A Woman's Place

It is 1968 and everything about being a Black woman in America is changing. A society once walled off has begun opening doors. Against this backdrop, three young women meet at a New England college and form a friendship that endures, heals, and dramatically shapes their lives. With backgrounds and temperaments symbolic of the many questions around attaining selfhood in the aftermath of freedom movements, Faith, Crystal and Serena struggle to exercise personal agency in an era when family history, along with race and gender identities, threaten to dictate their paths. As a poet-creative Crystal reaches for expression in language and in choosing who and how she loves. As a budding activist, Serena eschews conventions of marriage, and belonging, to become a global being, leaving the soil of America for Africa, where NGO work evolves into leading women toward an independence she herself maintains by remaining the mistress, never the bride, of a powerful man. Surprisingly, it is Faith, the most introverted, drawn into the self by a series of traumas, whose seemingly self-limiting choices will more directly affect a generation of women to come. The Philadelphia Tribune declared it, "a story of hope, a story of triumph and, above all, a testimony to resilience." Published in 1986 after the award-winning autobiography Migrations of the Heart, A Woman's Place is Marita Golden's first novel. More than fourteen books in fiction and nonfiction, including Gumbo: An Anthology of African-American Writing co-edited with E. Lynn Harris, followed. Golden went on to create and helm the Hurston/Wright Foundation, which has become a literary rite of passage for such talents as Nicole Dennis-Benn, Brit Bennett and Tayari Jones. A Woman's Place is reprinted here as an esteemed addition to McSweeney's Of the Diaspora series, edited by Erica Vital-Lazare, and opens with a new introduction by the author, with foreword by Women's March co-founder Tabitha St. Bernard-Jacobs.

“" Tragic Magic is a tremendous affirmation. . One hell of a writer." -- James Baldwin "(A) vibrant riff on Blackness, manhood, and jazz." -- The New Yorker "(W)onderfully wry." -- Donald Barthelme " Wesley Brown 's Tragic Magic is an underrated classic in the vein of my favorite albums. This is a book worth holding close and hugging hard. There has been much talk about the literary foreparents to hip-hop culture and for my money Brown has to take his place alongside the likes of the Black Arts Movement, The Nuyoricans, Piri Thomas, and Julius Lester. Pick this one up and ride alongside a masterful storyteller." -- Nate Marshall , author of Finna: Poems "A prescient ancestor to today's insurgent, boundary-breaching African American fiction... deserves rediscovery by a new generation of readers curious about where an earlier generation of Black protest came from and how they came through its challenges." -- Kirkus "(A)s relevant today as when first brought to print...excels in its line-level risks, intellectual depth, and wide-ranging cultural and political subject matter." -- Southeast Review "A captivating read...precisely structured and movingly written." -- Tobias Carroll”

"A book that should be bought, read, and cherished, because it is a story of hope, a story of triumph and, above all, a testimony to resilience."
--The Philadelphia Tribune

"A radical new talent ... The poignancy invites comparison to The Color Purple."
--New Woman

"A Woman's Place is a wonder of a novel. Slim, spare, with beautiful simplicity, it manages to convey multitudes about friendship, ambition, desire, duty, inheritance, and especially womanhood. I loved the three Black women whose lives are imagined in these pages, each so different and compelling in their search for meaning and contentment yet united by their uncompromising intellects and humanity. Thirty-six years after its original publication, A Woman's Place is all the more powerful for its enduring relevance and sense of urgency."
--Bliss Broyard, author of My Father, Dancing

"I first discovered Marita Golden's novel, A Woman's Place as a college student and young writer in the early 1990s. I was starved for literature that not only echoed my own search for belonging, for connection, but that also, eschewing restrictive/constrictive racial tropes, reflected the complexity and beauty of Black women creating lives, imperfect as they may be, on their own terms. In A Woman's Place, Golden's masterfully constructed protagonists fully inhabit and tell their own stories; discover and map their own geographies. I am overjoyed to see this new edition of A Woman's Place. I hope that it will become a welcoming space; a source of affirmation and celebration of Black women, a beautiful exploration of friendship, forgiveness and the perpetual journey of self-discovery for generations to come."
--Natasha Tarpley, author of Girl in the Mirror: Three Generations of Black Women in Motion

"The gift of a Black woman's friendship lies in the revelation of its permission; a permission that gives its recipient the joy of unraveling and being seen, through and through, for who we really are. More than we might be with even our lovers or our children, Black women and femmes are committed to each other's healing through the transformative act of unconditional love. We cultivate spaces in which each of us can break, bend, and grow into that much more divinely complex version of ourselves, the one that lies outside the peripheries of marriage, legislation, religion, and any other kind of moral confinement designed to deny us the autonomy of our bodies, minds, and spirits. With the re-release of Marita Golden's A Woman's Place, a new generation of Black women and femmes are brought back to this age old truth: your real 'ride-and-dies' will always be there for you--even when they aren't.

"An enthralling dive into the minds of 'young, talented, and Black' college-educated women, post the pivotal signing of the Civil Rights Act in 1964, A Women's Place reflects on the fictional inner-lives and friendships of three women who represent our still beloved Black femme archetypes--the innocent, the poet, and the revolutionary--all of whom stepped out as the first generation to emotionally and spiritually navigate the underbelly of patriarchal institutions in North America and abroad. Presciently putting the contemporary issues of today into context, Golden turns an astute eye to the ongoing fight for liberation, beautifully exemplifying how collective change is and has always been manifested through personal acts of defiance.

"From the inherited longing for land ownership to the need to be sexually emancipated, the communal yearning to grow away from the societal requirements of marriage and mothering and pursue with fervor our own unique intellectual passions is what drives Golden's A Woman's Place--a novel that reads as the beating heart of every Black woman still burning with wild intentions and the impulse to define themselves, for themselves."
--Faylita Hicks, author of HoodWitch

Books by Marita Golden include the novels The Wide Circumference of Love, After and The Edge of Heaven and the memoirs Migrations of the Heart, Saving Our Sons and Don't Play in the Sun One Woman's Journey Through the Color Complex and the anthology which she edited, Us Against Alzheimer's Stories of Family Love and Faith. Her most recent work of nonfiction is The Strong Black Woman How a Myth Endangers the Physical and Mental Health of Black Women. She is the recipient of many awards including the Writers for Writers Award presented by Barnes & Noble and Poets and Writers, an award from the Authors Guild, and the Fiction Award for her novel After awarded by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. She has lectured and read from her work internationally. Co-founder and President Emeritus of the Zora Neale Hurston/ Richard Wright Foundation, Marita Golden is a veteran teacher of writing. As a teacher of writing, she has served as a member of the faculties of the MFA Graduate Creative Writing Programs at George Mason University and Virginia Commonwealth University and in the MA Creative Writing Program at John Hopkins University. She has served as Distinguished Writer in Residence at the University of the District of Columbia. As a literary consultant, she offers writing workshops, coaching, and manuscript evaluation services.

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