Corregidora

I dreamed with my eyes open. All the Corregidora women with narrow waists and high cheekbones and wide hips. All the Corregidora woman dancing. Blues singer Ursa is consumed by her hatred of Corregidora, the nineteenth-century slave master who fathered both her mother and grandmother. Charged with 'making generations' to bear witness to this legacy of abuse, Ursa must confront her family history after a fight with her husband leaves her unable to have children. Haunted by the ghosts of a Brazilian plantation, pained by the fractured relationships of her present, she slowly and firmly strikes her own terms with womanhood.Upon publication in 1975, Corregidora was hailed as a masterpiece, winning acclaim from writers including James Baldwin, Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison and John Updike. Exploring themes such as race, sexuality and the long repercussions of slavery, this powerful novel paved the way for Beloved and The Colour Purple.No novel about any Black woman could ever be the same after this' TONI MORRISON'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 'A literary giant, and one of my absolute favourite writers' TAYARI JONES 'An American writer with a powerful sense of vital inheritance, of history in the blood' JOHN UPDIKE, NEW YORKER

Gayl Jones's first novel, Corregidora (1975), was both shocking and ground-breaking in its probing of the psychological legacy of slavery and sexual ownership through the life of a Kentucky blues singer . . . it predated Alice Walker's The Color Purple and Toni Morrison's Beloved, revealing an unfinished emancipation and the power of historical memory to shape lives. It also marked a shift in African-American literature that made women, and relationships between black people, central, An American writer with a powerful sense of vital inheritance, of history in the blood, No novel about any black woman could ever be the same after this, She writes beautifully, painfully, furiously and righteously about violence and desire, A literary giant, and one of my absolute favourite writers

Gayl Jones was born in Kentucky in 1949. She attended Connecticut College and Brown University and has taught at Wellesley and the University of Michigan. Her books include Corregidora (1975), Eva's Man (1976), The Healing (1998), which was a National Book Award finalist, Palmares (2021), which was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize in fiction and longlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize, and The Birdcatcher (2022), which was also a National Book Award Finalist.