Groundbreaking and heartbreaking, this triumphant novel by two of
America's most acclaimed storytellers follows a family of women from
enslavement to the dawn of the twenty-first century.
From Reconstruction to both world wars, from the Harlem Renaissance to
Vietnam, from spirituals and arias to torch songs and the blues, Some
Sing, Some Cry brings to life the monumental story of one American
family's journey from slavery into freedom, from country into city, from
the past to the future, bright and blazing ahead. Real-life sisters
Ntozake Shange, award-winning author of for colored girls who have
considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf, and Ifa Bayeza,
award-winning playwright of The Ballad of Emmett Till, achieve nothing
less than a modern classic in this story of seven generations of women,
and the men and music in their lives.
Opening dramatically at a sprawling plantation just off the South
Carolina coast, recently emancipated slave Bette Mayfield quickly says
her goodbyes before fleeing for Charleston with her granddaughter,
Eudora, in tow. She and Eudora carve out lives for themselves in the
bustling port city as fortune-teller and seamstress. Eudora marries, and
the Mayfield line grows and becomes an incredibly strong, musically
gifted family, a family that is led, protected, and inspired by its
women. Some Sing, Some Cry chronicles their astonishing passage through
the watershed events of American history.
