"Evil's regenerative powers
and one girl's fierce resistance.... A book that deserves a wide audience."
—The Cleveland Plain Dealer |
"[An] exceptional debut
novel.... [Has] a depth and dimension not often characteristic of a first
novel."
—Library Journal (starred review) |
"In an extraordinary fictional debut,
Delores Phillips delivers a narrative with the kind of brutal force that
renders a reader breathless.... A captivating and emotional tale, The
Darkest Child is a narrative as much about hate as it is about love."
—Noir! African American Book Review |
"One marvels at how Phillips sets
in motion, and sustains, a devastating series of revelations, confrontations
and acts of violence.... She buttresses those harsh episodes with a depth
of characterization worthy of Chekhov, pitch-perfect dialogue, and a
profound knowledge of the segregated South in the late 50s."
—The New Leader |
"The Darkest Child is a fierce and
bitter story, told with striking authority. Delores Phillips has created
a family and a town rich with resonant voices, all of them caught up
in struggles both personal and public, and a mother so wildly commanding
she earns a place beside some of the great mad women who embitter the
lives of the children who love them."
—Rosellen Brown |
"The Darkest Child is an exceptional
debut from a most talented writer. Epic in scope, intimate in tone, it
is sure to find a special place in the deepest crevices of your heart."
—Edwidge Danticat |
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Rozelle Quinn is so fair-skinned that she can pass for white. Yet everyone
in her small Georgia town knows. Rozelle's ten children (by ten different daddies)
are mostly light, too. They sleep on the floor in her drafty, rickety three-room
shack and live in fear of her moods and temper. But they are all vital to her.
They occupy the only world she rules and controls. They multiply her power
in an otherwise cruel and uncaring universe.
Rozelle favors her light-skinned kids, but insists that they all love and
obey her unquestioningly. Tangy Mae, thirteen, is her brightest but darkest-complected
child. Tangy wants desperately to continue with her education. Shockingly,
the highest court in the land has just ruled that Negroes may go to school
with whites. Her mother, however, has other plans.
Rozelle wants her daughter to work, cleaning houses for whites, like she does,
and accompany her to the "Farmhouse," where Rozelle earns extra money
bedding men. Tangy Mae, she's decided, is of age.
DELORES PHILLIPS was born in Georgia. She is a graduate
of Cleveland State University and works as a nurse in a facility for abused women
and children in Cleveland. This is her first novel.
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