Day 6 – Released in the Last Year:

Today I’ve decided to choose Ruby by Cynthia Bond.  This book was released last year the first of the month of January.  I didn’t pick it up until the end of the year.  This book shook me up and made me sick, sad, and angry.  For all the bad reactions I seemed to have had from reading Ruby there was something good in reading it.  I discovered a new promising African-American woman writer.  It also sparked spirited discussion with my literary friends.  The writing was beautiful at times, especially when it didn’t resemble other authors like Toni Morrison and Zora Neale Hurston.  Ruby ain’t all bad.

This story is about a woman named Ruby that has been virtually used and abused her entire life.  For a moment as a young adult, she manages to escape the small claustrophobic southern town of Liberty for a new life in New York.  She tries to make her way there the best she can, however the death of a close friend brings her back to the clutches of the small town that damaged her.  Will Ruby survive its grip and survive unscathed?  Check it out!

“Ruby Bell was a constant reminder of what could befall a woman whose shoe heels were too high.  The People of Liberty Township wove her into cautionary tales of the wages of sin and travel.  They called her buck-crazy.  Howling, half-naked mad.  The fact that she had come back from New York City made this somewhat understandable to the town.

She wore gray like rain clouds and wandered the red roads in bared feet.  Calluses thick as boot leather.  Hair caked with mud.  Blackened nails as if she had scratched  the slate of night.  Her acres of legs carrying her, arms swaying like a loose screen.  Her eyes the ink of sky, just before the storm.” (Ruby, Chapter 1 – p.3)