Mule & Pear

"The poems give voice to a cross-generational dialogue that includes protagonists from American classics like Nella Larsen's Passing (1929), Jones's Eva's Man (1976), Alice Walker's The Color Purple (1982), Morrison's The Bluest Eye (1970), as well as from lesser-known American texts like Valerie Martin's historical novel Property (2004), and contemporary African classics-in-process like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun (2006). Yet while Griffiths's focus is on the most poignant, memorable and troubling characters of black women's fiction, black female characters from male-authored works like Jean Toomer's hybrid New Negro text Cane (1923), and August Wilson's play Two Trains Running (1992), as well as voices from Adrienne Kennedy's play Funnyhouse of a Negro (1964) and Nina Simone's classic 1966 song "Four Women" share the pages of Mule & Pear with foremothers of the black female novel. Plucking chords from each of these voices, Griffiths orchestrates collaborative testimonials and incisive debates about the most pressing issues facing black women's writing and black women's lives.....The want you feel at the end of Mule & Pear is just the kind of want you hope for in turning the last page of a good book. It's the wish that the voices you have been sitting with will not leave, the promise that the conversation will continue."--Mecca Jamilah Sullivan "Cerise Press"