Wild Women and the Blues

Wild Women and the Blues
Author: Denny S. Bryce
Publisher: Kensington Publishing Corporation
Total Pages: 386
Release: 2021-03-30
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1496730089

Includes author's note, a reading group guide with discussion questions, and an excerpt from Blackbirds.

Wild Women Don't Wear No Blues

Wild Women Don't Wear No Blues
Author: Marita Golden
Publisher: Anchor
Total Pages: 260
Release: 1993
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN:

14 African American women explore the Black female psyche in uncompromising terms.

In the Face of the Sun

In the Face of the Sun
Author: Denny S. Bryce
Publisher: Kensington Books
Total Pages: 373
Release: 2022-04-26
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1496730119

“Bryce excels at placing readers in a glamorous time and place…riveting and vibrant.” – Booklist Go On Girl Book Club 2021 New Author of the Year | She Reads Best Literary Historical Fiction Coming in 2022 | BookRiot 2022 Historical Fiction to Add to Your TBR Right Now | We are Bookish Historical Fiction Novels You’ll Want in Your Future | BiblioLifestyle Most Anticipated Books of 2022 | BookBub Best Books of Spring 2022 & Best Historical Fiction Books of 2022 | BookTrib Top Ten Historical Fiction Books for the Spring 2022 In this haunting novel, the author of Wild Women and the Blues weaves together two stories as they unfold decades apart, as a woman on the run from an abusive husband joins her intrepid aunt as they head across the country from Chicago to Los Angeles, and confront a painful and shadowy past that has reverberated across generations. 1928, Los Angeles: The newly-built Hotel Somerville is the hotspot for the city's glittering African-American elite. It embodies prosperity and dreams of equality for all—especially Daisy Washington. An up-and-coming journalist, Daisy anonymously chronicles fierce activism and behind-the-scenes Hollywood scandals in order to save her family from poverty. But power in the City of Angels is also fueled by racism, greed, and betrayal. And even the most determined young woman can play too many secrets too far . . . 1968, Chicago: For Frankie Saunders, fleeing across America is her only escape from an abusive husband. But her rescuer is her reckless, profane Aunt Daisy, still reeling from her own shattered past. Frankie doesn't want to know what her aunt is up to so long as Daisy can get her to LA—and safety. But Frankie finds there’s no hiding from long-held secrets—or her own surprising strength. Daisy will do whatever it takes to settle old scores and resolve the past—no matter the damage. And Frankie will come up against hard choices in the face of unexpected passion. Both must come to grips with what they need, what they’ve left behind—and all that lies ahead . . . “The scenes are cinematically vivid, the language fresh and vibrant, the characters complicated and real.” – Historical Novel Society “The author of Wild Women and the Blues is back with another historical fiction novel to dazzle and amaze.” – Book Riot “An engrossing family saga filled with heartbreak and love, victory, forgiveness, and loss, and a wonderful character study of several unforgettable women.” – All About Romance

The Drum Is a Wild Woman

The Drum Is a Wild Woman
Author: Patricia G. Lespinasse
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
Total Pages: 97
Release: 2022-01-04
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1496836049

In 1957, Duke Ellington released the influential album A Drum Is a Woman. This musical allegory revealed the implicit truth about the role of women in jazz discourse—jilted by the musician and replaced by the drum. Further, the album’s cover displays an image of a woman sitting atop a drum, depicting the way in which the drum literally obscures the female body, turning the subject into an object. This objectification of women leads to a critical reading of the role of women in jazz music: If the drum can take the place of a woman, then a woman can also take the place of a drum. The Drum Is a Wild Woman: Jazz and Gender in African Diaspora Literature challenges that image but also defines a counter-tradition within women’s writing that involves the reinvention and reclamation of a modern jazz discourse. Despite their alienation from bebop, women have found jazz music empowering and have demonstrated this power in various ways. The Drum Is a Wild Woman explores the complex relationship between women and jazz music in recent African diasporic literature. The book examines how women writers from the African diaspora have challenged and revised major tropes and concerns of jazz literature since the bebop era in the mid-1940s. Black women writers create dissonant sounds that broaden our understanding of jazz literature. By underscoring the extent to which gender is already embedded in jazz discourse, author Patricia G. Lespinasse responds to and corrects narratives that tell the story of jazz through a male-centered lens. She concentrates on how the Wild Woman, the female vocalist in classic blues, used blues and jazz to push the boundaries of Black womanhood outside of the confines of respectability. In texts that refer to jazz in form or content, the Wild Woman constitutes a figure of resistance who uses language, image, and improvisation to refashion herself from object to subject. This book breaks new ground by comparing the politics of resistance alongside moments of improvisation by examining recurring literary motifs—cry-and-response, the Wild Woman, and the jazz moment—in jazz novels, short stories, and poetry, comparing works by Ann Petry, Gayl Jones, Toni Morrison, Paule Marshall, Edwidge Danticat, and Maya Angelou with pieces by Albert Murray, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, and Ellington. Within an interdisciplinary and transnational context, Lespinasse foregrounds the vexed negotiations around gender and jazz discourse.

Werewolf Sings the Blues

Werewolf Sings the Blues
Author: Jennifer Harlow
Publisher: Llewellyn Worldwide
Total Pages: 254
Release: 2014-03-08
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0738739340

If Vivian's life had a soundtrack, every song would be the Blues Pushin' Thirty (Hard Life Takes Its Toll) Singer Going Nowhere Fast Mysterious Stalker Got a Hold on Me Bullets, Blood, and Fur Long Lost Werewolf Daddy Done Me Wrong Ain't No Pack War Gonna Keep Me Down Love on the Run (feat. Sexy Jason) Melting in His Icy Eyes She's No Good (Born Under a Bad Moon) Don't Let Her Song Be Cut Short Livin' La Vida Werewolf (Bonus Track) Praise: "[Vivian's] journey ends with a twist that will have readers rapidly flipping the pages."—RT Book Reviews

When Your Body Gets the Blues

When Your Body Gets the Blues
Author: Marie-Annette Brown
Publisher: Rodale
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2002-02-23
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 157954486X

A guide to sub-clinical depression presents an eight-week program which uses light therapy, moderate exercise, and vitamins to combat depression, overcome fatigue, and provide a greater sense of control, balance, and well-being.

Wild Women of Song

Wild Women of Song
Author: Rebeca Mauleón
Publisher:
Total Pages: 80
Release: 2011-11-01
Genre: Women jazz musicians
ISBN: 9780615548555

Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

Even Cowgirls Get the Blues
Author: Tom Robbins
Publisher: Bantam
Total Pages: 385
Release: 2003-06-17
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0553897896

“This is one of those special novels—a piece of working magic, warm, funny, and sane.”—Thomas Pynchon The whooping crane rustlers are girls. Young girls. Cowgirls, as a matter of fact, all “bursting with dimples and hormones”—and the FBI has never seen anything quite like them. Yet their rebellion at the Rubber Rose Ranch is almost overshadowed by the arrival of the legendary Sissy Hankshaw, a white-trash goddess literally born to hitchhike, and the freest female of them all. Freedom, its prizes and its prices, is a major theme of Tom Robbins’s classic tale of eccentric adventure. As his robust characters attempt to turn the tables on fate, the reader is drawn along on a tragicomic joyride across the badlands of sexuality, wild rivers of language, and the frontiers of the mind.