not urban fiction. The writing is very sohpisticated as i read it for college, it is not erotica. That being said, the subject matter of this novel is fairly dark, covering everything from pedifile lesbianism, domestic abuse, and rape. What I like is that the book potrays sex in a very realistic light, a double edged sword that can be as beautiful as it is ugly. There is a redemptive quality to the story, and I love the ending if you've read it. :) The book covers many issues, but the one element that makes this novel so different is female empowerment through sexuality, and what it means to give and recieve love.

Beyond Moving

It is hard for me to review a book such as this. I do so as a woman, not as a black woman, so i realize that my thoughts will be lacking. As a woman from a culture (sicilian)that also puts so much emphasis on remembering not only the wrongs done to you, but all those done to your family, and growing up primarily with stories of hate, I was able to connect with the heroine of this book. I understood her anger, confusion, and need to find herself. This book contains a sublime beauty that is nearly impossible to explain.

one of the most powerful books I ever read

This book gripped me in a way few others have - the intermingling of past and present, slavery and so-called "freedom," drove home the realities of oppression. When a woman whose only source of power is the ability to "make generations" is unable to have children, it echoes with a scream of despair. I recently read an article about the author, who was apparently in an abusive marriage that ended recently with her husband's suicide - and attempted murder of her. No wonder she was able to convey pain in such a vivid way.