Gayl Jones Books In Order

Standalone Novels In Publication Order

  1. Corregidora (1975)
  2. Eva’s Man (1976)
  3. The Healing (1998)
  4. Mosquito (1998)
  5. Palmares (2021)

Collections In Publication Order

  1. White Rat (1977)
  2. Song for Anninho (1981)
  3. Hermit-Woman (1983)
  4. Xarque And Other Poems (1985)
  5. Song for Almeyda and Song for Anninho (2022)

Non-Fiction Books In Publication Order

  1. Liberating Voices (1991)

Standalone Novels Book Covers

Collections Book Covers

Non-Fiction Book Covers

Gayl Jones Books Overview

Corregidora

Here is Gayl Jones’s classic novel, the tale of blues singer Ursa, consumed by her hatred of the nineteenth century slave master who fathered both her grandmother and mother.’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

Eva’s Man

Imprisoned for the bizarre murder of her lover, Eva Medina Canada recalls a life tormented by sexual abuse and emotional violence. Eva’s Man is Gayl Jones’s second novel. ‘An American writer with a powerful sense of vital inheritance, of history in the blood.’ John Updike, The New Yorker

The Healing

Harlan Jane Eagleton transforms herself from a minor rock star’s manager to a traveling faith healer in this lyrical and often humorous exploration of the struggle to let go of pain, anger, and even love.’A major literary event…
surprising, romantic, and wholly satisfying.’ Veronica Chambers, Newsweek

Mosquito

Set in a south Texas border town, Mosquito is the story of Sojourner Nadine Jane Johnson an African American truck driver known as ‘Mosquito‘ and her accidental and increasing involvement in ‘the new underground railroad,’ a sanctuary movement for Mexican immigrants.’Where African American literature is heading as we approach the 21st century.’ E. Ethelbert Miller, Emerge

White Rat

Originally published in 1977, White Rat contains twelve provocative tales that explore the emotional and mental terrain of a diverse cast of characters, from the innocent to the insane. In each, Jones displays her unflinching ability to dive into the most treacherous of psyches and circumstances: the title story examines the identity and relationship conundrums of a black man who can pass for white, earning him the name White Rat as an infant; The Women follows a girl whose mother brings a line of female lovers to live in their home; Jevata details eighteen year old Freddy’s relationship with the fifty year old title character; The Coke Factory tracks the thoughts of a mentally handicapped adolescent abandoned by his mother; and Asylum focuses on a woman having a nervous breakdown, trying to protect her dignity and her private parts as she enters an institution. In uncompromising prose, and dialect that veers from northern, educated tongues to down home southern colloquialisms, Jones illuminates lives that society ignores, moving them to center stage.

Song for Anninho

This exquisite book length poem based closely on history and set in colonial Brazil, recounts the destruction of Palmares, the last of seven fugitive slave enclaves beset by the Portuguese. Amid the flight and re enslavement of its inhabitants emerges the love store of Anninho and Almeyda, former African slaves.

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