Gayl Jones, a contemporary African American writer, explores in her novels the effects that racism and sexual abuse have on successive generations of black women. She says of her own writing, "I am interested principally in the psychology of characters--and the way(s) in which they order their stories--their myths, dreams, nightmares, secret worlds, ambiguities, contradictions, ambivalences, memories, imaginations, their 'puzzles'." Her command of language, speech, dialogue, and nonlinear structure in her novels virtually place the reader alongside the characters. All of her novels blend the qualities of oral storytelling with the blues and dialogue that expresses the journey of African American women from slavery to the present.

Born on 23 November 1949 in Lexington, Kentucky, Gayl Jones has lived a life that reads much like that of one of the characters in her novels. The daughter of Franklin Jones, a cook, and Lucille Wilson Jones, a housewife and writer...