Freedom in the dismal / a novel by Monifa A. Love.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Love, Monifa A.

Contributor:

Gotham Book Mart Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

Joanna Banks Collection of African American Books (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

African Americans--Fiction.

African Americans.

Genre:

Fiction.

Penn Provenance:

Gotham Book Mart (former owner) (Gotham Book Mart Collection copy)

Banks, Joanna (donor) (Banks Collection copies 1 & 2)

Physical Description:

191 pages, 1 unnumbered page ; 21 cm

Distribution:

Chicago, IL : Distributed by Academy Chicago Publishers.

Place of Publication:

Kaneohe, Hawaii : Plover Press, 1998.

Summary:

Because of his participation in a crime, David Lesesne Carmichael -- a young black man of great promise -- has been given the unusually harsh sentence of thirty years in jail.

As the novel opens, he and his childhood sweetheart, Camille Royce Dumas, find themselves separated, faced with the Herculean task of sustaining their impassioned relationship through words and words alone. Their letters necessarily become their only means of communication; they embody the sublimated love they can never consummate.

The voices of the dead-both strangers and family members -- echo through these letters, bringing up images that ring with racial memories. David's and Camille's written words are vehicles not only for the expression of their love, but also for the remembrance of the cruel realities of their history: there is the runaway slave who hangs himself from a tree rather than face the possibility of recapture; and the woman who goes down to the sea literally to smell the ships in the hope that she can envision her native Africa.

This bizarre, seemingly impossible romanticism is a backdrop to our lovers' plight. It highlights their own deprivation, that the tragedy of David and Camille was inevitable and will go on repeating itself -- through other lovers and other live -- until the historic injustices suffered by African-Americans on this continent are ameliorated.

While love, in any form, offers no solutions, it is a vital element in this intense novel that provides the reader with new insights into the meaning and complexity of the black experience.

Contents:

Voices a Prologue

Freedom in the Dismal.

Notes:

"Cover illustration: 'Running to Freedom' Copyright © by Ann Tanksley."

Winner of Plover's 1997 Fiction Contest.

Local Notes:

Kislak Center Banks Collection copies 1 & 2 presented to the Penn Libraries in 2018 by Joanna Banks.

Banks Collection copy 2 has printed annotations.

ISBN:

0917635264

9780917635267

0917635272

9780917635274

OCLC:

38081701