 Jewell Parker Rhodes is the author of five novels: Voodoo Dreams, Magic City, Douglass' Women, Voodoo Season, and Yellow Moon; and a memoir, Porch Stories: A Grandmother's Guide to Happiness. A sixth novel, Hurricane Levee Blues, and a children's novel, Ninth Ward, will be published in 2009. Her work has been published in Germany, Italy, Canada, Turkey, and the United Kingdom and reproduced in audio and for NPR's "Selected Shorts." Her literary awards include: Yaddo Creative Writing Fellowship, the American Book Award, the National Endowment of the Arts Award in Fiction, the Black Caucus of the American Library Award for Literary Excellence, the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Award for Outstanding Writing, two Arizona Book Awards, and a finalist citation for the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award. She has been a featured speaker at the Runnymeade International Literary Festival (University of London-Royal Holloway), Santa Barbara Writers Conference, Creative Nonfiction Writers Conference, and Warwick University, among others. Recent fiction and essays have been anthologized in Rise Up Singing: Black Women Writers on Motherhood, (ed., Berry), In Fact: The Best of Creative Nonfiction, (ed. Gutkind), Gumbo, (ed., Golden and Harris) Children of the Night: Best Short Stories By Black Writers, (ed., Naylor) among others. She has been awarded the California State University Distinguished Teaching Award, ASU's Dean's Quality Teaching Award, Outstanding Thesis Director from the Barrett Honors College, and the Outstanding Faculty Award from the College of Extended Education. She is a member of the Arizona/International Women's Forum and a Renaissance Weekend invitee. Dr. Jewell Parker Rhodes is the Artistic Director for Global Engagement and the Piper Endowed Chair of the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing at Arizona State University. She received a Bachelor of Arts in Drama Criticism (Honors) a Master of Arts in English, and a Doctor of Arts in English (Creative Writing) from Carnegie-Mellon University.
[Editor's Note: The previous books in thi triology include Yellow Moon and Voodoo Season, which wil be rereleased in April 2011 under the new titles of Moon and Season respectively. The cover image may be different in April when the book is published]
Reading level: Ages 9-12 About the Book Ninth Ward is a celebration of resilience, love, family, and friendship, and a deeply emotional story of transformation. Honors for Ninth Ward:
The Real Ninth Ward:
Hardcover: 304 pages Read an AALBC.com Review A jazzman, a wharf worker, a prostitute, all
murdered. Wrists punctured, their bodies impossibly drained of
blood. What connects them? Why are they rising as ghosts? The struggle becomes personal, as the wazimamoto is intent on destroying her and all the Laveau descendants. Marie fights to protect her daughter, lover, and herself from the wazimamoto's seductive assault on both body and spirit. Echoing with the heartache and triumph of the African-American experience, the soulful rhythms of jazz, and the horrors of racial oppression, Yellow Moon gives us an unforgettable heroine -- sexy, vulnerable, and mysterious -- in Marie Levant, while it powerfully evokes a city on the brink of catastrophe. Yellow Moon is part two of the New Orleans trilogy that began with Voodoo Season -- magical realist fiction that takes the legend of the voodoo priestess Marie Laveau, as imagined by Jewell Parker Rhodes in the bestselling Voodoo Dreams, into the present day.
Paperback: 288 pages Voodoo Season is a sequel to my first novel,
Voodoo Dreams.
It is the start of a contemporary series set before, during, and
after Hurricane Katrina. The trilogy includes Voodoo Season,
Voodoo Jazz, and Hurricane Levee Blues.
Hardcover: 176 pages Award-winning author of fiction and nonfiction Jewell Parker
Rhodes is a master of her craft, under-standing how both real
and imagined stories can serve as a pathway to enlightenment.
Porch Stories is Rhodes's tribute to her beloved grandmother, a
real account of the love she received and the lessons she
learned.
Format:
Hardcover, 368pp. Douglass' Women reimagines the lives of an American hero, Frederick Douglass, and two women - his wife and his mistress - who loved him and lived in his shadow. Anna Douglass, a free woman of color, was Douglass' wife of forty-four years, who bore him five children. Ottilie Assing, a German-Jewish intellectual, provided him the companionship of the mind that he needed. Hurt by Douglass' infidelity, Anna rejected his notion that only literacy freed the mind. For her, familial love rivaled intellectual pursuits. Ottilie was raised by parents who embraced the ideal of free love, but found herself entrapped in an unfulfilling love triangle with America's most famous self-taught slave for nearly three decades.
Format:
Paperback, 368pp. In college and graduate school, Jewell Parker Rhodes never encountered a single reading assignment or exercise that featured a person of color. Now she has made it her mission to rectify the situation, gathering advice and inspiring tips tailored for African Americans seeking to express their life experiences. Comprehensive and totally energizing, the African American Guide to Writing and Publishing Nonfiction bursts with supportive topics such as:
The guide also features unforgettable excerpts from luminaries such as Maya Angelou, Brent Staples, Houston Baker, and pointers from bestselling African American authors Patrice Gaines, E. Lynn Harris, James McBride, John Hope Franklin, Pearl Cleage, Edwidge Danticat, and many others. It is a uniquely nurturing and informative touchstone for affirming, bearing witness, leaving a legacy, and celebrating the remarkable journey of the self.
Format: Paperback, 288pp. Based on true events, Magic City is the powerful story of two people who unwittingly lit the match that burned the community of Greenwood to the ground and erased it from the history books. Jewell Parker Rhodes imagines this tragedy through the eyes of Joe Samuels and Mary Keane, two people fundamentally divided by race but forever joined by fate. When Joe, a young man entranced by Houdini, is falsely accused of rape, he must perform his greatest escape by eluding a bloodthirsty lynch mob. Haunted by the mystery of his brother's death and the dark truth behind his father's success, Joe soon learns that he has been running all his life and that this may actually be the moment to turn and fight. Mary, the motherless daughter of a poor farmer who tries to marry her off to the farmhand who viciously raped her, is barely able to imagine what life could be like outside the prison of her own home. Now, however, she must unlock the courage to help exonerate the man she has accused with her panicked cry. Magic City, a mythic tale of violent revenge, is a portrait of an era, climaxing in the heroic but doomed stand that ultimately pitted the National Guard against a small band of black men determined to defend the town they had built into the "Negro Wall Street." Depicted against a backdrop of jail escapes, ghosts, family betrayal, and lost loves, it is a tale at once harrowing and redemptive.
Format: Paperback, 436pp. New Orleans in the mid-nineteenth century is a city overflowing with white aristos, black creoles, and African slaves, a city that pulses with crowds, with commerce, and with the power and spectacle of the voodoo religion. At the center of the ritual is Marie Laveau, the notorious voodooienne, worshipped and feared by blacks and whites alike. Marie's followers claimed that she walked on water and sucked poison from a snake's jowls, that she raised the dead and murdered two men. Voodoo Dreams is the spellbinding story of the woman behind the legend. Raised by her Grandmere in the Louisiana bayou, Marie ventures to New Orleans and begins a journey of self-discovery, hoping to find her lost Maman and understand the visions that haunt her dreams. Instead, she runs headlong into the brutality of slavery and oppression, and into the arms of John, the voodoo doctor who promises to teach her what Grandmere will not. As she falls under his spell, John sweeps Marie into a world of voodoo ceremonies, of drama and manipulation, and of sometimes terrifying power. A mesmerizing combination of history and storytelling, Voodoo Dreams marks the debut of an important new voice in fiction.
Format: Paperback, 352pp. A top-notch writer's guide filled with practical guidance, ssays, journal exercises, and illuminating examples, as well as advice from E. Lynn Harris, Charles Johnson, Yolanda Joe, Bebe Moore Campbell, Rita Dove, John Edgar Wideman, and others.
Paperback: 512 pages Forward by Jewell Parker Rhodes, Edited by Tracey Price Thompson and TaRessa Stoval with Pearl Cleage, Donna Hill, Parry "Ebony Satin" Brown, Omar Tyree and others If you can walk, you can dance. If you can talk, you can
sing." "Don't start none, won't be none." "If you don't stand
for something you'll fall for anything." Whether it was in the
church on a hard-shined wooden pew, or around the kitchen table
after, listening to the wisdom of mothers and fathers, aunts and
uncles, grandparents, friends, and leaders, the messages of the
proverbs resonate in the souls of most African-Americans'a sweet
refrain heard through striving, reaching, loving, and living. In
this powerful collection of stories based on African,
African-American, and Biblical proverbs, some of today's most
exciting new African-American writers tackle the unifying
themes, delicious wit and undeniable wisdom of the proverbs,
making them sing for a whole new generation.
Related links Official Web Site
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Yellow Moon
Voodoo
Season
Porch
Stories: A Grandmother's Guide to Happiness
Douglass'
Women
African American Guide to
Writing and Publishing Nonfiction 
Magic
City
Free
within Ourselves; Fiction Lessons for Black Authors
Proverbs
For The People: Contemporary African-American Stories