Ugly Ways (Harvest American Writing) - Softcover

Ansa, Tina McElroy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0156000776 ISBN 13: 9780156000772

Publisher: William Morrow & Company, 1995

Synopsis

Three sexy, screwed-up Southern sisters come home to Mulberry to put their totally self-centered mother, Mudear, in her grave. We meet the Lovejoy women as they gather in their mother's house to lay her and the demons she has dumped on them to rest. Mudear Lovejoy was the kind of mother who ruled her house and raised her daughters with an iron hand even after her "change." Betty is her oldest daughter, big-boned and strong, the only one who remembers what Mudear was like before The Change. Emily is the middle child, restless and divorced, the one who every one assumed would be the first after Mudear to crack. The youngest is wild Annie Ruth, a TV anchorwoman who is pregnant out of wedlock and plagued by visions of menacing cats. Ernest, their father, is a kaolin mine worker who is so overwhelmed by all the females around him that sometimes he just wants to yell out, "Womens taking over my house!" As the sisters reminisce, they are unaware that even though Mudear's body is laid out in Parkinson Funeral Home, she is not so easily buried. Her spirit refuses to die, and she floats around Mulberry, watching her daughters stretched out on her porch smoking cigarettes, drinking her husband's liquor from her best glasses, and talking about marijuana like "some damn black girl hippies." In alternating voices, each member of the Lovejoy family tells us what preys on his or her mind. As they prepare for the memorial, sit up with the body, and at the funeral itself, each must come to grips with her relationship to Mudear. At the same time, each must define what a mother, a black mother - their mother - is.

About this title

About the Author:

Tina McElroy Ansa is the author of Baby of the Family, The Hand I Fan With, and You Know Better. A frequent contributor to the Los Angeles Times, Newsday, and Atlanta Journal-Constitution, she can be seen on the CBS News Sunday Morning segment "Postcards from Georgia." She lives with her husband on St. Simons Island, Georgia.

About this edition

• Publisher: William Morrow & Company
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0156000776
• ISBN 13: 9780156000772
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288