Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
It is nearly impossible to read Jones's latest work without being reminded of the recent tragic events of her personal life. Last February in Kentucky, a standoff with policesparked, ironically, by a news story heralding her return to publishing with the novel The Healing (an NBA finalist)resulted in the suicide of her husband and Jones's hospitalization for depression. The raw, ephemeral spirit lurking in such books as Corregida seemed to have come to life. Here, however, Jones has written a powerfully hopeful "jazz novel"; improvisations, repetitions and syncopies round out the free-form genius of her fractured tale. Sojourner Jane Nadine Johnson"Mosquito"is the only female African American independent trucker driving a route along the border in Texas. After a pregnant Mexican woman hides in her truck, Mosquito becomes immersed in the new underground railroad, which offers sanctuary to Mexican immigrants. The ensuing relationship enriches her once solitary life with love, identity and independence. Mosquito's intelligence is evident through her language, a dialect with 19th-century inflections peppered with polysyllabic words and references to the philosophical concepts Mosquito has feverishly accumulated in her compelling quest for knowledge and wisdom. She learns from books and her women friends, cantina bartender Delgadina and Monkey Bread, who is seeking truth as a "Daughter of Nzingha." Remarkably, without the aid of quotation marks and other traditional guideposts, it is possible to track Mosquito through dreams, polemics and even a play by Lucille Jones, the author's mother. Though it is not for those easily distracted, this wonderfully inventive book begs to be read aloud. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
A cult figure in African American literature in the 1970s, Jones dropped out of sight for personal reasons. Earlier this year, Beacon published The Healing, her first novel in 20 years and its first novel ever. Since in the news because of shocking personal events, she continues to publish, exploring politics, romance, and racism in a new novel that uniquely captures the Southern dialect of Texas. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A recent confrontation with police that ended in the suicide of Jones's husband and her own hospitalization for what seemed a nervous breakdown understandably grabbed headlines. But the real news is that the author of the Corregidora (1975) and Eva's Man (1976) is once again'in fact, since last year's NBA-nominated The Healing'publishing vivid and challenging fiction grounded in African-American themes. Her latest is arguably both something more and something less than a novel, but it's a fascinating story: the first-person narrative of black independent truck-driver Sojourner Nadine Jane Johnson (a.k.a. ``Mosquito''). A native Kentuckian whose regular route runs through southern Texas, Nadine strikes up a friendship with the sisterly, mentoring Delgadina, a determinedly self-educated bartender-waitress, and gradually becomes involved with the ``new underground railroad'' transporting Mexican immigrants'and eventually with a radical activist with whose help she forms the worker-owned Mosquito Trucking Company. Nothing much more really happens in a ``novel'' composed of long, rich conversations and exchanges of letters, thanks to which Nadine reinvents herself while learning the histories of her own and other ``second-class'' culture struggles. It's a discursive, free-form dramatization of the raising of a consciousness, including material derived from Buddhist doctrine, Native American ``trickster'' tales, Mexico's colonial history, Shakespeare's Othello, and numerous other transmogrified sources and influences. The book has its longueurs, but when Jones keeps throwing at you the adventures of Nadine's childhood friend ``Monkey Bread'' as ``personal assistant'' to a Hollywood star, the ``prophetic'' and ``mystical'' writings of pseudonymous savant ``Electra,'' the militantly Pan-African ``Daughters of Nzingha,'' and much more (even a play written by the author's mother), it's hard not to be swept along by the sassy rhetorical momentum. Early on, Nadine imagines ``a true jazz story, where the peoples that listen can just enter the story and start telling it theyselves while they's reading.'' Mosquito is such a story.
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