Cover of Corregidora

Book 1987

Corregidora

4.01 73 readers shelved it

Publisher
Beacon Press
Language
English
Published
1987
  • African American women
  • Fiction
  • Fiction, general
  • African americans, fiction
  • Fiction, historical, general
  • Slavery
  • History
  • Noires américaines

A terse, chilling novel about how the memory of slavery plagues black women and men long after emancipation. Blues singer Ursa is consumed by her hatred of Corregidora, the 19th-century slave master who fathered both her grandmother and mother. Charged with “making generations” to bear witness to the abuse embodied in the family name, Ursa Corregidora finds herself unable to keep alive this legacy when she is made sterile in a violent fight with her husband. Haunted by the ghosts of a Brazilian plantation, pained by a present of lovelessness and despair, Ursa slowly and firmly strikes her own terms with womanhood in a tortured world.