LibGuides: African American Women Writers: Gayl Jones

Gayl Jones (1949- ), author of novels, poetry and short stories, was just 26 years old when she earned national acclaim for her first novel, Corregidora (1975). With her second novel, Eva's Man (1976), Jones consolidated her reputation as a writer who confronted slavery's legacy as it manifests itself in the lives of contemporary African Americans in the form of violence and abuse. With these early efforts, Jones successfully transferred elements of African American oral storytelling to the written page. After the death of her husband in 1998, Jones published Mosquito (1999), an ambitious stream-of-consciousness novel that evinced a new direction for the talented author.

Genre: Literary fiction; Psychological fiction

More about Gayl Jones at ProQuest One Literature

By Gayl Jones

Corregidora by Gayl Jones
The true harrowing story of Ursa Corregidora, a blues singer in the early twentieth century forced to confront the inherited trauma of slavery.
Eva's Man by Gayl Jones
Imprisoned for the bizarre murder of her lover, Eva Medina Canada recalls a life tormented by sexual abuse and emotional violence.
The Healing by Gayl Jones
The life of black faith healer, Harlan Jane Eagleton as she travels from town to town, curing people. She describes her work and records her observations of human nature.
Palmares by Gayl Jones
Recounts the journey of Almeyda, a Black slave girl who comes of age on Portuguese plantations and escapes to a fugitive slave settlement called Palmares. Following its destruction, Almeyda embarks on a journey across colonial Brazil to find her husband, lost in battle. Her story brings to life a world impacted by greed, conquest, and colonial desire. She encounters a mad lexicographer, desperate to avoid military service; a village that praises a god living in a nearby cave; and a medicine woman who offers great magic, at a greater price.

About Gayl Jones

After the pain : critical essays on Gayl Jones by Fiona MillsKeith B Mitchell
Ranging from analyses of her use of language and music to reevaluations of her representation of sexuality and gender roles to examinations of the oft-overlooked connections between Latin America and African Americans, each of these essays investigates Gayl Jones’s desire to continually complicate the process of identity formation.
Cross-Rhythms: jazz aesthetics in African-American literature by Keren Omry
Cross-Rhythms investigates the literary uses and effects of blues and jazz in African-American literature of the twentieth century. Texts by James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Gayl Jones, Toni Morrison and Ishmael Reed variously adopt or are consciously informed by a jazz aesthetic; this aesthetic becomes part of a strategy of ethnic identification and provides a medium with which to consider the legacy of trauma in African-American history.
Women in Chains: the legacy of slavery in Black women's fiction by Venetria K. Patton
Using writers such as Harriet Wilson, Frances E.W. Harper, Pauline Hopkins, Toni Morrison, Sherley Anne Williams, and Gayl Jones, the author highlights recurring themes and the various responses of black women writers to the issues of race and gender. Time and again these writers link slavery with motherhood - their depictions of black womanhood are tied to the effects of slavery and represented through the black mother. Patton shows that both the image others have of black women as well as black women's own self image is framed and influenced by the history of slavery.