Perfect Peace: A Novel by Daniel Black (English) Paperback Book

Description: Perfect Peace by Daniel Black "Perfect Peace" is the heartbreaking portrait of a large, rural southern familys attempt to grapple with a mothers desperate decision to make her newborn son into the daughter she will never have. From this point forward, his life becomes a bizarre kaleidoscope of events. FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Publisher Description As seen on TikTok, Daniel Blacks Perfect Peace is the heartbreaking portrait of a large, rural southern familys attempt to grapple with their mothers desperate decision to make her newborn son into the daughter she will never have--"a complex, imaginative story of one unforgettable black family in mid-twentieth century Arkansas" (Atlanta Magazine). When the seventh child of the Peace family, named Perfect, turns eight, her mother Emma Jean tells her bewildered daughter, "You was born a boy. I made you a girl. But that aint what you was supposed to be. So, from now on, you gon be a boy. Itll be a little strange at first, but youll get used to it, and thisll be over after while." From this point forward, Perfects life becomes a bizarre kaleidoscope of events--while the rest of his family is forced to question everything they thought they knew about gender, sexuality, unconditional love, and fulfillment. "A morality tale of the consequences of letting our selfish needs trap the ones we love into roles they werent born to play. The characters here are as flawed, their sins numerous, as any living human being held under the lens, but the author brings a compassion and understanding to their plights."--Mat Johnson, award-winning author of Invisible Things "Part cautionary tale, part folk tale, part fable, Daniel Blacks Perfect Peace is a complete triumph...In Emma Jean Peace, Dr. Black has created a character as complex, equivocal and unforgettable as Scarlett OHara."--Larry Duplechan, Lambda Literary Award-winning author of Got Til Its Gone Author Biography DANIEL OMOTOSHO BLACK teaches at Clark Atlanta University in Atlanta, Georgia. He earned a Ph.D. in African American Studies from Temple University then returned to Clark Atlanta as a professor with hopes of inspiring young black minds to believe in themselves. Review "A high-spirited, compassionate look at everyones longings for perfection, both inside and out." --The Atlanta Journal-Constitution "Black effortlessly conveys Pauls agony over his inner shame and what the world sees on the outside. Its painful to see how his father also struggles to accept as a son the child he had once adored as a girl. For the Peace family, the end of Perfect is akin to the death of a loved one." --San Antonio Express-News "Daniel Black understands the racial psychology and culture of the South so well that he can show, not tell, and his characters actions always ring true. This novel is a powerful exploration of a small group of individuals who hold each other in high regard. The love among members of this family is severely challenged, but the challenge is triumphantly met. Each child grows to manhood and achieves success according to his gifts. Through their lives we experience disappointment and sorrow, but also fulfillment and joy. Perfect Peace is an intense and satisfying read." --Greg Iles, New York Times bestselling author of The Devils Punchbowl "Daniel Black writes of growing up in a small town with humor, grace and forgiveness." --Adriana Trigiani, New York Times bestselling author of Very Valentine and the Big Stone Gap Series "Craft is not the word for this joyfully inscribed novel. The proper word is art. The book is a brave and complicated story perfectly told. Mr. Black offers a cultural gift to be welcomed." --Houston A. Baker, Jr., author of American Book Award winning Betrayal: How Black Intellectuals have abandoned the Ideals of the Civil Rights Era "Perfect Peace is a morality tale of the consequences of letting our selfish needs trap the ones we love into roles they werent born to play. The characters here are as flawed, their sins numerous, as any living human being held under the lens, but the author brings a compassion and understanding to their plights." --Mat Johnson, award-winning author of Incognegro, Drop, and Hunting in Harlem "Daniel Black has pried open the isolated lives of rural southerners, allowing us to peek inside. To understand the complexities of the southern experience, read Perfect Peace." --Dr. Karyn Lacy, professor of Sociology, University of Michigan, author of Blue Chip Black: Race, Class, and Status in the New Black Middle Class "Mr. Blacks novel nudges our sense of awareness and accountability. His narrative eloquently poses difficult questions with disarming kindness: Do you know who you are? Do you know what you do? Do you know that there is never an excuse? The relevance of this work with regard to all we are and all we do far exceeds his adroitly simple telling of the tale." --Keith Hamilton Cobb, actor "Part cautionary tale, part folk tale, part fable, Daniel Blacks Perfect Peace is a complete triumph. It bursts with emotions as intense as opera. Perfect Peace will bring you to tears and laughter. You will recognize characters from your own life, and perhaps even recognize yourself. In Emma Jean Peace, a mid-20th-Century rural Southern black woman who wants a daughter so desperately that she raises her infant son as a girl, Dr. Black has created a character as complex, equivocal and unforgettable as Scarlett OHara." --Larry Duplechan, author of Blackbird, Captain Swing, and the Lambda Literary Award-winning Got Til Its Gone Review Quote Perfect Peace is a morality tale of the consequences of letting our selfish needs trap the ones we love into roles they werent born to play. The characters here are as flawed, their sins numerous, as any living human being held under the lens, but the author brings a compassion and understanding to their plights. Description for Reading Group Guide Daniel Black on writing Perfect Peace I conceived this book one day, in 2005, when I saw a child and couldnt determine if it was a boy or girl. Then I wondered why it mattered at all. I knew the child was human ; that wasnt up for question. But by desire to know lingered. I began to imagine the price the child was paying as the world sorted out its gender, or created one. My imagination ran free. I situated the story in the rural, segregated south in order to explore the specific ways in which southern black folk grapple with issues of gender, and I wanted to examine just how far a community is willing to go to "right" what they feel is wrong in one of its members. I also wanted to examine the ways in which patriarchy and homophobia have shaped the black communitys constructs of God and salvation, leading its members to denounce and demean all in the name of something holy. Perfect Peace was extremely difficult to write for three reasons: (1) appropriating the language and perception of black people at the time with regards to social dimensions of gender and sexuality, (2) trying to imagine how a child would cope with such an extraordinary identity crisis in the midst of people who arent sympathetic to such a dilemma, and (3) trying to figure out how such a kaleidoscope of events could be survived BEFORE the age of therapy and counseling, at least in the black community. But this was important because many who were different DID survive. Perfect Peace is one telling/imagining of that great survival. This novel is dear to me and close to my heart because it speaks for those who have been silenced. It validates their existence and suggests to the world that they are not only human, but very possibly divine. More specifically, it forces readers to look at their very narrow ideas of gender and sexuality in hopes of freeing them to love and respect those whom theyve traditionally abused and rejected. This book is my Word from God. It announces, partly, why I walk the planet at all: to teach the world that every person is a flower in Gods bouquet--precious, rare, sweet, fragile--and should be honored thusly. Only then will God reveal Gods self to the world, and well see that we all were made in the image. With each word I write, I hope to move humanity toward the day when well see that image face to face and well know, finally, that God was nothing but all of us combined. Excerpt from Book Chapter 1 Gus stood beside the living room window, waiting for the annual spring rains. They should have come by now, he noted, glancing at the battered Motley Funeral Home calendar hanging from a nail on the wall. It was May 17, 1940, and Guss wilted crops made him wonder if, somehow, he had angered Mother Nature. Usually the rains came between March and April, freeing him to hunt or fish the latter part of spring while cabbage, collard, and tomato sprouts strengthened in the moistened earth. That year, the stubborn rains prolonged the daily sojourn Gus and the boys took to the river and back-locals called it the Jordan-carrying five-gallon buckets of water for both their own and the sprouts survival. Gus loved the rains. As a child, he lay in bed listening to the thunderous polyrhythms they drummed into the rusted tin rooftop. Something about the melody soothed his somber soul and allowed him to cry without fear of his fathers reprisal. After all, he was a boy, Chester Peace Sr. loved to remind him-as though his genitalia didnt-and tears didnt speak well for one who would, one day, become a man. The indelible imprint of Chester Sr.s inordinately large hand on Guss tender face whenever he wept never bothered the boy who, in his heart, wanted nothing more desperately than to emulate his father. But as he grew, he never learned to control his tears. He learned instead to hide whenever he felt their approach. The rains awakened something in him. Maybe it was their steady flow that eroded his makeshift stoicism and caused water to gush from his eyes as if from a geyser. What ever the connection, Gus always wept along with the rains. Hed convinced himself that the sky, like him, was cursed with a heavy heart that required annual purging. So every spring since his tenth birthday, when the scent of moisture filled his nose he escaped to the Jordan River and stood amid the rain, wailing away pain like a woman in labor. Whether it lasted for hours or even a day, no one expected his return to normalcy until the showers subsided. Gus was grateful others didnt ask why he cried, because he couldnt have explained it. Had he known words like "injustice" or "inequity" he mightve been able to translate his feelings into words, but with a third-grade vocabulary, such articulation was out of the question. All he knew was that he cried when things werent right. He wept as a child when other children mocked his holey shoes, and then he wept when God refused to grant him the courage and the will to fight. He wept for mother birds that couldnt find worms for their young. He wept for cows left freezing in the snow. He wept for Miss Mazie-the woman whose husband slashed her with a butchers mallet for talking back-and wept even harder when he overheard that they put the man away. Most of all he wept because he thought people in the world didnt care. His hardest days were between the rains. At the most inopportune moments, in the middle of the summer or the bitter cold of winter, hed witness a wrong and water would ooze, unannounced, across his cheeks and hed be forced to retreat into some private place where his tears wouldnt be cause for ridicule. Yet these momentary cleansings never resulted in Guss complete healing. Only the annual spring rains set his heart aright again, so, after the third grade-the end of Guss formal education-he began anticipating the rains arrival. As soon as the first buds bloomed, hed watch the heavens for signs of inclement weather, and when the dark clouds gathered, hed run to the Jordan and welcome the downpour. After 1910, locals noted the beginning of spring when they heard Gus wailing in the distance and, whether out of fear or simple disinterest, no one bothered traveling to the riverbank to see exactly what Gustavus Peace was doing, much less why. He needed the rains of 1940 worse than hed ever needed them, for the impending birth of his seventh child-the only one he had never wanted-incited rage he feared he couldnt restrain. Yet the rains wouldnt come. Each morning he jumped from his sleeping pallet on the floor, sniffing the air like a Labrador retriever, hoping to smell the sweet scent of moisture, only to be disappointed when his nostrils inhaled particles of dry, pungent, red dust. Having never mentioned to his wife, Emma Jean, that he felt deceived by the pregnancy, Gus had waited since her ecstatic November announcement to unleash with the spring rains instead of strangling her. His greatest fear now was that an overflowing heart would cause him to crumble before his sons. Each day, his eyes glazed over and his hands began to tremble, and he cursed the rains for seemingly having abandoned him. So far, he had remained composed, but he knew he wouldnt last much longer. When Emma Jean screamed, Gus released the curtain, turned from the window, and looked toward their bedroom. It was really her bedroom, he thought, for he had slept on the floor since learning of her pregnancy. He liked it that way. It kept him from touching her and creating another mouth to feed. He wouldnt have touched her this last time had Emma Jean not convinced him that she couldnt have any more children. Gus asked why, and Emma Jean said that she was going through the change. He didnt know exactly what that meant, but he took her at her word. The day she confessed her pregnancy, Gus nodded and promised in his heart never to touch her again. That would keep the children from coming, he reasoned, and that was exactly what he wanted. "Push!" Henrietta coaxed with her hands cupped around the wet, slimy crown of the babys head. Beads of sweat danced across Emma Jeans shiny black forehead as she panted. With borrowed might, she clutched the sheets on which she lay and bellowed, "Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!" tossing her head from one edge of the pillow to the other. "Oh my God! I thought havin a girl"-breath-"would be easier than havin them big, knucklehead boys." Henrietta chuckled. She had delivered almost every child in Conway County, Arkansas, since the 1920s, and if nothing else, she had learned that a babys gender could never be predicted. "This might be another boy, Emma," she warned softly. "Dont get yo hopes up too high. Plenty women think they havin one thing and have somethin else. Now breathe and push again." Emma Jean sighed, refusing to relinquish hope that she was finally birthing the daughter shed always wanted. That hope lent her strength to push again. "AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" she growled, exposing the rich, deep alto for which folks at St. Matthew No. 3 Baptist Church were grateful. It was this voice that had caught Guss attention years ago, teasing his soul one Easter Sunday morning with a rendition of "He Rose" that left him tingling inside. He called the feeling love and asked Emma Jean to marry him. That was fifteen years ago. Back when he was a fool, he always said. "It wont be long now!" Henrietta encouraged. "Just a few more pushes and well have ourselves another baby." Emma Jean gripped the iron bars of the headpost and stared at the ceiling, delirious. She wanted to push again, but couldnt find the strength. In the meantime, she wondered if Gus had decided upon a name, since he hadnt liked any of her choices. "What about Rose?" shed posed one night, leaning over the edge of the bed. Gus grunted something unintelligible and pulled the battered quilt over his head. Emma Jean interpreted the response as a no. "Then what about Violet? Or maybe Priscilla?" Too sleepy to care, Gus hoped his words would close the matter. "Them dont sound like no colored girls names to me," he murmured. "And, anyway, its probably gon be a boy, the luck we been havin." Emma Jean scoffed. "Just cause a girl be colored dont mean she gotta have no ole, tired, country-soundin name." Gus peeked from beneath the quilt. "You got one." "I know!" Emma Jean shouted. "But that dont mean my baby gotta have one." "Well, it dont make no difference right now noway. The baby aint even here yet. Good night." Emma Jean stopped discussing names with Gus. Why, she wondered, had she consulted a fool in the first place? What would a man know about choosing a babys name? "I got de head in my hands," Henrietta said excitedly. "Just give me one more good push! Come on! You can do it!" The dance of the sweat beads devolved into a slow waltz around Emma Jeans thick brows as she lay exhausted upon the feather pillow. Her good, baby blue sheets, which she had intended to remove from the bed in a few days, would now have to be discarded. Thinking she had at least another week before the babys arrival, she had prioritized other more immediate chores, but when her water broke while she was preparing Sunday breakfast, she knew those sheets were history. Gus and the boys sat in the small living room and waited. Knowing no other way to pass the time, Gus read passages from the Bible-the few he could read-in hopes that something from the Word might still his rumbling heart. He would love the baby, he resolved, but he would never forgive Emma Jean. Never. And if the rains didnt come, he wouldnt forgive them, either. Still in their church clothes, which was a clean shirt beneath their work overalls, the boys anticipated the sister they didnt have. Of course another brother Details ISBN0312571658 Author Daniel Black Short Title PERFECT PEACE Language English ISBN-10 0312571658 ISBN-13 9780312571658 Media Book Format Paperback DEWEY FIC Year 2011 Publication Date 2011-12-06 Subtitle A Novel Pages 352 Publisher St. Martins Griffin Imprint St. Martins Griffin Audience General UK Release Date 2011-12-06 We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. With fast shipping, low prices, friendly service and well over a million items - you're bound to find what you want, at a price you'll love! TheNile_Item_ID:40605236;

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