The Good Negress: A Novel

by A. J. Verdelle

Overview

“Haunting . . . To read The Good Negress is to fall under a spell, to open a window, to fly.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review
 
Twenty years after its initial publication, The Good Negress continues to be an important part of the literary canon, as relevant and necessary as ever. Set in 1960s Detroit, the novel centers around Denise Palms, who leaves her grandmother’s home in rural Virginia to reunite with her mother, stepfather, and older brothers. As a black teenage girl, Denise is given scarce opportunity beyond cooking, cleaning, and raising her mother’s baby. But an idealistic, demanding teacher opens Denise’s eyes to a future she has never considered, and soon she begins to question the limits of the life prescribed to her.
 
With lyrical, evocative prose, A. J. Verdelle captures Denise’s journey from adolescence to womanhood as she navigates the tension between loyalty and independence, and between circumstance and desire. The Good Negress is an unforgettable debut—simultaneously the portrait of a family and a glimpse into an era of twentieth-century America.
 
Winner of the Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award from the 
American Academy of Arts and Letters
Finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781565128675
Publisher:	Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
Publication date:	01/03/1995
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	375,827
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

A.J. Verdelle was born and raised in Washington, D.C., graduated from the University of Chicago with a degree in political science, and went on for two postgraduate degrees in statistics and writing. She is founder and owner of Applied Statistics and Research, a consulting company in New York.

Read an Excerpt

This Rain Coming

I knew I was sleepin too long. And as I have come to know myself, I think I felt her leavin, the door closin behind the belly at the end of my rope. When I did finally shake myself awake, I was at Granma'am's house. I got out of bed, tiptoed down the hall, and peered around the door frame into the quiet front room. Nobody there, or in the front yard. I walked back toward the kitchen, and, there at the line where the floor planks got wider, I had to stop and take a look: one boiled egg, bacon, and glass of brown juice, all sittin so orderly in one place on the table. I dragged a chair over to the open window and climbed up on it. I hung my neck through the window and looked out to the backyard. Granma'am was outside in the bleachin sun, bent over, pullin tomatoes off the vines.

I stretched farther out the window to see where Mama stood. She would be standin more in the shade, havin conversation. Or maybe foldin clothes she was takin off the line. I reached farther out to see her feet underneath the long white sheets. No feet. Granma'am must have heard my elbow slip. She turned as if I called. "Well, good mornin, sleepyhead," she said, and she was inside, the screen door slappin, before I got down off the chair.

"Hi, Granma'am. Where's Mama?" I answered.

Granma'am had red and green and yellow-orange tomatoes stretched out in a dip in her upturned housedress. "Well, hi is you, Baby Sister? You ready for some breakfast?" She has turned her back to me before I can nod my head. One at the time, she lays the tomatoes on the wood board by the sink. Then she brushes off her dress front with her hand and goes over to the big blackVulcan stove that anchored the kitchen's back wall. Her cotton stockings were thick, and she had them rolled down below her knees. There was a bulge on each right side, a knot she had twisted to hold her leggings up.

"Sit down to the table, Baby Sister." My place at the table was set directly across from the stove. In time, from that place, and that kitchen, I will know all the Vulcans dents and injuries. I will cause some more.

Granma'am lifted warm bread across the table and onto the white plate with the yellow-green flowers round the edges. She pushed the plate closer to the egg. And then, in one of the wide chairs with beige and brown flecked vinyl seats and backs, the one to my right, Granma'am sat down. "Say your blessin, and have your breakfast, Baby Sister." Her hand stretched out and pressed down my hair where sleep had rumpled the edges up. That was the end of the sentence.

"Where's Mama?" I was screaming; my voice was quavery, wild, quick. I jumped up. The chair legs scraped against the kitchen floor. I stood as tall as I could on the floor. I looked directly at a face and mouth that did not move, eyes that looked surprised but ready too, somehow. The whole situation answered, with a shudder and a sucking sound: she's gone.

I tore away. from the table, my arms heavy like they was wet and wrung out. They swung very late behind my hurly-burly hurt. I upset the neat breakfast place with my wet rags for arms. Off the plate and the table went the swiped boiled egg, it landed in the chair, it rolled off onto the floor. The shell crumpled at the compact hit, and the egg rested there, displaced and on its side. The cracked pieces of shell hung together; it was that tough-but-thin inside skin. One boiled breakfast egg, preserved through the fall.

I ran out to the front yard again, in just what I had slept in and in my bare feet. I wrapped my fingers around two of the boards on the gate. I looked in one direction down the what-they-called road. I didn't recognize the place or its colors. It had no blocks or comers or streets, no other two-families with shutters. No traffic lights, no pavement. No Detroit. Disbelief is an emotion, you know. Like an ocean and its major pulse, it can overtake you. it can blind your eyes and block your ear canals. It can knock you to a depth.

Both my hopefulness and my faith in my mother went flat. I felt so completely betrayed.

After many choked breaths, I collapsed at the gate. Left by Mama second and by Daddy first, now I was sent away. My behind on the dirt was naked, and the soil wasn't dry or rich. It wasn't grainy or rocky under my skin. It wasn't cold, but grass wasn't growin. It was in between everything, thats how ordinary it was. Ordinary, just ordinary dirt.

When I finally started to see again I noticed that the dirt in the yard had been raked. Overtop of the lines of rake teeth were two crazy curvy paths. My dashing feet -- yesterday in shoes and today without. Down the middle of all that dashing hurly-girly were two other lines. The little small ovals of my mother's high heels. I stayed there and looked hard a while, my mouth hanging open, my tongue drying off.

I had this tantrum at Granma'am's front gate, where I had run to to look for my mother. This was my down home coming-out scene, a slow motion moment when I got left where Mama grew up, in history. This was when the years started to yawn. I opened my mouth wide, and I roared. Anybody could hear knew I was there. I stomped, and I wailed. Some people walked by, nobody I knew, and since I wasn't seeing so well at that moment, it all went by me, their slowing and staring and shared looks with my granma'am.

Editorial Reviews

Truly Extraordinary.

Toni Morrison

A stunning debut.

Mirabella

[Verdelle] illuminates the way language itself can both reflect and circumscribe a person's character and experience.

New York Times Book Review

In a particularly accomplished debut, Verdelle imbues her ambitious novel with a confident style, finely realized characters and a strikingly original first-person voice. In the early 1960s, 12-year-old Denise Palms, who has been living with her maternal grandmother in rural Virginia for five years, is summoned home to Detroit to care for her expectant mother, Margarete, new stepfather and adored older brothers. Neesey knows little of the world beyond Granma'am's country life but is excited to rejoin her two siblings who, in her absence, have become very different from each other: David is reliable and implacable, but unfocused Luke edward constantly courts trouble. At the local public school, Denise's intellectual promise catches the attention of Gloria Pearson, an idealistic young teacher, who works tirelessly to perfect Denise's backwater English and thereby raise her pupil's expectations for her future. Denise thrives under Gloria's tutelage, but conflict arises when her family's needs and her mentor's desires clash. At the same time, Luke edward's life slowly begins to spiral out of control when he gets caught stealing. Denise must become the fulcrum of her family's problems as she attempts to define her own identity. Verdelle imaginatively uses Denise's subtly evolving language to mirror the girl's growing awareness. Her characters, especially Margarete and Granma'am, are convincingly human in their true-to-life imperfections. Consistently absorbing and beautifully detailed, Verdelle's novel brings universal truths to an affecting study of adolescence.

Publishers Weekly - Cahners\\Publishers_Weekly

In a particularly accomplished debut, Verdelle imbues her ambitious novel with a confident style, finely realized characters and a strikingly original first-person voice. In the early 1960s, 12-year-old Denise Palms, who has been living with her maternal grandmother in rural Virginia for five years, is summoned home to Detroit to care for her expectant mother, Margarete, new stepfather and adored older brothers. Neesey knows little of the world beyond Granma'am's country life but is excited to rejoin her two siblings who, in her absence, have become very different from each other: David is reliable and implacable, but unfocused Luke edward constantly courts trouble. At the local public school, Denise's intellectual promise catches the attention of Gloria Pearson, an idealistic young teacher, who works tirelessly to perfect Denise's backwater English and thereby raise her pupil's expectations for her future. Denise thrives under Gloria's tutelage, but conflict arises when her family's needs and her mentor's desires clash. At the same time, Luke edward's life slowly begins to spiral out of control when he gets caught stealing. Denise must become the fulcrum of her family's problems as she attempts to define her own identity. Verdelle imaginatively uses Denise's subtly evolving language to mirror the girl's growing awareness. Her characters, especially Margarete and Granma'am, are convincingly human in their true-to-life imperfections. Consistently absorbing and beautifully detailed, Verdelle's novel brings universal truths to an affecting study of adolescence. Author tour. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

This excellent first novel examines issues of the black experience in America in a new voice. It is the coming-of-age story of Denise Palms, who leaves her grandmother's rural home to return to her family in Detroit. Denise's family expects her to concentrate on housework and childcare, but her teacher pushes her to spend time on afterschool lessons in diction and grammar in order to "better" herself. Language is the key to this novel, as the story is told in Denise's own voice, and the evolution of language in her life, as well as the questioning of the need to speak in unnatural words, plunges the book into greater depths than the simple plot would on its own. Contrasts between the urban and rural, home and the broader world, and men and women are emphasized throughout. Verdelle's ear for language is excellent, as is her portrayal of the emotional life of this young girl. Like many novels by African American women, this book portrays a matriarchy and the voicelessness of black women in the broader culture. Recommended for all libraries.-Marie F. Jones, Muskingum Coll. Lib., New Concord, Ohio

Library Journal

YA-This first novel by an exceptional writer indicates the wide scope of the African American female experience. Set in Virginia and Detroit during the 1950s and 1960s, the story concerns a young black girl who is encouraged by her teacher to shed her southern ``back woods'' ways. Neesy is astonished to learn that the proper way of spelling and pronouncing her name is Denise. More than anything, she wants to be educated, and does not want to spend her life as a ``good negress.'' For to be a good negress is never to look beyond one's station in life, to merely construct a self where expectation and performance are low. Forced to leave her grandmother's house in rural Virginia to move to Detroit to live with her pregnant mother and her mother's new husband, Denise begins to resent the fact that at 14 her education will end in order to attend to her mother's newborn. Encouraged to ``jump to the moon'' by her teacher, she continues to study despite her absence from school. Finally, her tenacity makes her triumphant. This is a difficult novel to read because of its flashbacks and foreshadowing, but its stress on education and a girl's coming of age are enough to tempt readers to stick with it to the end.-Michele L. Simms-Burton, George Washington University, DC

School Library Journal

This novel fits in the rite-of-passage genre quite nicely. Denise has lived in rural Virginia with her paternal grandmother for most of her life, but when her mother, who is about to give birth, asks for help with her housekeeping, Denise joins her family in Detroit. The adjustment Denise must make to a new physical environment is not nearly as daunting as the adjustment to her family (mother, grandmother, stepfather, and two brothers), who seem content to allow her to clean and cook. Once she begins school, she learns of her language deficiencies and how important it is for her to tackle and learn the King's English. It is this new realization that causes her internal conflicts between "helping out" her mother and pursuing her desire for an education. " The Good Negress" is a sad story, but the use of dialect and the descriptions of the present detailed by the explanations of the past make it an interesting tale of pulling oneself up by one's own bootstraps.

Lillian Lewis