From the time that Ursa Corregidora is able to listen, she is told by her great-grandmother that she must retain "the evidence" in order to pass it on to her children. Initially, one would think this is a harmless request. However, "the evidence" is an oral history of how her great-grandmother was raped and then used as a whore by her white slave owner, Corregidora, as was her daughter (Ursa's grandmother) after her. Corregidora then impregnates Ursa's grandmother (his biological daughter) to produce Ursa's mother. Not only is this a disturbing history for a child to commit to memory, but her great-grandmother's resentment and distrust of men were also passed onto a young Ursa.

Although Ursa had a black father, she resembles the Portuguese Corregidora. Her light skin and fine hair causes her to be ostracized by black women and desired by black men. She expresses her lifelong frustrations in the form of song and has moderate success as a blues singer in the small local club circuit. Ursa finds herself suffering emotionally, verbally, and physically at the whim of her husband, Mutt, who begins to exhibit the same jealousy, possessiveness, and envy that her great-grandmother shared regarding her relationship with Corregidora.

Through flashbacks and internal memories, we understand Ursa's mental anguish when trying to discern between the painful slave legacy and her present day household situation. True to the mindset of the time, a woman's childbearing ability is looked upon as her only source of power and we see Ursa's torment further exacerbated when her ability to pass "the evidence" to her children is jeopardized.

This book addresses racism, slavery, and sexism on several different levels. Be warned-- it grips the reader from the beginning and goes deep in a very "Alice Walker-ish" kind of way. I experienced difficulty following the dialogue at times but I hung in there and relied on inference to follow the author's insinuations; and despite this one 'snag', I was not disappointed with Ms. Jones's first novel. This is a short but complex read; it is not for everyone, however I found it was a worthwhile literary departure from the "norm."

Reviewed by Phyllis
APOOO BookClub
April 4, 2003

I read the book after I'd already gone through The Healing and it made me understand why her debut astonished the literary community. She created a deep bluesy world in which to explore themes of love, geneology, black matriarchy, memory, forgiveness, loyalty...One wishes she could have told more stories, had a career trajectory like Morrison's but her personal life did not accomodate her gift. Ursa Corregidora is a beautiful blues singer in 1930's middle America. A tragic accident (or is it?) leaves her unable to bear children and tormented by the twisted lineage of a line of women that will end with her. I would recommend the book for anyone interested in women's fiction, black historical fiction, American fiction. Similar theme to Beloved but much more spare prose style, much is left for the reader to infer, improvise. A slim, powerful book.

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.

Narrated by Almeyda, a fugitive slave woman in Brazil in the late 1600s, this book is a departure for Jones as it is written in the form of a narrative poem. Fans of her fiction - books such as CORREGIDORA and EVA'S MAN may like it, however, as it conveys all of the pain and anger that Jones does so well. There is a dearth of beautiful language in this book, but it is rich in emotion as Almeyda tells the tale of her breasts that were sliced off by a Portuguese soldier, of her lover, Anninho, lost and presumed dead, and of the yearning and desire that permeates her life. Throughout the long poem, there is an undercurrent of danger. Sex is dangerous. Love is dangerous. Men are dangerous. All are desired, yet they all bring pain. Black men seem necessary for black women's lives, and white men, are, of course, a kind of death sentence. Jones' poetry is at its best when she is writing of connections between women or when penning anything remotely sensual. Song for Anninho is a book to read when one is in need of a sorrow greater than one's own.

I am so glad Beacon published a new addition of this lovely book. It is so powerful, beautiful and rare. A gem like this should never be out of print.

Eva Medina Canada sits in a jail cell, reflecting on the ruin that is her whole life. From the time she was a little girl, Eva has been the target of random and senseless sexual assaults: Freddy with his popsicle stick, her neighbor Mr. Logan who attacked her in a stairwell when she was still a child; her mother's paramour; her cousin Alfonso; her husband twenty years her senior who treated her like a virtual prisoner. Eva has never known what it is to be loved and cared for by a decent, caring man. But she's hit rock bottom when she meets Davis, who uses her like a rented prostitute and won't let her out of his hotel room until he's finished with her; he won't even give her a comb for her hair. She's been debased to a piece of property to be used and thrown away. But Eva's had more than enough, and she takes a devastating revenge. She's not just paying back Davis alone for what she's been through; he's just the instrument: Eva wants revenge at every man who ever looked at her, touched her, treated her as something less than human.

Like Eva's cellmate, Elvira, we are at once fascinated and repelled by Eva's crime and her tortured life that drove her to commit it. Gayl Jones makes us feel all Eva's pain and her disgust and horror at the men who used her and treated her with such contempt. Eva was a walking time bomb; we can only wonder that she didn't explode earlier. But murder doesn't ease Eva's pain, and there's no escape for her. Lonely and devastated, Eva needs love like any other human being, but love is something she'll never find; instead, she's stuck in a cell with Elvira, who is as predatory as the men on the outside who ruined her life. Eva has survived, but at a devastating cost; she's become one of the walking dead.

In 177 spare pages, Jones paints a convincing portrait of a soul so damaged that even the gift of a comb would be an unhoped-for kindness. "Eva's Man" is a short book but it's not easy to get through; Jones slices back and forth between time and place, mirroring Eva's fractured, fissured life. It's a tough, gritty, no-holds-barred book by a uniquely gifted novelist.

EVA'S MAN is a confusing, profound, and horrifying tale about abuse and silence. Gayl Jones masterfully tells the story of how one Black woman's life was manipulated and changed forever because of the sexual abuse she encountered at every stage of her development and how this brutality eventually led to a bizaare murder.

This was a hard read both emotionally and physically. Jones takes liberties with time and detail jumping back and forth in the story and slowly giving the reader the complete picture of Eva's life. I had to read and re-read chapters for fear of missing crucial detail.

What the reader is left with is a glimpse into the mind of a fractured woman unable to love for fear of being victimized. What Eva chooses to do instead is assume the role of the victimizer and take extreme control of her own sexuality by killing her lover.

Within the pages of this horror story, Jones mananges to give Eva a language and image that is brutal, honest, sadistic and frail. If ever there was a complicated anti-hero in modern fiction, here she is.

I didn't come away from the novel with praise or pity for Eva, but her story is one that has stayed in my mind months after finishing the book.

From the mouth of a madwoman come horrible poetic truths in a riveting oral history style.

but after a week of trying to get through the first 20 pages, I realized that this book just wasn't for me. I'm a pretty fast reader, but with this book, I found myself re-reading the same pages over and over again. I guess it's all just a matter of opinion. You'll either love it, or downright hate. There's no in between.

I have never read Gayl Jones before, but I throughly enjoyed this book. It follows a stream-of consciousness pattern in the style of James Joyce, along with the jargon of a woman with no formal education so one must on occassion reread a passage to follow what has happened.

Jones reveals a rich knowledge of the culture, plants, and animals of the Southwest in this work. At times, I felt like I was reading a Tex-Mex Spanish primer.

This book is lenghty and unless you are a graduate of Evelyn Wood's speed reading course, you will need a few days to absorb its contents. However, the plot is interesting and the characters, particularly Mosquito, are well developed.

I don't understand the reviews which describe Mosquito's style as digressive because I found it incredibly focused. On one level it's a mosaic of ideas that could roughly be called "multiculturalist" or even "politically correct," though this is not at all to pigeonhole the book. As a white male reader I found it disorienting the way Mosquito specifies and then marginalizes the dominant culture: here the white man never speaks in his own voice and when he does appear it is as a stereotype--racist cop or immigration official. Almost as if Jones is trying to perform the kind of "othering" operation that the dominant culture has been practicing on women and people of color...on another level of course Jones deploys all the metanarrative props some of us crave but here they're put in service to her central themes of identity, mistaken identity, borders and border crossings...I could go on, just read this book!

Gayl Jones' folktale is an engaging enough story. In spite of this, I was immensely frustrated while reading through it. The main character, the spiritual "Healer", is named Harlan. Similar to many other books I have read in the past, this book contains a lot of dialogue between the main character and other minor ones. Unlike any other novel I have read, the author chooses not to include any dialogue related punctuation in her work. This makes for a pretty confusing read. It was not until around page ten that I learned that there even was a difference between Harlan's personal thoughts and her numerous conversations. Jones also includes conversations other people have about Harlan in her novel. With a standard novel, this would not pose a problem to the reader. Nevertheless, with The Healing, it made for a struggling read. Since most of these conversations seemed crucial to Harlan's character development I felt guilty skipping over some of them. After a while, my eyes hurt. The absence of quotations is an interesting device, but, not worth the patience it requires. The Healing receives one star because the plot is fantastic. Harlan's grandmother is a dynamic character, and I found Harlan's journey to becoming a "healer" very interesting.

Something told me I should read this book. What had initially caught my attention were the news stories about Jones and her husband. But the descriptions I was reading of The Healing also made me curious, and when I read the first page of the book, I immediately found better reasons for wanting to read it. I enjoyed the time I spent privileged to overhear the constant chatter passing through main character Harlan Jane Eagleton's head, repetitions and all. I laughed at the long, omnivorous reading lists put together by her client Joan. (I recognized some of my friends and myself in that.) This is a very funny book, a mythic--a confabulatory--tale written with a great deal of literary sophistication. And if you like this one, make sure you read Mosquito too.

Gayl Jones speaks the truth like no other writer. Her characters go on long, entertaining and insightful rants. They burst into soliloquies and reveal the inherent racism in America with humor. Her text shows how American culture legitimizes and perpetuates cultural insensitivity at every point. The main character, Harlan Jane Eagleton, discovers she can "heal" people of all sorts of ills, but she can't tackle society's ills. Her own path toward self-healing takes her all around the world, where she meets up with various stereotype-breaking people. The only minor flaws in this book are an inconsistent narrative voice and confusing narrative structure, but Jones playfully addresses both criticisms in her text, thus subverting any complaints. A book of the ages for the ages.