Average customer rating:
- Great for a First Novel
- Good plot gone wild
- emotionally gripping, but ultimately disappointing
- Inescapbably Captivated......
- The juxtaposition of myth and reality
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The Icarus Girl: A Novel
Helen Oyeyemi
Manufacturer: Nan A. Talese
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The Opposite House: A Novel
ASIN: 0385513836
Release Date: 2005-06-21 |
Book Description
“The Icarus Girl is an astonishing achievement.” —Sunday Telegraph (London)
Jessamy “Jess” Harrison is eight years old. Sensitive, whimsical, possessed of an extraordinary and powerful imagination, she spends hours writing haiku, reading Shakespeare, or simply hiding in the dark warmth of the airing cupboard. As the child of an English father and a Nigerian mother, Jess just can’t shake off the feeling of being alone wherever she goes, and the other kids in her class are wary of her tendency to succumb to terrified fits of screaming. Believing that a change from her English environment might be the perfect antidote to Jess’s alarming mood swings, her parents whisk her off to Nigeria for the first time where she meets her mother’s family—including her formidable grandfather.
Jess’s adjustment to Nigeria is only beginning when she encounters Titiola, or TillyTilly, a ragged little girl her own age. To Jess, it seems that, at last, she has found someone who will understand her. But gradually, TillyTilly’s visits become more disturbing, making Jess start to realize that she doesn’t know who TillyTilly is at all.
Helen Oyeyemi draws on Nigerian mythology to present a strikingly original variation on a classic literary theme: the existence of "doubles," both real and spiritual, who play havoc with our perceptions and our lives. Lyrical, haunting, and compelling, The Icarus Girl is a story of twins and ghosts, of a little girl growing up between cultures and colors. It heralds the arrival of a remarkable new talent.
Customer Reviews:
Great for a First Novel.......2007-05-14
Oyeyemi finished this novel before her nineteenth birthday, and it proves to be a hypnotic, thrilling tale. Some of the plot and characterization are a bit flawed, and I was disappointed with the ending, as I thought my fervent reading should have been a bit more generously rewarded. All in all, though, Oyeyemi seems to have a bright future ahead of her. Very absorbing and in some cases really frightening.
Good plot gone wild.......2007-04-29
This story is a little strange
although rather compelling
Right from the start it draws you in
with clever storytelling
Jess is only eight years old
and prone to misbehaving
Her parents think she needs a change
to stop her bouts of raving
Her mom is from Nigeria
Her dad's from the UK
They take a trip to Africa
for their next holiday
She meets her mother's kith and kin
and then there's TillyTilly
Who knows things Jessy doesn't know
but doesn't call her "silly"
When they return to England's shores
along comes her new friend
Although the grown-ups think she's real
she's mostly just pretend
The story takes a spooky twist
a family secret's shared
Her friend's demeanor starts to change
and has Jess really scared
Although the plot is really good
some characters don't flow
The ending's rushed and not that great
there's too much you don't know
The author wrote this as a teen
so I'll cut her some slack
The first part is the meaty bit
The ending's just a snack
(Rated: 3.5 stars)
Amanda Richards, April 28, 2007
emotionally gripping, but ultimately disappointing.......2006-12-07
I was really hopeful as I started to read this book, because I found that I cared about Jess and her family. If the goal of the author was to be completely creepy, she definitely met that goal - I had nightmares all night upon completing the book (and I'm not easily scared). The writing was very good, especially as regards developing characters, but the story was uneven and a bit wandering at times. I was left with several unanswered questions (and not the good kind, where you are OK with not having enough information). I will be giving this book to Goodwill, but I would not be opposed to reading another effort by this author, who clearly has potential...
Inescapbably Captivated.............2006-10-14
I could not put this book down. Immediately connected to the character Jess and her struggles, I felt a unique connection to her. Desperately wanting her to be ok, and wanting the author to provide me more, as she did. While the other characters were a bit underdeveloped, especially her grandfather, the main focus was around Jess as it should have been. Although the end made me feel as though, there is more to this story and there maybe something more the author will have to tell us about Jess.
The juxtaposition of myth and reality.......2006-08-06
Eight-year old Jessamy Harrison has never been like the other girls at her school in Bromley, England. Daughter of a Nigerian mother and a British father, Jessamy is gifted, difficult, even peculiar, given to screaming tantrums and strange, febrile fevers. Jess spends hours alone, reading and drawing, seemingly content in her own company. Early in the novel, the family visits Nigeria, where a bevy of aunts, uncles and cousins await and, most significantly, her maternal grandfather, who believes in the ancestral ways but is a devout Christian. It is on this visit that the solitary Jessamy meets a new friend in an abandoned building, Titiola, whom she calls TillyTilly. Jess is delighted to have a playmate, drawn into the intimacies of young girls sharing secrets. Titiola's true identity is unclear until the family returns home, where she appears once more.
TillyTilly knows all of Jess's secrets, the girls at school who ridicule her difference and lack of social skills, anyone who disturbs or makes Jess angry. But eventually Jessamy realizes that no one can see her new friend; she is invisible. It is at this point that the novel shifts from fiction to fable. Is this girl a figment of Jessamy's imagination, a panacea for her emotional turmoil, or is there a darker source, in the roots of African folklore, where spirits have the power to enter the physical realm? As the disturbing incidents increase and Jess realizes she can't control TillyTilly's appearance or her actions, fear presides, those closest to Jessamy affected by the sinister presence of this sister-friend who does or doesn't really exist. The tale beings to make sense when Jessamy's parents take her to a therapist. It is through the girl's response to Doctor McKenzie that the real image of this tormented child takes shape.
It is TillyTilly who tells the shocking secret of Jessamy's birth: she was born a twin, but her sister did not survive. TillyTilly yearns to take the lost sister's place, but all is twisted around her own identity as the missing half of another twin. TillyTilly wields her power, controlling Jess, whose fright grows in proportion to escalating events. As a twin, Jessamy is a child of three worlds: "this one, the spirit world and the Bush, which is a sort of wilderness of the mind", according to Jessamy's mother. In a desperate struggle for dominance, Jess returns to Nigeria with her family, there to confront her confusion. It is here that the battle for Jessamy's soul is engaged, a fight waged between two realities, the physical and the spiritual, the living and the dead.
The novel was written by Oyeyemi before her nineteenth birthday, capturing both the innocence and the deviousness of an unhappy child who cannot find a comfortable place to inhabit, a place where conflicting emotions are allowed to coexist; instead, folklore mixes with reality, the half-life of the spirits begging recognition. The Icarus Girl is imbued with the language of otherness, a fairy tale in which anything is possible, ancestral rituals in Nigeria, lost twins and imaginary friends part of the warp and weft of the fragile fabric of Jessamy's existence. Luan Gaines/2006.
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Student Companion to Richard Wright: (Student Companions to Classic Writers)
Robert Felgar
Manufacturer: Greenwood Press
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ASIN: 0313309094 |
Book Description
Born in rural Mississippi, the grandson of slaves, Richard Wright overcame every social obstacle, including poverty, racism, and limited education to achieve literary recognition as the creator of some of America's most powerful Black literature. Written with unprecendented candor, Wright's works changed the cultural landscape by challenging old stereotypes and myths about race. Wright scholar Robert Felgar has written a critical volume to help students appreciate the literary significance of such groundbreaking works as Native Son and the autobiographical Black Boy. This study serves students of both literature and social history as it explores the themes of racism and all types of insitutionalized oppression that Wright exposed in his provocative writing. Felgar approaches each of Wright's major works in chronological order, offering insightful literary analysis of Uncle Tom's Children, Native Son, Black Boy, and The Outsider, as well as Wright's two works published posthumously, Eight Men, a collection of stories, and Lawd Today! The original, censored works are discussed and compared with the more recently re-published unexpurgated versions. This Student Companion introduces readers to Richard Wright with a biographical chapter, recounting the writer's struggles and achievements. A literary heritage chapter examines the genres, themes, and stylistic traditions that figured in Wright's work. Each of Wright's major works of fiction is given careful literary interpretation, with analysis of plot, character development, thematic concerns and a close alternate reading. A selective bibliography of critical works and reviews, in addition to the listings of Wright's stories, essays and full-length works will help students derive the most from their study of this important American writer.
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August Wilson: A Literary Companion (Mcfarland Literary Companions)
Mary Ellen Snodgrass
Manufacturer: McFarland & Company
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King Hedley II
ASIN: 0786419032 |
Book Description
Award-winning African-American playwright August Wilson has created a cultural chronicle of black America through such works as Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, Fences, Joe Turner's Come and Gone, The Piano Lesson, and Two Trains Running. The authentic ring of wit, anecdote, homily, and plaint has proved that a self-educated Pittsburgh ghetto native can grow into a revered conduit for a century of black achievement. He forces readers and audiences to examine the despair generated by poverty and racism by exploring African-American heritage and experiences over the course of the twentieth century.
This literary companion provides the reader with a source of basic data and analysis of characters, dates, events, allusions, staging strategies, and themes from the work on one of America's finest playwrights. The text opens with an annotated chronology of Wilson's life and works, followed by his family tree. Each of the 166 encyclopedic entries that make up the body of the work combines insights from a variety of sources along with generous citations; each concludes with a selected bibliography on such relevant subjects as the blues, Malcolm X, irony, roosters, and Gothic mode. Charts elucidate the genealogies of Wilson's characters, the Charles, Hedley, and Maxson families, and account for weaknesses in Wilson's female characters. Two appendices complete the generously cross-referenced work: a timeline of events in Wilson's life and those of his characters, and a list of forty topics for projects, composition, and oral analysis.
Book Description
Combining scholarship covering one hundred fifty years of novel writing in the U.S., newly commissioned essays examine eighty African American novels. They include well-known works as well as writings recently recovered or acknowledged. The collection features essays on the slave narrative, coming of age, vernacular modernism, and the post-colonial novel to help readers gain a better appreciation of the African American novel's diversity and complexity.
Amazon.com
This important sourcebook for information about black writers and their craft is a welcome companion to the recently issued Norton Anthology of African American Literature. More to the point, it shows how much black literature, once relegated to the margins, has become mainstream. Here are brief biographies of more than 400 black writers, entries on some 150 works, and a host of entries on characters from novels, stories, and plays. In addition, there are entries on topics such as Afrocentricity (as well as on topics of more general interest, such as the novel), that make this essential for anyone who cares about black literature.
Book Description
A breathtaking achievement, this Concise Companion is a suitable crown to the astonishing production in African American literature and criticism that has swept over American literary studies in the last two decades. It offers an enormous range of writers-from Sojourner Truth to Frederick Douglass, from Zora Neale Hurston to Ralph Ellison, and from Toni Morrison to August Wilson. It contains entries on major works (including synopses of novels), such as Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Richard Wright's Native Son, and Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun. It also incorporates information on literary characters such as Bigger Thomas, Coffin Ed Johnson, Kunta Kinte, Sula Peace, as well as on character types such as Aunt Jemima, Brer Rabbit, John Henry, Stackolee, and the trickster. Icons of black culture are addressed, including vivid details about the lives of Muhammad Ali, John Coltrane, Marcus Garvey, Jackie Robinson, John Brown, and Harriet Tubman. Here, too, are general articles on poetry, fiction, and drama; on autobiography, slave narratives, Sunday School literature, and oratory; as well as on a wide spectrum of related topics. Compact yet thorough, this handy volume gathers works from a vast array of sources--from the black periodical press to women's clubs--making it one of the most substantial guides available on the growing, exciting world of African American literature.
Customer Reviews:
OUTSTANDING RESOURCE.......2001-05-21
Everything that you wanted to know or needed to know about African American Literature is contained in this eight hundred page volume. This comprehensive volume covers the historical and cultural contexts of African American literature that has been too long neglected.
Oxford's Companion encompasses the traditional genres of poetry, fiction and drama but goes beyond them. It gives the same analysis to special genres such as Slave Narratives, Oratory, Folk Literature, etc. that you don't normally find in reference works of this kind. These special features and others give this book a unique spot in reference works of literature.
From the moment I got this volume in my hands, I couldn't put it down. Its numerous essays, brief biographies and analysis of the various hues of African American Literature was overwhelming and enjoyable. A referance guide such as this should be in every home. It is user friendly, informative and entertaining. Most of all it will give you a deeper appreciation of the vast types of African American literature produced throughout the years.
An English Graduate Student in Nashville.......2001-04-25
I purchased this anthology to assist me in my African-American literature class. This book has given me great insight about the literature of African-Americans. Not only does it give great details about the many authors, but it also explains the nature of their many works. I strongly recommend this book to anyone taking an African-American literature course - regardless of the time period.
Book Description
Zora Neale Hurston is considered one of the most controversial yet prominent figures associated with the Harlem Renaissance. This introductory study examines Hurston's contributions to that literary movement, as well as her role as mediator between the black and white worlds in which she lived. Readers will appeciate the clear presentation of the biographical facts of her life, as well as an overview of the issues and varying perceptions surrounding her literary achievements. A full chapter is devoted to analysing each of Hurston's major works of fiction: Jonah's Gourd Vine (1934), Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), Moses, Man of the Mountain (1939), Seraph on the Suwanee (1948) as well as her short fiction and her fictionalized autobiography Dust Tracks on a Road (1942). For each of the works, plot, character development, themes, setting and symbols are identified and discussed in clear accessible language. An alternate critical perspective enhances the understanding of each of Hurston's full length works. Contemporary reviews are cited in a bibliography which also helps students find further biographical and critical information on Zora Neale Hurston.
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Readings on a Raisin in the Sun (The Greenhaven Press Literary Companion to American Literature)
Manufacturer: Greenhaven Press
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Alice Walker: A Critical Companion (Critical Companions to Popular Contemporary Writers)
Gerri Bates
Manufacturer: Greenwood Press
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0313320241 |
Book Description
Alice Walker, born in Eatonton, Georgia in 1944, overcame a disadvantaged sharecropping background, blindness in one eye, and the tense times of the Civil Rights Movement to become one of the world's most respected African American writers. While attending both Spelman and Sarah Lawrence Colleges, Walker began to draw on both her personal tragedies and those of her community to write poetry, essays, short stories, and novels that would tell the virtually untold stories of oppressed African and African American women, providing them with hope and inspiring activisim. Perhaps best known for her novel The Color Purple (1982), which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1983 and became a controversial film three years later, Walker has introduced and developed womanist theory, criticism and practice, and continues to champion the causes of women of color by encouraging their strength and liberation in her life and her writings. Literary works analyzed in this volume: The Third Life of Grange Copeland, Meridian, The Color Purple, The Temple of My Familiar, Possessing the Secret of Joy, By the Light of My Father's Smile, The Way Forward Is With a Broken Heart, Now is the Time to Open Your Heart.
Average customer rating:
- Thorough and accurate biography
- Heart-warming and touching
|
Maya Angelou: A Critical Companion (Critical Companions to Popular Contemporary Writers)
Mary Jane Lupton
Manufacturer: Greenwood Press
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0313303258 |
Book Description
Maya Angelou's five-volume autobiography transcends the autobiographical tradition, enriching it with contemporary experience, African American vision, and female sensibility. With these five books, Angelou has created a work of epic scope that covers a quarter century of American and African American history, from the beginning of World War II to the civil rights movement. These volumes stretch over time and place, from Arkansas to Africa, as Angelou grows from a confused child in a Southern town to an accomplished adult. Throughout her life journey depicted in the autobiographies, Angelou grapples with the issues of motherhood and race and reveals the struggles of being a black mother in America, extending her perspective in the fourth and fifth volumes to encompass an African setting. A biographical chapter is enriched by an exclusive interview granted by Angelou, and a chapter on genre discusses Angelou's work in the context of the tradition of American and African American autobiography. A chapter is devoted to each of the five volumes of her serial autobiography--I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings(1970), Gather Together in My Name (1974), Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas(1976), The Heart of a Woman (1981), and All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes(1986). The discussion of each novel features sections on narrative point of view, plot development, character development, thematic issues, style and literary devices, and an alternate critical approach from which to read the work. A complete bibliography of Angelou's work, plus a list of reviews of each work and selected secondary critical and biographical sources, complete the work. This companion is ideal for students, teachers, and others interested in Maya Angelou, the African American experience, and the craft of autobiography.
Customer Reviews:
Thorough and accurate biography.......2004-08-16
I liked the way Lupton treated the double themes of race and motherhood. The book was thorough and accurate.
Heart-warming and touching.......1999-06-15
This book was very good. I liked the way the author described each moment in Maya's life. I'd just like to say that if anyone wants a good biography this is it.
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Readings on Black Boy (Literary Companion Series)
Manufacturer: Greenhaven Press
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0737702435 |
Books:
- The Land of Mango Sunsets: A Novel
- The Lord of the Rings Trilogy Gift Set
- The Magus of Strovolos: The Extraordinary World of a Spiritual Healer (Arkana)
- The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones
- The Office Space Kit
- The Outsiders
- The Passionate Fictions of Eliza Haywood: Essays on Her Life and Work
- The Pilgrims of Rayne (Pendragon)
- The River of Lost Footsteps: Histories of Burma
- The Scarlet Letter (Penguin Classics)
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