Corregidora
- New York: Random House, 1974
New York: Random House, 1974. Very Good/Very Good. New York: Random House, 1975. First Edition Stated with full RH number line. Octavo; publisher's cloth-backed boards in white pictorial dust jacket retaining original price ($6.95); [6],185pp. Dust jacket rather yellowed, light foxing to textblock margins, corners bumped, else Very Good and sound.
Exploring themes of generational trauma, womanhood, and memory set against 1940s Kentucky, this debut novel centers on Ursa and her recovery from a nasty fall. Gayl Jones was only twenty-five when Corregidora was published, under the editing eye of her mentor Toni Morrison. While well known for taking herself out of the spotlight after her sophomore novel, Jones actually returned with two more books, most recently in 2021 with her novel Palmares, which was nominated for a Pulitzer. Corregidora, however, remains a touchstone work in the canon of American letters as the novel that “changed Black literature forever” (Toni Morrison) as well as “the most brutally honest and painful revelation of what has occurred, and is occurring, in the souls of Black men and women” (James Baldwin).
Exploring themes of generational trauma, womanhood, and memory set against 1940s Kentucky, this debut novel centers on Ursa and her recovery from a nasty fall. Gayl Jones was only twenty-five when Corregidora was published, under the editing eye of her mentor Toni Morrison. While well known for taking herself out of the spotlight after her sophomore novel, Jones actually returned with two more books, most recently in 2021 with her novel Palmares, which was nominated for a Pulitzer. Corregidora, however, remains a touchstone work in the canon of American letters as the novel that “changed Black literature forever” (Toni Morrison) as well as “the most brutally honest and painful revelation of what has occurred, and is occurring, in the souls of Black men and women” (James Baldwin).