North Atlantic Books is pleased to announce the publication of two novels by local East Bay authors: The Life and Loves of Mr. Jiveass Nigger by Cecil Brown, and Sweetpea’s Secret by Renay Jackson.
First published in 1969, The Life and Loves of Mr. Jiveass Nigger is an audacious, unapologetic novel with an anti-hero who could make Tom Jones seem inhibited. Fed up with the racism of the American South, George Washington, a.k.a Paul Winthrop, a.k.a. Mr. Jiveass Nigger, heads to Denmark in search of truth and identity. What he finds, however, is a series of opportunistic encounters and something akin to an existential crisis. George laments,
It’s like I’m growing down. I’m growing down into the world, into the center of the earth, except my head is still above the water, I still have my consciousness, see. Jesus, I want so much to lose my consciousness again. To be able to think without thinking I am thinking.
Cecil Brown’s cult classic combines sardonic commentary on race relations with unabashed eroticism and rhythmic, resonant language: it is an unsentimental journey for the postmodern period. In the foreword, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. praises The Life and Loves of Mr. Jiveass Nigger for its
impressively rich textures of allusion to other canonical works of literature, and…those marvelous moments when Brown gives voice poignantly and lyrically to the ironies and essence of the human condition—those moments when his prose resounds as great art, transcending the time and place of its subject matter…
CLICK HERE to visit Cecil Brown’s web site.
And for our second anti-hero, the eponymous Sweetpea of Sweetpea’s Secret:
Sweetpea: a climbing garden plant having fragrant pastel-colored flowers a fictional character from Renay Jackson’s Oaktown: a mortgage broker and accomplished hitman.
Suffice it to say that this is not The Secret Garden. Set against a raw backdrop of shady drug deals and inner city poverty, Sweetpea’s Secret is a gritty blend of urban vernacular, druglords, sex, and murder. When gangster Big Ed crosses Sweetpea’s path, Sweetpea doesn’t hesitate to slit his throat in a parking lot. Little does he realize that this simple act of revenge will force him to face the possibilities of jail time, death, or worse.
Self-proclaimed godfather of urban lit, Renay Jackson brings an intimate understanding of urban culture and language to his novels. Oakland Tribune comments that he is “an example of an emerging and distinct genre.”
CLICK HERE to visit Renay Jackson’s web site.
Posted by ailanna 
