What do you think?
Rate this book
Corregidora
Scritto in una lingua tagliente e diretta, "Corregidora" è il romanzo d’esordio della statunitense Gayl Jones (Lexington, Kentucky, 1949). Pubblicato nel 1975 grazie ai buoni uffici di Toni Morrison, narra la vita di Ursa Corregidora, una cantante di blues la cui esistenza nel presente è rimasta agganciata al passato traumatico della schiavitù. Per Ursa il ricordo delle violenze subite dalle sue antenate, il permanere nella mente delle loro voci, il confuso desiderio di fare giustizia determinano le sorti del suo canto, il destino del suo matrimonio e il suo rapporto con la maternità. Estranea al sentimentalismo e alla retorica, Jones ha scritto un romanzo in cui il dovere della memoria diventa un macigno, un fardello che spinge la protagonista verso un’esistenza in cui sesso e sopraffazione sono sempre in primo piano e sempre connessi tra loro.
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1975
308 people are currently reading
14825 people want to read
About the author
Gayl Jones
41 books594 followersGayl Jones is an African-American writer from Lexington, Kentucky. Her most famous works are Corregidora, Eva's Man, and The Healing.
Jones is a 1971 graduate of Connecticut College, where she received her Bachelor of Arts degree in English. While attending the college she also earned the Frances Steloff Award for Fiction. She then began a graduate program in creative writing at Brown University, studying under poet Michael Harper and earning a Master of Arts in 1973 and a Doctor of Arts in 1975.
Harper introduced Jones's work to Toni Morrison, who was an editor at the time, and in 1975, Jones published her first novel Corregidora at the age of 26. That same year she was a visiting lecturer at the University of Michigan, which hired her the following year as an assistant professor. She left her faculty position in 1983 and moved to Europe, where she wrote and published Die Vogelfaengerin (The Birdwatcher) in Germany and a poetry collection, Xarque and Other Poems. Jones's 1998 novel The Healing was a finalist for the National Book Award, although the media attention surrounding her novel's release focused more on the controversy in her personal life than on the work itself. Her papers are currently housed at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University. Jones currently lives in Lexington, Kentucky, where she continues to write.
Jones has described herself as an improvisor, and her work bears out that statement: like a jazz or blues musician, Jones plays upon a specific set of themes, varying them and exploring their possible permutations. Though her fiction has been called “Gothic” in its exploration of madness, violence, and sexuality, musical metaphors might make for a more apt categorization.
(from Wikipedia)
Jones is a 1971 graduate of Connecticut College, where she received her Bachelor of Arts degree in English. While attending the college she also earned the Frances Steloff Award for Fiction. She then began a graduate program in creative writing at Brown University, studying under poet Michael Harper and earning a Master of Arts in 1973 and a Doctor of Arts in 1975.
Harper introduced Jones's work to Toni Morrison, who was an editor at the time, and in 1975, Jones published her first novel Corregidora at the age of 26. That same year she was a visiting lecturer at the University of Michigan, which hired her the following year as an assistant professor. She left her faculty position in 1983 and moved to Europe, where she wrote and published Die Vogelfaengerin (The Birdwatcher) in Germany and a poetry collection, Xarque and Other Poems. Jones's 1998 novel The Healing was a finalist for the National Book Award, although the media attention surrounding her novel's release focused more on the controversy in her personal life than on the work itself. Her papers are currently housed at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University. Jones currently lives in Lexington, Kentucky, where she continues to write.
Jones has described herself as an improvisor, and her work bears out that statement: like a jazz or blues musician, Jones plays upon a specific set of themes, varying them and exploring their possible permutations. Though her fiction has been called “Gothic” in its exploration of madness, violence, and sexuality, musical metaphors might make for a more apt categorization.
(from Wikipedia)
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 619 reviews
April 7, 2015
"You asked me how did I get so beautiful. It wasn't him. No, not Corregidora. And my spirit, you said, like knives dancing. My veins are centuries meeting."
There are some books that are just so merciless you wonder how on earth the characters even manage to survive all that brutality. But they do and then you wonder how they deal with all that accumulated pain and whether they can live a “normal” life. This book deals with some difficult topics such as slavery, domestic violence, and rape. It also focuses on ancestral memory and orality as a way of passing on stories. Of course with oral culture we pick which stories we want passed on so it might be surprising to learn that the story that the protagonist’s grandmother chooses to tell her is one of rape: the rape of both her grandmother and mother by the same man, the Portuguese slavedriver, Corregidora. You can’t help but squirm when you read that Ursa has been listening to these stories while on her grandmother’s knee since she was 5 years old:
" Her hands had lines all over them. It was as if the words were helping her, as if the words repeated again and again could be a substitute for memory, were somehow more than the memory. As if it were only the words that kept her anger."
This book focuses on Ursa, the daughter and great-grand-daughter. A blues singer at a local club, the book starts off with tragedy for her at the hands of her husband. The blues are prominent in the book and I’m reminded of Angela Davies and her research on black women, feminism and the blue. All Ursa has are the blues and her beautiful voice which changes after her tragedy:
"It sounds like you been through something. Before it was beautiful too, but you sound like you been through more now."
Ursa’s flashbacks are full of anger. Why did the grandmother want to keep that tragic story alive? She doesn’t want the story to die and she wants Ursa to “make generations” to carry on the story:
“I'm leaving evidence. And you got to leave evidence too. And your children got to leave evidence. And when it comes time to hold up the evidence, we got to have evidence to hold up."
It’s interesting about the body being memory that has been touched on in so many books, it's even more interesting that Ursa's memories of her mother and grandmother are perhaps just as strong as her own memories: “It was as if their memory, the memory of all the Corregidora women, was her memory too, as strong with her as her own private memory, or almost as strong."
The story relies mostly on dialogue, both internal and external. The language is often quite graphic and explicit. The language the men in her life use to describe and label Ursa is incredibly misogynistic and objectifying.
The story shows in several ways how our past can affect us. The history of slavery in particular; I can’t even begin to comprehend the pain the slaves experienced, though Gayl Jones did a good job of highlighting some examples.
For some reason I feel this is the sort of book that a lot will dislike but will keep going back to.
There are some books that are just so merciless you wonder how on earth the characters even manage to survive all that brutality. But they do and then you wonder how they deal with all that accumulated pain and whether they can live a “normal” life. This book deals with some difficult topics such as slavery, domestic violence, and rape. It also focuses on ancestral memory and orality as a way of passing on stories. Of course with oral culture we pick which stories we want passed on so it might be surprising to learn that the story that the protagonist’s grandmother chooses to tell her is one of rape: the rape of both her grandmother and mother by the same man, the Portuguese slavedriver, Corregidora. You can’t help but squirm when you read that Ursa has been listening to these stories while on her grandmother’s knee since she was 5 years old:
" Her hands had lines all over them. It was as if the words were helping her, as if the words repeated again and again could be a substitute for memory, were somehow more than the memory. As if it were only the words that kept her anger."
This book focuses on Ursa, the daughter and great-grand-daughter. A blues singer at a local club, the book starts off with tragedy for her at the hands of her husband. The blues are prominent in the book and I’m reminded of Angela Davies and her research on black women, feminism and the blue. All Ursa has are the blues and her beautiful voice which changes after her tragedy:
"It sounds like you been through something. Before it was beautiful too, but you sound like you been through more now."
Ursa’s flashbacks are full of anger. Why did the grandmother want to keep that tragic story alive? She doesn’t want the story to die and she wants Ursa to “make generations” to carry on the story:
“I'm leaving evidence. And you got to leave evidence too. And your children got to leave evidence. And when it comes time to hold up the evidence, we got to have evidence to hold up."
It’s interesting about the body being memory that has been touched on in so many books, it's even more interesting that Ursa's memories of her mother and grandmother are perhaps just as strong as her own memories: “It was as if their memory, the memory of all the Corregidora women, was her memory too, as strong with her as her own private memory, or almost as strong."
The story relies mostly on dialogue, both internal and external. The language is often quite graphic and explicit. The language the men in her life use to describe and label Ursa is incredibly misogynistic and objectifying.
The story shows in several ways how our past can affect us. The history of slavery in particular; I can’t even begin to comprehend the pain the slaves experienced, though Gayl Jones did a good job of highlighting some examples.
For some reason I feel this is the sort of book that a lot will dislike but will keep going back to.
December 2, 2021
Gayl Jones’s debut from 1975 was edited by Toni Morrison, influencing Morrison’s later writing. It’s a challenging, powerful piece, and I benefited hugely from being able to discuss it with friends from the ‘Read Women’ group. It’s an intense psychological study of one woman, Ursa Corregidora, who’s grappling with the fall-out of enormous individual and generational trauma. Ursa’s the near descendent of slaves, her great-grandmother repeatedly raped and forced into prostitution by her Portuguese owner Corregidora, who also fathered her daughter. This daughter became another of his victims eventually producing her own daughter, Ursa’s mother. Ursa first learnt about their past at the age of five, sitting on her grandmother’s knee. She also learnt her purpose, to ‘make generations’ to bear witness to her family’s suffering, all official records long-since destroyed. But then something happens to Ursa that means she’ll never have children, leaving her bereft and confused.
Jones’s novel’s exceptionally sophisticated in structure and style, building on a concept formulated during her years of PhD study. She aimed to flout convention, combining “experience and imagination, autobiography, history, legend, myth, ritual, metaphor, dream…” And to create fiction that drew on “specifically black forms, both musical (blues, jazz, work songs, spirituals) and linguistic (the sermon, playing dozens, signifying, jive); it would see the erotic as an authentic method of expression.” All of which informs Corregidora. The tone and atmosphere shifts as the narrative unfolds, filled with, what Jones called, "ritualised dialogue," anti-naturalistic, often explicitly invoking the language, rhythms, and forms of the blues - the call-and-response, the break, play a crucial role. Oral cultures and, significantly, the blues saturate the story: for Ursa singing the blues is her one true means of expression, the space in which her voice rings out, clear and unfettered. Outside of this space, Ursa’s overwhelmed by a cacophony of other voices dominating her thoughts and dreams: her mother, her grandmother, imagined conversations with her controlling lover Mutt, even visitations from Corregidora, whose face looms over hers in her own reflection.
Through Ursa, Jones probes the experience of historic and ongoing trauma, the lives of women caught up in cycles of violence, mired in the forms of compulsive repetition that so often accompany immense suffering. Their bodies a site of remembrance and a testament to pain, obsessed with telling their stories, stories that infect their present and the future. For Ursa this legacy thwarts her ability to fulfil her desires or make meaningful connections, sex for her’s inextricably tangled up with images of control and brutality. She’s her mother’s child but she also fears her inheritance from Corregidora. Pain and sexual desire’s central to the novel but Jones’s equally concerned with endurance, survival and the slender hope of freedom and self-realisation. It’s a controversial book admired by writers from Morrison, James Baldwin to Tayari Jones but criticised by others like June Jordan and Daryl Pinckney for its portrayal of Black masculinity and lesbian identity. It’s part of a debate that’s still raging, too complicated for me to outline. Corregidora reminded me of aspects of Morrison’s later fiction but it also seemed to be looking back to Zora Neale Hurston and her longing for a writing steeped in Black art forms and idioms. I found it hypnotic, memorable, frequently devastating yet it also seemed to be holding out the possibility of finding a way through, of achieving independence, albeit fragile, despite the weight of unspeakable histories.
Jones’s novel’s exceptionally sophisticated in structure and style, building on a concept formulated during her years of PhD study. She aimed to flout convention, combining “experience and imagination, autobiography, history, legend, myth, ritual, metaphor, dream…” And to create fiction that drew on “specifically black forms, both musical (blues, jazz, work songs, spirituals) and linguistic (the sermon, playing dozens, signifying, jive); it would see the erotic as an authentic method of expression.” All of which informs Corregidora. The tone and atmosphere shifts as the narrative unfolds, filled with, what Jones called, "ritualised dialogue," anti-naturalistic, often explicitly invoking the language, rhythms, and forms of the blues - the call-and-response, the break, play a crucial role. Oral cultures and, significantly, the blues saturate the story: for Ursa singing the blues is her one true means of expression, the space in which her voice rings out, clear and unfettered. Outside of this space, Ursa’s overwhelmed by a cacophony of other voices dominating her thoughts and dreams: her mother, her grandmother, imagined conversations with her controlling lover Mutt, even visitations from Corregidora, whose face looms over hers in her own reflection.
Through Ursa, Jones probes the experience of historic and ongoing trauma, the lives of women caught up in cycles of violence, mired in the forms of compulsive repetition that so often accompany immense suffering. Their bodies a site of remembrance and a testament to pain, obsessed with telling their stories, stories that infect their present and the future. For Ursa this legacy thwarts her ability to fulfil her desires or make meaningful connections, sex for her’s inextricably tangled up with images of control and brutality. She’s her mother’s child but she also fears her inheritance from Corregidora. Pain and sexual desire’s central to the novel but Jones’s equally concerned with endurance, survival and the slender hope of freedom and self-realisation. It’s a controversial book admired by writers from Morrison, James Baldwin to Tayari Jones but criticised by others like June Jordan and Daryl Pinckney for its portrayal of Black masculinity and lesbian identity. It’s part of a debate that’s still raging, too complicated for me to outline. Corregidora reminded me of aspects of Morrison’s later fiction but it also seemed to be looking back to Zora Neale Hurston and her longing for a writing steeped in Black art forms and idioms. I found it hypnotic, memorable, frequently devastating yet it also seemed to be holding out the possibility of finding a way through, of achieving independence, albeit fragile, despite the weight of unspeakable histories.
July 15, 2020
So much packed into a novel of less than 200 pages: inherited and generational trauma and the weight of bearing witness; the trauma of remembering and feeding the memory of horrific sexual violation; the destructibility of the male gaze and dominion over black women's bodies; the constant fight for autonomy and agency; the ability to love and desire and feel pleasure intertwined with feelings of hatred and fury and pain; the private pain that women bear alone; the weight of memory and experience that can't be communicated in words; the physical destruction of the evidence of the evil deeds of white colonizers preserved through oral telling; the loneliness of womanhood...How do you see yourself when you are a reflection of past and inherited trauma, a vessel for seeing and bearing witness for the sexual assaults upon your ancestors without which you would not be alive?
Corregidora is one of the best novels ever. It is the work of a visionary and prodigious artist. Fair warning though: there are scenes of very intense sexual violence and extremely coarse and visceral (and believable!) language. It's incredibly dark and painful but so honest and one of the greatest novels for capturing the viscious intersectionality that is black womanhood.
Corregidora is one of the best novels ever. It is the work of a visionary and prodigious artist. Fair warning though: there are scenes of very intense sexual violence and extremely coarse and visceral (and believable!) language. It's incredibly dark and painful but so honest and one of the greatest novels for capturing the viscious intersectionality that is black womanhood.
October 1, 2019
This is Gayl Jones’s first novel, published in 1975. It is set in the 1940s, with a brief move forward to the 1960s at the end. It also moves back to Brazil and a Portuguese slave owner called Simon Corregidora. The protagonist is Ursa, a blues singer whose line through her mother, grandmother and great-grandmother goes back to Corregidora. The present day is set mainly in Kentucky.
Jones looks back on the physical enslavement of black women through the generations of one family and draws comparisons with modern cycles of abuse between men and women. Jones makes clear the issues are complex; need, intimacy and violence are entwined and the objectification of women takes many forms. Psychological bondage is also powerful. Ursa hears the stories of her forbears, the brutality, incest and trauma. There is some emphasis on generations following and bearing witness. The focal event of the book is right at the start. Ursa’s husband Mutt throws her down a flight of stairs because of her refusal to stop singing. Her unborn child dies and she has to have an emergency hysterectomy. This means Ursa cannot bear future generations and the novel revolves around her coming to terms with what has happened and the consequences:
“I am Ursa Corregidora. I have tears for eyes. I was made to touch my past at an early age... Let no one pollute my music. I will dig out their trumpets. I will pluck out their eyes.”
Sexuality is a central theme, in the present and looking back. Sexual ownership continues in a form after slavery, but the descriptions of sexual exploitation in slavery are powerful;
“Cause tha's all they do to you, was feel up on you down between your legs see what kind of genitals you had, either so you could breed well, or make a good whore. Fuck each other or fuck them. Tha's the first thing they would think about, cause if you had somebody who was a good fucker you have plenty to send out into the field, and then you could also make you plenty money on the side, or inside.”
Ursa learns the secrets of the past gradually, over time, whilst she is herself being abused by two husbands. Ursa’s own identity becomes focussed on her identity as a singer and her relationship with her audience and the significant men in her life resent this and cannot accept her sense of agency in this area; they have to have control over every part of her (a different sort of slavery, but the comparisons are obvious).
The novel is difficult and painful and the reader has nowhere to go, but its message is important and it can’t be ignored
Jones looks back on the physical enslavement of black women through the generations of one family and draws comparisons with modern cycles of abuse between men and women. Jones makes clear the issues are complex; need, intimacy and violence are entwined and the objectification of women takes many forms. Psychological bondage is also powerful. Ursa hears the stories of her forbears, the brutality, incest and trauma. There is some emphasis on generations following and bearing witness. The focal event of the book is right at the start. Ursa’s husband Mutt throws her down a flight of stairs because of her refusal to stop singing. Her unborn child dies and she has to have an emergency hysterectomy. This means Ursa cannot bear future generations and the novel revolves around her coming to terms with what has happened and the consequences:
“I am Ursa Corregidora. I have tears for eyes. I was made to touch my past at an early age... Let no one pollute my music. I will dig out their trumpets. I will pluck out their eyes.”
Sexuality is a central theme, in the present and looking back. Sexual ownership continues in a form after slavery, but the descriptions of sexual exploitation in slavery are powerful;
“Cause tha's all they do to you, was feel up on you down between your legs see what kind of genitals you had, either so you could breed well, or make a good whore. Fuck each other or fuck them. Tha's the first thing they would think about, cause if you had somebody who was a good fucker you have plenty to send out into the field, and then you could also make you plenty money on the side, or inside.”
Ursa learns the secrets of the past gradually, over time, whilst she is herself being abused by two husbands. Ursa’s own identity becomes focussed on her identity as a singer and her relationship with her audience and the significant men in her life resent this and cannot accept her sense of agency in this area; they have to have control over every part of her (a different sort of slavery, but the comparisons are obvious).
The novel is difficult and painful and the reader has nowhere to go, but its message is important and it can’t be ignored
April 3, 2022
I am the daughter of the daughter of the daughter of Ursa of the currents, steel wool and electric wire for hair
This is an extraordinary book, one which had me frequently flinching at the things characters do, say or have done to them, but which is also written in such a sophisticated way that I was utterly bewitched by Jones' art.
Weaving together the stories of the 'Corregidora women' and the generational trauma of slavery and its legacies that they suffer and embody, this is also a narrative shot through with the rhythms and content of jazz and blues. There's so much going on here: slavery, the additional horrors of how it was sexualised in relation to women, issues of memorialisation and bearing witness, the tainted relationships that continue between men and women, women and women, psyches brutalised and suffering turning to violence.
There's a gorgeous intimacy in some scenes though absolutely no sentimentality. Jones' control is impressive and it seems incredible that so much of emotional substance is held within around a mere 200 pages.
Ursa, the narrator, uses what seems like a kind of improvisatory mode of storytelling as she flits between the present, memories that are almost like hauntings, and shifts through time; and there are uses of almost chant-like prose with repetition and variations, like the music she references. As a creator and singer of songs, Ursa is herself both a storyteller and yet also uses music as a way of breaking through the barriers of silence and suffering that belong to her both personally and as the inheritor of her past: 'we're all consequences of something. Stained with another's past as well as our own. Their past in my blood.'
Throughout, there are riffs on themes: enforced and deliberate memory vs. the inability to 'make generations', the repetitions of sexualised violence, love and loss, the courage to just keep going. It's not hard to see why Toni Morrison was so struck by this book and to trace how her own work draws productively on Jones in both subject matter and the syncopated rhythm of Morrison's own prose in her Jazz.
November 4, 2022
4.5
The brutal story of the generational effects of the cycle of violence and self-loathing perpetuated by enslavement is a necessary one, but it’ll take someone else besides me to properly review it, as I don’t feel equipped to do so. Though the language is not difficult, I couldn’t read it straight through, having to put it aside whenever I’d had “enough.” The prose style almost forces you to slow down anyway, as the narrator deals with her present and past, mostly through dialogue, some of which is interior, and through her recollection of the stories told to her (forced upon her?) by her maternal ancestors.
*
Gayl Jones was only twenty-six at the time of her debut novel’s publication and Toni Morrison was its editor. The novel was a big influence on Morrison, who hadn’t published any of her own work yet, and I can see its influence on Beloved and Jazz especially. Jones’s book could’ve been titled Blues.
*
On another note…I started reading Elizabeth Hardwick’s Sleepless Nights before finishing Corregidora. After finishing it, I discovered Hardwick was an even earlier mentor to Gayl Jones...
The brutal story of the generational effects of the cycle of violence and self-loathing perpetuated by enslavement is a necessary one, but it’ll take someone else besides me to properly review it, as I don’t feel equipped to do so. Though the language is not difficult, I couldn’t read it straight through, having to put it aside whenever I’d had “enough.” The prose style almost forces you to slow down anyway, as the narrator deals with her present and past, mostly through dialogue, some of which is interior, and through her recollection of the stories told to her (forced upon her?) by her maternal ancestors.
*
Gayl Jones was only twenty-six at the time of her debut novel’s publication and Toni Morrison was its editor. The novel was a big influence on Morrison, who hadn’t published any of her own work yet, and I can see its influence on Beloved and Jazz especially. Jones’s book could’ve been titled Blues.
*
On another note…I started reading Elizabeth Hardwick’s Sleepless Nights before finishing Corregidora. After finishing it, I discovered Hardwick was an even earlier mentor to Gayl Jones...
September 28, 2019
I’m ashamed to say I hadn’t come across Gayl Jones’ writing before learning about this new edition of “Corregidora” being reissued by Virago Modern Classics. It was originally published in 1975 with the help of Toni Morrison who was working as an editor at Random House at the time. Morrison famously stated “that no novel about any black woman could ever be the same after this” and the influence “Corregidora” had on Morrison is very evident. It certainly must have partly inspired her novel “Beloved” as Jones’ novel similarly shows how the past intrudes upon and shapes the present by invoking voices from earlier generations who suffered under slavery.
“Corregidora” is the story of blues singer Ursa Corregidora. At the beginning of the novel she suffers a terrible injury after being thrown down the stairs by her jealous husband Mutt. The novel traces their tumultuous relationship over the years while Ursa recounts her early and later life. Interspersed throughout her story are accounts from previous generations of Corregidora women who can only relate the history of their difficult lives by talking to their daughters because physical records of their subjugation have been purposefully destroyed: “She said when they did away with slavery down there they burned all the slavery papers so it would be like they never had it.” Ursa carries the evidence of this past in the stories she’s received and she feels guilty that she can’t continue passing it on because she can’t have children. Both she and this novel are filled with the weight of history.
Read my full review of Corregidora by Gayl Jones on LonesomeReader
“Corregidora” is the story of blues singer Ursa Corregidora. At the beginning of the novel she suffers a terrible injury after being thrown down the stairs by her jealous husband Mutt. The novel traces their tumultuous relationship over the years while Ursa recounts her early and later life. Interspersed throughout her story are accounts from previous generations of Corregidora women who can only relate the history of their difficult lives by talking to their daughters because physical records of their subjugation have been purposefully destroyed: “She said when they did away with slavery down there they burned all the slavery papers so it would be like they never had it.” Ursa carries the evidence of this past in the stories she’s received and she feels guilty that she can’t continue passing it on because she can’t have children. Both she and this novel are filled with the weight of history.
Read my full review of Corregidora by Gayl Jones on LonesomeReader
March 26, 2022
I didn’t expect this book to be the way that it was. The story was so strong and layered. It was disturbing and thought-provoking, kind of gave What’s Love Got to Do With It at points.
Our main character Ursa’s life and experiences are filled with generational trauma with both her mother and grandmother being born of the same filthy disgusting man who forced so much on these women he kept as slaves and prostitutes.
How does that impact the life of a young woman singing for her money, trying to make her own way, but crippled by the circumstances of this narrative and of this history? It’s a relentless presence in her life.
The story unfolds with various men playing different roles in the mayhem. Trigger warning for domestic violence, rape, sexual assault, abuse, spiritual assault, gaslighting, etc.
The writing is visceral, and Gayl Jones minces no words! It is also a critical reflection on the wellspring of pain that many Black women have shared amongst each other forever. The duality in the importance and struggle that exists in telling the truth about what has transpired amongst our elders and ancestors, and how those truths impact future generations. Many people are experiencing current and continued trauma born of historical trauma.
Shout out to the Books Are Pop Culture podcast for putting me on to this book by talking about it! Check out their episode “Twyla was Black” which includes a short comparison of Toni Morrison’s Sula to Gayl Jones’ Corregidora by clicking here!
Our main character Ursa’s life and experiences are filled with generational trauma with both her mother and grandmother being born of the same filthy disgusting man who forced so much on these women he kept as slaves and prostitutes.
How does that impact the life of a young woman singing for her money, trying to make her own way, but crippled by the circumstances of this narrative and of this history? It’s a relentless presence in her life.
The story unfolds with various men playing different roles in the mayhem. Trigger warning for domestic violence, rape, sexual assault, abuse, spiritual assault, gaslighting, etc.
The writing is visceral, and Gayl Jones minces no words! It is also a critical reflection on the wellspring of pain that many Black women have shared amongst each other forever. The duality in the importance and struggle that exists in telling the truth about what has transpired amongst our elders and ancestors, and how those truths impact future generations. Many people are experiencing current and continued trauma born of historical trauma.
Shout out to the Books Are Pop Culture podcast for putting me on to this book by talking about it! Check out their episode “Twyla was Black” which includes a short comparison of Toni Morrison’s Sula to Gayl Jones’ Corregidora by clicking here!
June 20, 2020
I don’t know. If you can read this without feeling nauseous from the pain and brutality it expresses, then something is wrong with you
April 18, 2022
Η Ούρσα, η τελευταία απόγονος μιας γενιάς γυναικών των οποίων τη ζωή καταδυναστεψε ο Κορετζιντόρα,αγαπά το τραγούδι και με αυτό θέλει να πορευτεί. Η πορεία της ζωής της όμως αλλάζει όταν μένει στείρα. Αποφασισμένη να ζήσει τη ζωή της με τους δικούς της κανόνες, χωρίζει και συνεχίζει να κάνει αυτό που αγαπά.
Είναι ένα βιβλίο που μιλά για τη μνήμη των γυναικών σκλάβων, που παρόλες τις φρικαλεότητες τις οποίες έζησαν, όπως βιασμοί, πορνεία, αιμομιξία, στόχος τους άλλος δεν ήταν, παρά να τη μεταφέρουν μέσω των απογόνων τους στις επόμενες γενιές για να μην ξεχαστούν.
Η Ούρσα, μένοντας στείρα, έχασε το δικαίωμα της επιλογής να τεκνοποιήσει, για αυτό στράφηκε με όλη τη δύναμη της ψυχής της στο τραγούδι.
Είναι όμως μια γυναίκα πληγωμένη που προσπαθεί να νιώσει επιθυμητή και να απολαύσει τον έρωτα - άραγε, θα τα καταφέρει?
Η συγγραφέας, έγραψε το βιβλίο όντας μόλις 25 χρονών, χρησιμοποιώντας γλώσσα σκληρή, μα αληθινή, που προφανώς φάνταζε σχεδόν ανάρμοστο να χρησιμοποιήσει μια γυναίκα.
Πέρα από το θέμα της δουλείας, η Jones, μας βάζει να σκεφτούμε κατά πόσο η θηλυκότητα είναι συνυφασμένη και άρρηκτα συνδεδεμένη με την μητρότητα.
Ένα εξαιρετικό βιβλίο που σαφέστατα ταρακούνησε τα νερά την χρονολογία που γράφτηκε και που θεωρώ ότι πρέπει να διαβαστεί.
Είναι ένα βιβλίο που μιλά για τη μνήμη των γυναικών σκλάβων, που παρόλες τις φρικαλεότητες τις οποίες έζησαν, όπως βιασμοί, πορνεία, αιμομιξία, στόχος τους άλλος δεν ήταν, παρά να τη μεταφέρουν μέσω των απογόνων τους στις επόμενες γενιές για να μην ξεχαστούν.
Η Ούρσα, μένοντας στείρα, έχασε το δικαίωμα της επιλογής να τεκνοποιήσει, για αυτό στράφηκε με όλη τη δύναμη της ψυχής της στο τραγούδι.
Είναι όμως μια γυναίκα πληγωμένη που προσπαθεί να νιώσει επιθυμητή και να απολαύσει τον έρωτα - άραγε, θα τα καταφέρει?
Η συγγραφέας, έγραψε το βιβλίο όντας μόλις 25 χρονών, χρησιμοποιώντας γλώσσα σκληρή, μα αληθινή, που προφανώς φάνταζε σχεδόν ανάρμοστο να χρησιμοποιήσει μια γυναίκα.
Πέρα από το θέμα της δουλείας, η Jones, μας βάζει να σκεφτούμε κατά πόσο η θηλυκότητα είναι συνυφασμένη και άρρηκτα συνδεδεμένη με την μητρότητα.
Ένα εξαιρετικό βιβλίο που σαφέστατα ταρακούνησε τα νερά την χρονολογία που γράφτηκε και που θεωρώ ότι πρέπει να διαβαστεί.
February 8, 2023
Ursa is a blues singer in Kentucky. Being the descendant of both slave and slave-master, her upbringing was such that bearing witness and keeping memory–that of the exploitation, pain, and the existence of slavery itself, is instilled in her since childhood, and she's charged with passing down this information to the next generation through her children and their children afterwards, so that what happened isn't lost. The brutal abuse of Ursa's husband, Mutt, changes the order of this . Ursa through her art of storytelling and singing blends what she calls private memory (that which is more individual) and collective memory (that which involves a larger group of people).
Corregidora is the Portuguese master who sexually abused and exploited the bodies of his slaves personally and commercially. After slavery ends, the enslavers, in typical criminal fashion, burn the evidence of the brutal enterprise they were engaged and profited in. Ursa’s great-grandmother begins the tradition of oral record-keeping:
"And then that’s when the officials burned all the papers cause they wanted to
play like what had happened before never did happen. But I know it happened, I
bear witness that it happened."
Truthfully, in its theme, this book struck too close to home for me. While none of my ancestors were victims of the TransAtlantic slave trade, the whole enterprise of those in power unleashing brutality as means to whatever ends and covering it up, was too familiar. Burundi, as well as Rwanda and Congo (D.R.) were Belgian colonies. The records of the horrifying suffering in that period (the villages pillaged, the massacres, the fields razed and the starvation and deaths caused, those maimed, the sexual abuse and rape suffered) cannot be accessed by the average Burundian, Congolese or Rwandan. Of course this isn’t to mention the political assassinations carried out, the divide and rule policies, and all that has caused more suffering. Not that Belgium burned all these records, but they took all records (and artifacts as well of course) with them after independence and if I wanted to learn of certain events I would need to book an appointment with the archives department in Brussels to access the records. There were talks of digitizing the records, but I didn’t see any change last I checked. Which of course means the way information from this period trickles for many is through the memories of those who endured the suffering and the few (often white) academics who’re able to access these records. They didn’t do this only with their own records, but were kind enough to cover up the massacring, killing, and raping their German predecessors did before them, and before they lost the first world war and their colonies, some of which Belgium took. The Belgians (with the help of the Catholic church) were so thorough in their cleaning up that they abducted tens of thousands of biracial children fathered by Belgian colonizers and settlers in Burundi, Congo and Rwanda, and only apologized for it three years ago:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/201...
The transience of memory makes it a fragile vessel for record. This is a fact the powerful know and depend on. Ursa, tasked with keeping memory passed down, is faced with a crisis when it becomes clear that the memory of the suffering could be lost forever.
It’s unbelievable that this book was written while Gayl Jones was twenty five. The incredible depth and breadth this book bears and its ideas on memory, pain, loneliness, unfulfilled desire and desolation as well as the aftermath of something so big and painful as slavery conceived and told in such language at such a young age is just astounding.
Corregidora is the Portuguese master who sexually abused and exploited the bodies of his slaves personally and commercially. After slavery ends, the enslavers, in typical criminal fashion, burn the evidence of the brutal enterprise they were engaged and profited in. Ursa’s great-grandmother begins the tradition of oral record-keeping:
"And then that’s when the officials burned all the papers cause they wanted to
play like what had happened before never did happen. But I know it happened, I
bear witness that it happened."
Truthfully, in its theme, this book struck too close to home for me. While none of my ancestors were victims of the TransAtlantic slave trade, the whole enterprise of those in power unleashing brutality as means to whatever ends and covering it up, was too familiar. Burundi, as well as Rwanda and Congo (D.R.) were Belgian colonies. The records of the horrifying suffering in that period (the villages pillaged, the massacres, the fields razed and the starvation and deaths caused, those maimed, the sexual abuse and rape suffered) cannot be accessed by the average Burundian, Congolese or Rwandan. Of course this isn’t to mention the political assassinations carried out, the divide and rule policies, and all that has caused more suffering. Not that Belgium burned all these records, but they took all records (and artifacts as well of course) with them after independence and if I wanted to learn of certain events I would need to book an appointment with the archives department in Brussels to access the records. There were talks of digitizing the records, but I didn’t see any change last I checked. Which of course means the way information from this period trickles for many is through the memories of those who endured the suffering and the few (often white) academics who’re able to access these records. They didn’t do this only with their own records, but were kind enough to cover up the massacring, killing, and raping their German predecessors did before them, and before they lost the first world war and their colonies, some of which Belgium took. The Belgians (with the help of the Catholic church) were so thorough in their cleaning up that they abducted tens of thousands of biracial children fathered by Belgian colonizers and settlers in Burundi, Congo and Rwanda, and only apologized for it three years ago:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/201...
The transience of memory makes it a fragile vessel for record. This is a fact the powerful know and depend on. Ursa, tasked with keeping memory passed down, is faced with a crisis when it becomes clear that the memory of the suffering could be lost forever.
It’s unbelievable that this book was written while Gayl Jones was twenty five. The incredible depth and breadth this book bears and its ideas on memory, pain, loneliness, unfulfilled desire and desolation as well as the aftermath of something so big and painful as slavery conceived and told in such language at such a young age is just astounding.
October 29, 2022
4.5 // What an emotionally complex novel. This book kept twisting and changing and reintroducing itself as it went along. The prose and structure felt rhythmic; ebbing and flowing. A richly-realized story exploring themes of generational trauma, bloodlines, the legacy of slavery, oral history, womanhood, sexuality, eroticism, taboo, toxic masculinity, self-destruction, self-discovery. The kind of book I would’ve loved to study is a classroom setting. I need to purchase “Eva’s Man” —need that in my life.
January 25, 2008
Corregidora is an intense exploration of sex, desire, and history. Ursa, the protagonist, struggles with her own sexuality, her womanhood, and her responsibility to bear witness to the horrible history of enslavement that her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother instill in her. Their storytelling and passing along of this history is both a necessary way of remembering that past which has created the present and a form of abuse that prevents her from fully living her own life.
"...your roots are where you was born and you can't pull them up, the only thing you can do is cut yourself away from them, but they still be there."
Ursa cannot escape her roots in the history of slavery, rape, and forced prostitution. And she doesn't seem to want to. She sees in her interactions with abusive men a continuation of the patterns her forebears experienced. To turn away from those patterns, to deny them, would be to ignore the dangers that come with sexual relationships because these sexual relationships are always already relationships of power. The men are abusive as a way to demonstrate their power. But what power do the women have? Ursa discovers, finally, the power that she has, that her Great Gram had, too: "It had to be sexual, I was thinking, it had to be something sexual that Great Gram did to Corregidora [her great grandmother and grandmother's master and lover:]. I knew it had to be sexual: 'What is it a woman can do to a man that make him hate her so bad he wont to kill her one minute and keep thinking about her and can't get her out of his mind the next?' In a split second I knew what it was, and I think he [Mutt, her lover and ex-husband:] might have known too. A moment of pleasure and excruciating pain at the same time, a moment of broken skin but not sexlessness, a moment just before sexlessness, a moment that stops before it breaks the skin: 'I could kill you.'"
The best Ursa can do in relation to the history that she cannot escape is to claim the control she can within this relationship. She says, in the end, "It was like I didn't know how much was me and Mutt and how much was Great Gram and Corregidora--like Mama when she had started talking like Great Gram. But was what Corregidora had done to her, to them, any worse than what Mutt had done to me, than what we had done to each other, than what Mama had done to Daddy, or what he had done to her in return, making her walk down the street looking like a whore?"
Although the plot of Corregidora that drives forward focuses on desire and Ursa's romantic relationships, the real driving force of the novel is the past and its inescapability. Ursa and Mutt, Ursa and Tadpole, Great Gram and Gram and Corregidora, Mama and Martin, and every other relationship in the book, all are tainted by the past. Mutt tries to tell Ursa, "Whichever way you look at it, we ain't them," but she knows that's not true. She feels a deep connection to the previous generations of women who have been abused and treated as sex objects. Great Gram describes what it was like on Corregidora's place, when he whored her out to his white friends: "when he send them white mens in there to me he didn't look like that, cause he be nodding and saying what a fine piece I was, said I was a fine speciment of a woman, finest speciment of a woman he ever seen in his life, said he had tested me out hisself, and then they would be laughing, you know, when they come in there to me. Cause tha's all they do to you, was feel up on you down between your legs see what kind of genitals you had, either so you could breed well, or make a good whore. Fuck each other or fuck them." This attitude toward women is not so terribly different from the one that Ursa encounters every day. Men see her as a piece of ass, not hesitating in the least to walk up to her and say, "I bet you got some good pussy" and expect her to welcome them with open arms and legs.
Given this, Ursa's responsibility, as handed down by her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother, is to bear witness by bearing children and passing these lessons on to them. But after an injury caused by her husband's abuse, Ursa cannot bear children. She cannot bear generations. She cannot pass these lessons on. One important question the book raises through this turn of events is whether or not these lessons should be passed on.
"Forget what they went through."
"I can't forget."
"Forget what you been through."
"I can't forget. The space between my thighs. A well that never bleeds."
"And who are you fucking?"
"No one. Silence in my womb. My breasts quiver like old apples."
"Forget the past."
But Ursa cannot forget. And she cannot pass these stories along. Perhaps, in the end, this is best. Perhaps, as in Toni Morrison's Beloved,, "this is not a story to pass on." Perhaps healing can only come with separation from this past. Perhaps only with separation and the willingness to stop telling the old stories can men and women stop hurting each other
Corregidora provides no clear answer to this speculation. What it does do is provide a haunting illustration of the pain that these old stories are built on and the pain that they carry with them even into the present.
"...your roots are where you was born and you can't pull them up, the only thing you can do is cut yourself away from them, but they still be there."
Ursa cannot escape her roots in the history of slavery, rape, and forced prostitution. And she doesn't seem to want to. She sees in her interactions with abusive men a continuation of the patterns her forebears experienced. To turn away from those patterns, to deny them, would be to ignore the dangers that come with sexual relationships because these sexual relationships are always already relationships of power. The men are abusive as a way to demonstrate their power. But what power do the women have? Ursa discovers, finally, the power that she has, that her Great Gram had, too: "It had to be sexual, I was thinking, it had to be something sexual that Great Gram did to Corregidora [her great grandmother and grandmother's master and lover:]. I knew it had to be sexual: 'What is it a woman can do to a man that make him hate her so bad he wont to kill her one minute and keep thinking about her and can't get her out of his mind the next?' In a split second I knew what it was, and I think he [Mutt, her lover and ex-husband:] might have known too. A moment of pleasure and excruciating pain at the same time, a moment of broken skin but not sexlessness, a moment just before sexlessness, a moment that stops before it breaks the skin: 'I could kill you.'"
The best Ursa can do in relation to the history that she cannot escape is to claim the control she can within this relationship. She says, in the end, "It was like I didn't know how much was me and Mutt and how much was Great Gram and Corregidora--like Mama when she had started talking like Great Gram. But was what Corregidora had done to her, to them, any worse than what Mutt had done to me, than what we had done to each other, than what Mama had done to Daddy, or what he had done to her in return, making her walk down the street looking like a whore?"
Although the plot of Corregidora that drives forward focuses on desire and Ursa's romantic relationships, the real driving force of the novel is the past and its inescapability. Ursa and Mutt, Ursa and Tadpole, Great Gram and Gram and Corregidora, Mama and Martin, and every other relationship in the book, all are tainted by the past. Mutt tries to tell Ursa, "Whichever way you look at it, we ain't them," but she knows that's not true. She feels a deep connection to the previous generations of women who have been abused and treated as sex objects. Great Gram describes what it was like on Corregidora's place, when he whored her out to his white friends: "when he send them white mens in there to me he didn't look like that, cause he be nodding and saying what a fine piece I was, said I was a fine speciment of a woman, finest speciment of a woman he ever seen in his life, said he had tested me out hisself, and then they would be laughing, you know, when they come in there to me. Cause tha's all they do to you, was feel up on you down between your legs see what kind of genitals you had, either so you could breed well, or make a good whore. Fuck each other or fuck them." This attitude toward women is not so terribly different from the one that Ursa encounters every day. Men see her as a piece of ass, not hesitating in the least to walk up to her and say, "I bet you got some good pussy" and expect her to welcome them with open arms and legs.
Given this, Ursa's responsibility, as handed down by her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother, is to bear witness by bearing children and passing these lessons on to them. But after an injury caused by her husband's abuse, Ursa cannot bear children. She cannot bear generations. She cannot pass these lessons on. One important question the book raises through this turn of events is whether or not these lessons should be passed on.
"Forget what they went through."
"I can't forget."
"Forget what you been through."
"I can't forget. The space between my thighs. A well that never bleeds."
"And who are you fucking?"
"No one. Silence in my womb. My breasts quiver like old apples."
"Forget the past."
But Ursa cannot forget. And she cannot pass these stories along. Perhaps, in the end, this is best. Perhaps, as in Toni Morrison's Beloved,, "this is not a story to pass on." Perhaps healing can only come with separation from this past. Perhaps only with separation and the willingness to stop telling the old stories can men and women stop hurting each other
Corregidora provides no clear answer to this speculation. What it does do is provide a haunting illustration of the pain that these old stories are built on and the pain that they carry with them even into the present.
August 25, 2016
I realized today that the only reason I was pushing through this book was to say that I'd read it. But that's not enough reason to read nearly 200 pages, so I stopped somewhere after page 100. Everyone speaks so highly of it and of Gayl Jones as a writer. I might need to check out her other work because this one lost me on almost every other page.
February 18, 2017
I wanted a song that would touch me, touch my life and theirs. A Portuguese song, but not a Portuguese song. A new world song. A song branded with the new world. I thought of the girl who had to sleep with her master and mistress. Her father, the master. Her daughter's father. The father of her daughter's daughter. How many generations?February has been good for relieving the drought in my state and bad at maintaining my mental health. The ongoing drought (ha) in my reviewing enforced by study, work doing its best to maintain the artificial and capitalistic hell that is life with a Bachelor's in English, and lack of relationships that are local as well as beneficial are the usual suspects, but the crown goes to exacerbation of the ever present demonization of mentally ill people. Trump's a sadistic rapist? Crazy! Anti-abortionists have a tendency to commit terrorism? Insane! Fascists are coming out of the woodwork, corruption's rife, and people really haven't "progressed" as much as we'd like to think? Needless to say, I've had to get rid of a lot of people in my life. They're the reason why I don't automatically call someone with the knowledge that they will help me without making me sacrifice my autonomy, why the empty terror that is the cornerstone of my major depressive disorder matches the 'civilization' around me, why Nazis aren't dead, and will never be so long as eugenics comes equipped with the adjectives of 'reasonable', 'inevitable', and 'necessary', instead of those of sterilization, euthanization, institutionalization, and murder. As such, I don't have the energy to inform people every time they make the world that much more unsafe for me. They simply have to go.
Ever go into a hospital looking to keep yourself healthy and come out without a womb? If not, you're probably white, and you can read all about it in Medical Apartheid. Eugenics and racism go hand in hand in the rhetoric of "purity of the race", which is why I preface this review as such. That's actually a lie, as I do whatever the fuck I want these days in one of the few spaces where such range of expression is possible, but I remind myself of this as often as I can. The times are strange, the people are willfully myopic in order to get their schaudenfreude kicks, and the end of the 21st century may very well see something as horrifying as disabled KKK doing battle with Nazis of color. You can't fight the hydra via surgical attachment of its heads.
"You mixed up every which way, ain't you?"Self-care's an odd creature. Sometimes I'll need the life giving humanity that is Steven Universe. Other times I'll need something quick, brutal, and short. Case in point with Corregidora, although the pacing exacted by grad school study lengthened less than 200 pages to nearly a month, which is exhausting in its own, backwards comparisons right. Nevertheless, the rewards are many: another work I would not have purchased had I not been familiar with the 500 GBBW, a text which melds in coincidentally powerful ways with my critical thoughts on the structure that is intersectional social justice, and a meditation on the maelstrom that is misogynoir that takes all of the rape culture, all of the appropriative culture, all the gendered capitalism, all the performative respectability, all of the biology, all of the sir/sur in names, all of the history that will be kicking so long as white people think they're walking over its grave, and grits it out in 185 pages of truth, sex, and self-expression. It's one of those books that will be read by an obscenely low percentage of people who should be required to read it, and of those who do, even less will look at themselves within its context and set about doing something about it. But that's the comfort zone for you. Trigger warnings are censorship, but god forbid we find something worrisome about those who self-censor by reading only the white, or the male, or both.
"What do you mean?"
"You seem like you got a little bit of everything in you," he said.
"I didn't put it there,"
My veins are centuries meeting.There's a quote on the back of this by John Updike that makes me really glad I never read the back of this before purchasing it. I mean, was Maya Angelou the only accredited black woman writer running around? In any case, he praises it for its lacking polemic, rhetoric, and outrage, which tells me he either got off so much on all the sexual abuse that his already limited critical faculties shut down, or he really believed Ursa when she compared her avoidance of an abusive husband to her simultaneous grand and great-grandfather's facilitation of her ancestry. The only aspect I agree with is that it's not a polemic. Teaching children that all was fine and dandy on Thanksgiving is polemic. Taking indigenous languages as state names and creating public (white) spaces out of thriving (nonwhite) communities is polemic. Every mewl and puke of the 1492 rhyme is polemic, as while one may attack ideas via loud spoken insults, it is far more effective to render the space around them a vacuum. These days, I am able to research on Youtube the oral cultures that have survived every bookburning, enslavement, and genocide, but when considering how my generation has a shorter average lifespan than that which birthed me, I don't know how long the children of the next have to wrest themselves from the polemic of a US citizen's education and listen to those who were actually there.
...they might wont your pussy, but if you do anything to get back at them, it'll be your life they be wonting, and then they make even that some kind of sex show, all them beatings and killings wasn't nothing but sex circuses, and all them white peoples, mens, womens, and childrens crowding around to see...This book swears more than I do, articulates more than I do, renders the concept of "the blues" to a degree of pain higher than any white mind, body, and soul could take. You could write a dissertation on the theory engendered amidst the pussy and the rape if academia was suffused long enough with reality to engage with violence outside of the usual pasty patriarchal purview. As it stands, academia as a whole is sinking all the quicker, as the world has no time for liberal arts when science and the military is at stake. These are the days of feeling endangered; you can either help me, or get out of my way.
Let no one polluted my music. I will dig out their temples. I will pluck out their eyes.
September 11, 2025
” Cazzo, siamo tutti la conseguenza di qualche cosa. Segnati dal passato di un’altra persona così come dal nostro.”
Disturbante angoscia: ecco quello che ho sentito leggendo la storia che Ursa Corrgidora, cantante blues, racconta in queste pagine.
La memoria riporta a racconti ripetuti allo sfinimento ad una piccola bambina di cinque anni.
La giovanissima età non le risparmia il fatto di dover ascoltare le crude storie della bisnonna e della nonna entrambe stuprate e costrette a prostituirsi dallo schiavista portoghese Corregidora.
“La mia bisnonna ha raccontato a mia nonna la parte che ha vissuto lei e che mia nonna non aveva vissuto e poi mia nonna ha detto a mamma quello che avevano vissuto loro due e poi mamma ha detto a me quello che hanno vissuto tutte quante e che eravamo tenute a tramandarlo così, da una generazione al¬l’altra, così non ce lo saremmo dimenticato mai. Anche se hanno bruciato tutto per fare finta che la schiavitù non era mai successa. Come no, ma dove sta la prossima generazione? ”
Ursa fugge da una casa così piena di dolori sbandierati come trofei e da un trauma generazionale ma solo la musica non la tradirà.
C’è tanto sesso fra queste pagine: sesso rubato, estorto, preteso, fatto di fame e rabbia..
“Sono Ursa Corregidora, con le lacrime al posto degli occhi. Ho dovuto toccare il passato da piccola. L’ho trovato sulle tette di mia madre. Nel suo latte. Che nessuno si permetta di sporcare la mia musica. Gli buco le tempie. Gli strappo gli occhi. ”
Disturbante angoscia: ecco quello che ho sentito leggendo la storia che Ursa Corrgidora, cantante blues, racconta in queste pagine.
La memoria riporta a racconti ripetuti allo sfinimento ad una piccola bambina di cinque anni.
La giovanissima età non le risparmia il fatto di dover ascoltare le crude storie della bisnonna e della nonna entrambe stuprate e costrette a prostituirsi dallo schiavista portoghese Corregidora.
“La mia bisnonna ha raccontato a mia nonna la parte che ha vissuto lei e che mia nonna non aveva vissuto e poi mia nonna ha detto a mamma quello che avevano vissuto loro due e poi mamma ha detto a me quello che hanno vissuto tutte quante e che eravamo tenute a tramandarlo così, da una generazione al¬l’altra, così non ce lo saremmo dimenticato mai. Anche se hanno bruciato tutto per fare finta che la schiavitù non era mai successa. Come no, ma dove sta la prossima generazione? ”
Ursa fugge da una casa così piena di dolori sbandierati come trofei e da un trauma generazionale ma solo la musica non la tradirà.
C’è tanto sesso fra queste pagine: sesso rubato, estorto, preteso, fatto di fame e rabbia..
“Sono Ursa Corregidora, con le lacrime al posto degli occhi. Ho dovuto toccare il passato da piccola. L’ho trovato sulle tette di mia madre. Nel suo latte. Che nessuno si permetta di sporcare la mia musica. Gli buco le tempie. Gli strappo gli occhi. ”
August 18, 2022
"Είμαι η Ουρσα Κορετζιντόρα.Έχω δάκρυα αντι για μάτια.Είμαι φτιαγμένη να νιώθω από μικρή το παρελθόν μου.Το βρήκα στο στήθος της μάνας μου,στα γάλα της.Δεν θα επιτρέψω σε κανέναν να μολύνει τη μουσική μου"
Το βιβλίο μας παρουσιάζει την ιστορία της Ούρσα που μεγάλωσε ακούγοντας για τις τραυματικές ιστορίες της μητέρας, της γιαγιάς και της προγιαγιάς της, οι οποίες κάποτε είχαν υποδουλωθεί και κακοποιηθεί από έναν άνδρα που ονομαζόταν Κορετζιντόρα. Ενήλικη πια, αποφασίζει να απομακρυνθεί από την πόλη όπου μεγάλωσε και να γίνει τραγουδίστρια των μπλουζ, θέλοντας με κάποιο τρόπο να απομακρυνθεί από την θλίψη και από ένα τόπο γεμάτο βία. Στη ζωή της θα βρεθεί ο Ματ, ο άντρας που θα παντρευτεί, αλλά θα της κάνει το μεγαλύτερο κακό..
Η Τζόουνς, μέσω της αιχμηρής γραφής της, δίνει φωνή μέσω της Ούρσα και δεσμεύεται να γράψει την αλήθεια και τις εμπειρίες μαύρων γυναικών που κάποτε είχαν υποδουλωθεί. Διαβάζουμε τις σκέψεις της, τα συναισθήματα της κατακερματισμένα, με αποτέλεσμα να σχηματίσουν χωρίς υπερβολές, ένα ψυχολογικό πορτρέτο γυναίκας.
Δεν μπορώ να πιστέψω ότι το έγραψε μόλις ήταν 26 ετών, η γραφή της είναι ανατριχιαστικά και βαθιά αμείλικτη. Σε όλη την διάρκεια της ανάγνωσης σκεφτόμουν με αγανάκτηση, ερωτήματα σχετικά με το πόσο μακριά πρέπει να φτάσουν οι γυναίκες ώστε να είναι πραγματικά «ελεύθερες» από τη σεξουαλική εκμετάλλευση.
Σίγουρα ήταν ένα βιβλίο που με δυσκόλεψε συναισθηματικά, αλλά ταυτόχρονα είναι από τα βιβλία που είναι εξαιρετικά από κάθε άποψη.
Το βιβλίο μας παρουσιάζει την ιστορία της Ούρσα που μεγάλωσε ακούγοντας για τις τραυματικές ιστορίες της μητέρας, της γιαγιάς και της προγιαγιάς της, οι οποίες κάποτε είχαν υποδουλωθεί και κακοποιηθεί από έναν άνδρα που ονομαζόταν Κορετζιντόρα. Ενήλικη πια, αποφασίζει να απομακρυνθεί από την πόλη όπου μεγάλωσε και να γίνει τραγουδίστρια των μπλουζ, θέλοντας με κάποιο τρόπο να απομακρυνθεί από την θλίψη και από ένα τόπο γεμάτο βία. Στη ζωή της θα βρεθεί ο Ματ, ο άντρας που θα παντρευτεί, αλλά θα της κάνει το μεγαλύτερο κακό..
Η Τζόουνς, μέσω της αιχμηρής γραφής της, δίνει φωνή μέσω της Ούρσα και δεσμεύεται να γράψει την αλήθεια και τις εμπειρίες μαύρων γυναικών που κάποτε είχαν υποδουλωθεί. Διαβάζουμε τις σκέψεις της, τα συναισθήματα της κατακερματισμένα, με αποτέλεσμα να σχηματίσουν χωρίς υπερβολές, ένα ψυχολογικό πορτρέτο γυναίκας.
Δεν μπορώ να πιστέψω ότι το έγραψε μόλις ήταν 26 ετών, η γραφή της είναι ανατριχιαστικά και βαθιά αμείλικτη. Σε όλη την διάρκεια της ανάγνωσης σκεφτόμουν με αγανάκτηση, ερωτήματα σχετικά με το πόσο μακριά πρέπει να φτάσουν οι γυναίκες ώστε να είναι πραγματικά «ελεύθερες» από τη σεξουαλική εκμετάλλευση.
Σίγουρα ήταν ένα βιβλίο που με δυσκόλεψε συναισθηματικά, αλλά ταυτόχρονα είναι από τα βιβλία που είναι εξαιρετικά από κάθε άποψη.
March 1, 2019
I am Ursa Corregidora. I have tears for eyes. I was made to touch my past at an early age. I found it on my mother’s tiddies. In her milk. Let no one pollute my music. I will dig out their temples. I will pluck out their eyes.
It’s in the blood.
It’s in the blood.
October 20, 2009
From the time that Ursa Corregidora is able to listen, she is told by her great-grandmother that she must retain "the evidence" in order to pass it on to her children. Initially, one would think this is a harmless request. However, "the evidence" is an oral history of how her great-grandmother was raped and then used as a whore by her white slave owner, Corregidora, as was her daughter (Ursa's grandmother) after her. Corregidora then impregnates Ursa's grandmother (his biological daughter) to produce Ursa's mother. Not only is this a disturbing history for a child to commit to memory, but her great-grandmother's resentment and distrust of men were also passed onto a young Ursa.
Although Ursa had a black father, she resembles the Portuguese Corregidora. Her light skin and fine hair causes her to be ostracized by black women and desired by black men. She expresses her lifelong frustrations in the form of song and has moderate success as a blues singer in the small local club circuit. Ursa finds herself suffering emotionally, verbally, and physically at the whim of her husband, Mutt, who begins to exhibit the same jealousy, possessiveness, and envy that her great-grandmother shared regarding her relationship with Corregidora.
Through flashbacks and internal memories, we understand Ursa's mental anguish when trying to discern between the painful slave legacy and her present day household situation. True to the mindset of the time, a woman's childbearing ability is looked upon as her only source of power and we see Ursa's torment further exacerbated when her ability to pass "the evidence" to her children is jeopardized.
This book addresses racism, slavery, and sexism on several different levels. Be warned-- it grips the reader from the beginning and goes deep in a very "Alice Walker-ish" kind of way. I experienced difficulty following the dialogue at times but I hung in there and relied on inference to follow the author's insinuations; and despite this one `snag', I was not disappointed with Ms. Jones's first novel. This is a short but complex read; it is not for everyone, however I found it was a worthwhile literary departure from the "norm."
Although Ursa had a black father, she resembles the Portuguese Corregidora. Her light skin and fine hair causes her to be ostracized by black women and desired by black men. She expresses her lifelong frustrations in the form of song and has moderate success as a blues singer in the small local club circuit. Ursa finds herself suffering emotionally, verbally, and physically at the whim of her husband, Mutt, who begins to exhibit the same jealousy, possessiveness, and envy that her great-grandmother shared regarding her relationship with Corregidora.
Through flashbacks and internal memories, we understand Ursa's mental anguish when trying to discern between the painful slave legacy and her present day household situation. True to the mindset of the time, a woman's childbearing ability is looked upon as her only source of power and we see Ursa's torment further exacerbated when her ability to pass "the evidence" to her children is jeopardized.
This book addresses racism, slavery, and sexism on several different levels. Be warned-- it grips the reader from the beginning and goes deep in a very "Alice Walker-ish" kind of way. I experienced difficulty following the dialogue at times but I hung in there and relied on inference to follow the author's insinuations; and despite this one `snag', I was not disappointed with Ms. Jones's first novel. This is a short but complex read; it is not for everyone, however I found it was a worthwhile literary departure from the "norm."
April 7, 2022
Warning! This is not for the faint-hearted. Gayl Jones wrote a very dark and painful novel here.
Ursa, a blues singer is repeatedly told by her mother, grandmother and great-grandmother "to make generations" so that their suffering will never be forgotten. You see, the Portuguese Brazilian owner of Ursa's great-grandmother had not only ripped apart the documents, but he also fathered Ursa's grandmother and mother.
This traumatic experience of sexual violence and incest becomes a distressing fact and memory for Ursa. She falls into abusive relationships with men and ends up having doctors performing hysterectomy on her. Ursa is unable to trust men and feel love. In the meantime, the men in her life treat her body as property, not much different from a slave owner (Tadpole uses Ursa to sing at his establishment to attract clients, Mutt is very jealous and possessive over Ursa's body).
The story is set in the late 1940s and a lot of vulgar language is used. We come across many broken characters and relationships. On the one hand, we can hear the voice of Ursa's grandmother telling her about the plantation horrors. On the other hand, we hear Ursa's own voice and how she tries to deal with the pain. Despite this being a short book, many people have given up on it due to the dark matter. So once again, I stress that this is not for the faint-hearted.
Ursa, a blues singer is repeatedly told by her mother, grandmother and great-grandmother "to make generations" so that their suffering will never be forgotten. You see, the Portuguese Brazilian owner of Ursa's great-grandmother had not only ripped apart the documents, but he also fathered Ursa's grandmother and mother.
This traumatic experience of sexual violence and incest becomes a distressing fact and memory for Ursa. She falls into abusive relationships with men and ends up having doctors performing hysterectomy on her. Ursa is unable to trust men and feel love. In the meantime, the men in her life treat her body as property, not much different from a slave owner (Tadpole uses Ursa to sing at his establishment to attract clients, Mutt is very jealous and possessive over Ursa's body).
The story is set in the late 1940s and a lot of vulgar language is used. We come across many broken characters and relationships. On the one hand, we can hear the voice of Ursa's grandmother telling her about the plantation horrors. On the other hand, we hear Ursa's own voice and how she tries to deal with the pain. Despite this being a short book, many people have given up on it due to the dark matter. So once again, I stress that this is not for the faint-hearted.
December 6, 2022
Wer schmutzig, derb und roh Kolonialismus und das Erbe, der geschändeten Frauen um die Ohren gewatscht bekommen möchte, ist hier richtig.
Das Unaussprechliche wird verbalisiert und brennt sich ein.
Aus meiner Sicht benötigt das Buch etwas Zeit um sich in seiner stilistischen Einzigartigkeit zu Offenbaren. Bei anfänglichen Irritationen unbedingt dran bleiben!
Großer Zugewinn das Nachwort zur Übersetzungsarbeit.
Das Unaussprechliche wird verbalisiert und brennt sich ein.
Aus meiner Sicht benötigt das Buch etwas Zeit um sich in seiner stilistischen Einzigartigkeit zu Offenbaren. Bei anfänglichen Irritationen unbedingt dran bleiben!
Großer Zugewinn das Nachwort zur Übersetzungsarbeit.
May 12, 2022
Δεν έχω ή, για να είμαι πιο σωστός, δεν μπορώ να γράψω και πολλά πράγματα για το συγκεκριμένο βιβλίο, το οποίο πραγματικά έπαιξε πολύ με τα νεύρα μου και την υπομονή μου, και δυστυχώς στο τέλος μάλλον με κέρδισε: Και με αυτό εννοώ ότι με εκνεύρισε και με έκανε να χάσω την υπομονή μου, όχι ότι με κέρδισε σαν αναγνώστη. Αλίμονο. Μου φάνηκε πολύ μέτρια και απλοϊκά γραμμένο, χωρίς ιδιαίτερες λογοτεχνικές αρετές, υπερβολικά και χωρίς λόγο αισχρό, στο τέλος θα έλεγα ότι κατάντησε και γραφικό, αποτυγχάνοντας να μου περάσει κάποιο μήνυμα, να μου πει κάτι, πέρα ίσως από κάποια διάσπαρτα κομμάτια εδώ κι εκεί, που μπορεί να μου είπαν κάτι. Πάντως, γενικά δεν κατάλαβα τι ακριβώς ήθελε να πει ο ποιητής: Για τη σκλαβιά και τα βάσανα των Μαύρων στις Ηνωμένες Πολιτείες; Για τη συμπεριφορά των ανδρών απέναντι στις γυναίκες; Για τη σεξουαλική (και όχι μόνο) κακοποίηση και εκμετάλλευση των γυναικών; Αλλά έτσι όπως ήταν γραμμένο το βιβλίο, δεν με ένοιαξε στην τελική τι ακριβώς ήθελε να πει. Απλά ήθελα να τελειώσει και να πάω παρακάτω... Το μόνο σίγουρο είναι ότι δεν ήταν για μένα αυτό το βιβλίο: Όχι λόγω θεματολογίας, αλλά λόγω του τρόπου γραφής και του όλου ύφους της συγγραφέως.
November 30, 2019
"Are you still there?"
This is a beautiful novel about bearing witness and bearing witnesses, asking questions and listening to the answers, about American history, slavery and personal history. It engages, I think, with Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! in its structure and concerns. That earlier novel also depicts a woman speaking and a witness to her story, but it is put to entirely different ends.
"She stopped. I didn't ask her to go on. I knew she would go on when she was ready."
This line above tells the theme of the book. The narrator, Ursa, tells her own story this way. She hears the stories of her mother and grandmother and great grandmother in this way, but she also holds off until she is ready to tell her own story complete. Everyone should read this book.
This is a beautiful novel about bearing witness and bearing witnesses, asking questions and listening to the answers, about American history, slavery and personal history. It engages, I think, with Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! in its structure and concerns. That earlier novel also depicts a woman speaking and a witness to her story, but it is put to entirely different ends.
"She stopped. I didn't ask her to go on. I knew she would go on when she was ready."
This line above tells the theme of the book. The narrator, Ursa, tells her own story this way. She hears the stories of her mother and grandmother and great grandmother in this way, but she also holds off until she is ready to tell her own story complete. Everyone should read this book.
May 18, 2022
"The important thing is making generations. They can burn the papers but they can't burn conscious, Ursa. And that makes the evidence. And that's what makes the verdict."
Very dark, but exceptional. One of those rare occasions when strong, difficult themes don't overshadow the story.
Very dark, but exceptional. One of those rare occasions when strong, difficult themes don't overshadow the story.
Read
February 4, 2025for me this novel lands well within the "who am I to judge" zone.
November 17, 2021
This is a raw, visceral read and I'm glad I read it in a group discussion.
It was written when the author was 26 years old, a similar age to her young protagonist Ursa Corrie (Corregidora). Ursa sings blues in a bar and in the first paragraph of the book, a whole story is written. Of her marriage to Mutt in Dec 1947, his dislike of her singing after their marriage because he believed marriage changed all that.
"I said I sang because it was something I had to do."
And in April 1948 he threatens publicly to remove her from the stage, other men throw him out, but he is there waiting for her and after that evening her short-lived marriage is over, and another man waiting for her.
Much of the novel is relayed in dialogue and in sections that reconnect with the past, with things her mother told her, that her grandmother has said to her, and conversations that took place between the grandmother and the great grandmother that Ursa asks her mother about. She visits her mother to ask more about the unsaid.
There are things she wants to know, an oral history that is supposed to be passed down to protect them, however there are subjects her mother hasn't opened up about. About Corregidora, a 19th century slavemaster who fathered both her mother and grandmother. And who her father was.
Ursa feels those things in her, the inherited trauma, but doesn't understand it. We witness her reactions to things, the duality of her strength at standing up for herself alongside her inability to speak at all.
She has both strength and reticence.
The attack by her husband landed her in hospital, and resulted in doctors removing her womb, the forced sterilisation of Black women part of America's eugenics policy at the time. This causes Ursa to reflect on the broken line, the passing down of the oral history, the need to 'create generations'. What is her place now that she is the end of a lineage.
Trauma experienced pre-conception changes a persons DNA and is passed on. It need not be explained, it is often not understood, it is lived out. It is pre-verbal, inherited and is it no wonder that these children who inherited both the trauma of the victim and the DNA of the perpetrator are confused, both one thing and its opposite, neither nor, either or.
As James Baldwin put it,
It was written when the author was 26 years old, a similar age to her young protagonist Ursa Corrie (Corregidora). Ursa sings blues in a bar and in the first paragraph of the book, a whole story is written. Of her marriage to Mutt in Dec 1947, his dislike of her singing after their marriage because he believed marriage changed all that.
"I said I sang because it was something I had to do."
And in April 1948 he threatens publicly to remove her from the stage, other men throw him out, but he is there waiting for her and after that evening her short-lived marriage is over, and another man waiting for her.
Much of the novel is relayed in dialogue and in sections that reconnect with the past, with things her mother told her, that her grandmother has said to her, and conversations that took place between the grandmother and the great grandmother that Ursa asks her mother about. She visits her mother to ask more about the unsaid.
She sat with her hands on the table.
'It's good to see you, baby,' she said again.
I looked away. It was almost like I was realizing for the first time how lonely it must be for her with them gone, and that maybe she was even making a plea for me to come back and be a part of what wasn't anymore.
There are things she wants to know, an oral history that is supposed to be passed down to protect them, however there are subjects her mother hasn't opened up about. About Corregidora, a 19th century slavemaster who fathered both her mother and grandmother. And who her father was.
'He made them make love to anyone, so they couldn't love anyone.'
Ursa feels those things in her, the inherited trauma, but doesn't understand it. We witness her reactions to things, the duality of her strength at standing up for herself alongside her inability to speak at all.
She has both strength and reticence.
The attack by her husband landed her in hospital, and resulted in doctors removing her womb, the forced sterilisation of Black women part of America's eugenics policy at the time. This causes Ursa to reflect on the broken line, the passing down of the oral history, the need to 'create generations'. What is her place now that she is the end of a lineage.
But I am different now, I was thinking. I have everything they had, except the generations. I can't make generations. And even if I still had my womb, even if the first baby had come - what would I have done then? Would I have kept it? Would I have been like her, or them?
Trauma experienced pre-conception changes a persons DNA and is passed on. It need not be explained, it is often not understood, it is lived out. It is pre-verbal, inherited and is it no wonder that these children who inherited both the trauma of the victim and the DNA of the perpetrator are confused, both one thing and its opposite, neither nor, either or.
It was as if she had more than learned it off by heart, though. It was as if their memory, the memory of all the Corregidora women, was her memory too, as strong with her as her own private memory, or almost as strong. But now she was Mama again.
As James Baldwin put it,
"it dares to confront the absolute terror which lives at the heart of love"
April 24, 2022
Η σκληρή γλώσσα της (μόλις 26 ετών), Jones είναι το πιο δυνατό της αφηγηματικό εργαλείο, που ενώ διαβάζεις σε ταράζει και έτσι προκαλεί μια πηγαία συγκίνηση που δεν προλαβαίνεις να εκλογικεύσεις για να τη γλυτώσεις. Από τι να γλυτώσεις; Από την ιστορία που διηγείται. Πρόκειται για μια γλώσσα που μπορεί να μοιάζει παράτερη για γυναίκα, όπως έχουμε μάθει, αλλά πλέον κατάλληλη για να περιγράψει τα εγκλήματα στις γυναίκες σκλάβες, τους βιασμούς, τους ξυλοδαρμούς και τις αιμομιξίες.
Βρισκόμαστε σε δύο βασικές γραμμές ιστορίες, στο σήμερα, Κεντάκι 1947, όπου η Ούρσα στερείται την πιθανότητα της μητρότητας μετά από έναν άγριο καυγά με τον άντρα της και στο βαθύ και βαρύ παρελθόν της ιστορίας της, των γυναικών που προηγήθηκαν. Ακούει τις τραυματικές ιστορίες που διατηρήθακαν για τα αυτιά της, από την προ γιαγιά, τη γιαγιά και τη μητέρα της, των γυναικών δηλαδή που ο Κορετζιντόρας αγόρασε, βίασε και πούλησε. Αυτός ο Πορτογάλος υπήρξε σύζηγος, ιδιοκτήτης και πατέρας αυτής της γυναικείας σειράς, όπου τις καταδυνάστευσε και ύστερα κατέστρεψε κάθε απόδειξη για τα εγκλήματά του.
Η Ούρσα μένει η τελευταία απόγονος αυτής της γενιάς του Κορετζιντόρα και πλέον δεν έχει που να πει την ιστορία τους, ξέρει μόνο πως πρέπει να την επαναλάβει, για να μην χαθεί στον χρόνο. Το μίσος της για αυτόν, συχνά μονοπολεί τις σκέψεις της, ενώ ταυτόχρονα επιχειρεί να υπάρξει, σε έναν κόσμο αφιλόξενο, χωρίς αγάπη και στοργή. Είναι στοιχειωμένη από τις ρίζες της, αλλά μένει περήφανη, βαθιά ερωτευμένη με τα μπλουζ ως εξιστόρηση και δεν παραιτείται από την εξερεύνηση της γήινης απόλαυσης που κουβαλάει η γυναικεία της ταυτότητα.
«Είμαι η Ούρσα Κορετζιντόρα. Έχω δάκρυα αντί για μάτια. Είμαι φτιαγμένη να νιώθω από μικρή το παρελθόν μου. Το βρήκα στο στήθος της μάνας μου, στο γάλα της. Δεν θα επιτρέψω σε κανέναν να μολύνει τη μουσική μου».
Βρισκόμαστε σε δύο βασικές γραμμές ιστορίες, στο σήμερα, Κεντάκι 1947, όπου η Ούρσα στερείται την πιθανότητα της μητρότητας μετά από έναν άγριο καυγά με τον άντρα της και στο βαθύ και βαρύ παρελθόν της ιστορίας της, των γυναικών που προηγήθηκαν. Ακούει τις τραυματικές ιστορίες που διατηρήθακαν για τα αυτιά της, από την προ γιαγιά, τη γιαγιά και τη μητέρα της, των γυναικών δηλαδή που ο Κορετζιντόρας αγόρασε, βίασε και πούλησε. Αυτός ο Πορτογάλος υπήρξε σύζηγος, ιδιοκτήτης και πατέρας αυτής της γυναικείας σειράς, όπου τις καταδυνάστευσε και ύστερα κατέστρεψε κάθε απόδειξη για τα εγκλήματά του.
Η Ούρσα μένει η τελευταία απόγονος αυτής της γενιάς του Κορετζιντόρα και πλέον δεν έχει που να πει την ιστορία τους, ξέρει μόνο πως πρέπει να την επαναλάβει, για να μην χαθεί στον χρόνο. Το μίσος της για αυτόν, συχνά μονοπολεί τις σκέψεις της, ενώ ταυτόχρονα επιχειρεί να υπάρξει, σε έναν κόσμο αφιλόξενο, χωρίς αγάπη και στοργή. Είναι στοιχειωμένη από τις ρίζες της, αλλά μένει περήφανη, βαθιά ερωτευμένη με τα μπλουζ ως εξιστόρηση και δεν παραιτείται από την εξερεύνηση της γήινης απόλαυσης που κουβαλάει η γυναικεία της ταυτότητα.
«Είμαι η Ούρσα Κορετζιντόρα. Έχω δάκρυα αντί για μάτια. Είμαι φτιαγμένη να νιώθω από μικρή το παρελθόν μου. Το βρήκα στο στήθος της μάνας μου, στο γάλα της. Δεν θα επιτρέψω σε κανέναν να μολύνει τη μουσική μου».
April 7, 2025
HOUSEKEEPING 2025:
Not gonna lie: I've had better years than 2021 (I think that goes for a lot of people). A bunch of really decades-long shit I had either simmering or boiling on multiple stoves in my chemical kitchen came to a wondrous, explosive 'meth lab on nightly news' flamehead that, having survived it, has left a clarity of purpose, vision, and peace I didn't have for a quarter-century. The point: there's a lot of hazy haze in the years up-to-and-including that Year of The Night of the Hunter, which is why I am having to write any of these old fucking things now (i.e. too long after the fact to remember much). I know that I owe Gayl Jones a reread of her first two novels, as both fell within the impending blast zone I was unwittingly staging. I also know that I will read both sometime before, likely, this summer. That all depends on the wiles of baseball as I've learned not to force things. For near on four years, I have managed to remain convinced that the summit of events that occurred in my 2021 revealed what I'd been searching most of my teenaged and all of my adult life for. Turns out I never would have outrun-or-gunned it: the key to somewhat enjoying life, however spasmodically, is not to attempt the vanity of safeguarding against the inviolability of death at any and every moment, rather (and however oxymoronic or quixotic it may seem), to brave the complete surrendering of the physical and psychological Self to Oblivion to finally be free of it. Pass through the needle's eye, the camel; all that shit.
Yeppers. I'm sure that's all crystal clear to everyone. Hah! You expected this NOT to be about me? No, I don't do those much. Check back after I've reread it.
Waiter?
Not gonna lie: I've had better years than 2021 (I think that goes for a lot of people). A bunch of really decades-long shit I had either simmering or boiling on multiple stoves in my chemical kitchen came to a wondrous, explosive 'meth lab on nightly news' flamehead that, having survived it, has left a clarity of purpose, vision, and peace I didn't have for a quarter-century. The point: there's a lot of hazy haze in the years up-to-and-including that Year of The Night of the Hunter, which is why I am having to write any of these old fucking things now (i.e. too long after the fact to remember much). I know that I owe Gayl Jones a reread of her first two novels, as both fell within the impending blast zone I was unwittingly staging. I also know that I will read both sometime before, likely, this summer. That all depends on the wiles of baseball as I've learned not to force things. For near on four years, I have managed to remain convinced that the summit of events that occurred in my 2021 revealed what I'd been searching most of my teenaged and all of my adult life for. Turns out I never would have outrun-or-gunned it: the key to somewhat enjoying life, however spasmodically, is not to attempt the vanity of safeguarding against the inviolability of death at any and every moment, rather (and however oxymoronic or quixotic it may seem), to brave the complete surrendering of the physical and psychological Self to Oblivion to finally be free of it. Pass through the needle's eye, the camel; all that shit.
Yeppers. I'm sure that's all crystal clear to everyone. Hah! You expected this NOT to be about me? No, I don't do those much. Check back after I've reread it.
Waiter?
August 26, 2022
Corregidora
„Gayl Jones‘ Roman Corregidora ist ein Klassiker der afroamerikanischen Literatur. Am Beispiel der Blues-Sängerin Ursa erzählt er von den generationsübergreifenden Traumatisierungen des Gewaltsystems der Versklavung (Kanon Verlags Homepage)“.
Ein „slave narrative“ in der Tradition der Oral History, rhythmisch wie ein Blues-Song. Das Original erschien 1975, die englische Übersetzung hat Pieke Biermann übernommen.
Ein schockierender Text, der die Themen Kolonialismus, Sklaverei, Inzucht, Rassismus, Misogynie, Homophobie, sexuelle und häusliche Gewalt in aller Härte und Deutlichkeit darstellt – in einer Sprache, die rau und obszön ist, die das Milieu (Kentucky, 1947, Bluesbar) einfängt und die jede erlebte Erniedrigung, jede Gewalterfahrung und Verletzung der Hauptfigur Ursas zum Ausdruck bringt.
Ich gebe zu, ich habe mich mit dem Text schwer getan. Abgebrochen auf Seite 68, mit Bookstagram Freunden drüber gesprochen, weiter gelesen, wieder abgebrochen, dann doch zu Ende gelesen.
Hart war das! Die Sprache, die soviele abwertende, menschenverachtende und verletzende Begriffe enthält, hat mich ins Innerste getroffen (all der Hass!). Und ich bin immer noch ratlos, ob die Reproduktion all dieser Wörter eine gute Idee ist.
Die Frage, die sich für mich stellt, ist folgende:
Wie kann man über so ein sensibles, schwieriges und wichtiges Thema schreiben? Wie es in die Öffentlichkeit tragen?
Die Reproduzierung der demütigenden und abwertenden Begriffe im Text, also den Originalton übernehmen?
Oder: Die Geschichte durch Vermeidung der Wörter entschärfen, verharmlosen, verändern?
Der Kanon Verlag hat sich für die erste Option entschieden und ist sich der Schwierigkeit bewusst, misogyner und rassistischer Sprache, eine Plattform zu bieten. Eine Stellungnahme des Verlags findet ihr auf der Homepage.
Meiner Meinung nach eine konsequente Entscheidung, in der Tradition des Verlags (soweit man davon sprechen kann), da bei allen Kanon Büchern, die ich gelesen habe, die Sprache immer kongruent zur Handlung ist und den Inhalt der Bücher widerspiegelt (am deutlichsten in Bov Bjergs Deadline\\\). Und gleichzeitig ist es ein klares Statement des Verlags gegenüber der Geschichte, und dass sie in ihrer Eindringlichkeit nicht vergessen werden darf (Kanon Homepage).
Weitere Gedanken zu dem Thema kamen auf, nämlich: Kann man einen Text, der von so immenser Wichtigkeit ist, überhaupt abbrechen und verweigern? Darf man so ein Zeitdokument rezensieren? Oder gar verurteilen?
„Gayl Jones‘ Roman Corregidora ist ein Klassiker der afroamerikanischen Literatur. Am Beispiel der Blues-Sängerin Ursa erzählt er von den generationsübergreifenden Traumatisierungen des Gewaltsystems der Versklavung (Kanon Verlags Homepage)“.
Ein „slave narrative“ in der Tradition der Oral History, rhythmisch wie ein Blues-Song. Das Original erschien 1975, die englische Übersetzung hat Pieke Biermann übernommen.
Ein schockierender Text, der die Themen Kolonialismus, Sklaverei, Inzucht, Rassismus, Misogynie, Homophobie, sexuelle und häusliche Gewalt in aller Härte und Deutlichkeit darstellt – in einer Sprache, die rau und obszön ist, die das Milieu (Kentucky, 1947, Bluesbar) einfängt und die jede erlebte Erniedrigung, jede Gewalterfahrung und Verletzung der Hauptfigur Ursas zum Ausdruck bringt.
Ich gebe zu, ich habe mich mit dem Text schwer getan. Abgebrochen auf Seite 68, mit Bookstagram Freunden drüber gesprochen, weiter gelesen, wieder abgebrochen, dann doch zu Ende gelesen.
Hart war das! Die Sprache, die soviele abwertende, menschenverachtende und verletzende Begriffe enthält, hat mich ins Innerste getroffen (all der Hass!). Und ich bin immer noch ratlos, ob die Reproduktion all dieser Wörter eine gute Idee ist.
Die Frage, die sich für mich stellt, ist folgende:
Wie kann man über so ein sensibles, schwieriges und wichtiges Thema schreiben? Wie es in die Öffentlichkeit tragen?
Die Reproduzierung der demütigenden und abwertenden Begriffe im Text, also den Originalton übernehmen?
Oder: Die Geschichte durch Vermeidung der Wörter entschärfen, verharmlosen, verändern?
Der Kanon Verlag hat sich für die erste Option entschieden und ist sich der Schwierigkeit bewusst, misogyner und rassistischer Sprache, eine Plattform zu bieten. Eine Stellungnahme des Verlags findet ihr auf der Homepage.
Meiner Meinung nach eine konsequente Entscheidung, in der Tradition des Verlags (soweit man davon sprechen kann), da bei allen Kanon Büchern, die ich gelesen habe, die Sprache immer kongruent zur Handlung ist und den Inhalt der Bücher widerspiegelt (am deutlichsten in Bov Bjergs Deadline\\\). Und gleichzeitig ist es ein klares Statement des Verlags gegenüber der Geschichte, und dass sie in ihrer Eindringlichkeit nicht vergessen werden darf (Kanon Homepage).
Weitere Gedanken zu dem Thema kamen auf, nämlich: Kann man einen Text, der von so immenser Wichtigkeit ist, überhaupt abbrechen und verweigern? Darf man so ein Zeitdokument rezensieren? Oder gar verurteilen?
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 25, 2015
This is a pretty disturbing and powerful book. If you've ever listened to blues, then you know the feeling this book will give you. This is a "blues" novel, to be sure.
Set in the 1940s, Blues singer Ursa Corregidora is haunted by the past -- not so much her own, but rather the past of her great grandmother, her grandmother, and her mother. Simon Corregidora, a slave owner, raped both Ursa's great grandmother and grandmother. They obsessively tell the story of all this -- the rape, the torture, the abuse -- to Ursa's mother and to Ursa herself. Since there are no records as evidence for any of this, they impress upon Ursa the responsibility of "making generations" to remind them of what happened as well.
But one day Ursa has an "accident", where she miscarries and can no longer have children. We then follow Ursa as she navigates her own world of torture and abuse, and her own struggles with her identity and relationships, told in a brutally gritty way by Gayl Jones.
As it says on the back of my book, this is a "brutally honest and painful revelation of what has occurred, and is occurring, in the souls of black men and women"(James Baldwin). Dealing with themes like sexism, slavery, and racism, this is not a very happy read, but it isn't supposed to be either.
Set in the 1940s, Blues singer Ursa Corregidora is haunted by the past -- not so much her own, but rather the past of her great grandmother, her grandmother, and her mother. Simon Corregidora, a slave owner, raped both Ursa's great grandmother and grandmother. They obsessively tell the story of all this -- the rape, the torture, the abuse -- to Ursa's mother and to Ursa herself. Since there are no records as evidence for any of this, they impress upon Ursa the responsibility of "making generations" to remind them of what happened as well.
But one day Ursa has an "accident", where she miscarries and can no longer have children. We then follow Ursa as she navigates her own world of torture and abuse, and her own struggles with her identity and relationships, told in a brutally gritty way by Gayl Jones.
As it says on the back of my book, this is a "brutally honest and painful revelation of what has occurred, and is occurring, in the souls of black men and women"(James Baldwin). Dealing with themes like sexism, slavery, and racism, this is not a very happy read, but it isn't supposed to be either.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 619 reviews