Gayle Jon, Wrer born - Ain Amerin Registry

Contents:

• GAYL JON’S NOVELS OF OPPRSN
• GAYL JON
• GAYLE N. HIGGS
• GAYLE JON LOUISIANA
• OLIVIA GAYLE JON
• HELENE GAYLE, M.D.

GAYL JON’S NOVELS OF OPPRSN

Source photograph by Thomas search of Gayl Jon, whose new novel breaks 22 years of by PS Spencer. Source photograph by Thomas 17, 2021I knew om the begng that I would not meet Gayl see a recent photograph of her. Lucille, her mother, read stori she herself had wrten to Gayl and Frankl Jr.

Gayl started wrg around send gra. Wh Gayl’s support, Lucille Jon published stori and novels late life, and Lucille’s wrg we n see how much the dghter mt have learned om the mother: They each e vernacular language, along wh the Southern gothic tradn, as the raw stuff of art. They were peers, and Gayl’s life has been a harvt of and homage to Lucille’s.

GAYL JON

Gayl Jon would achieve great regnn yet follow directly her mother’s footsteps: a quiet terr geni.

She told me that childhood neighbors scribe Gayl and her brother as never playg wh the other kids, though they sometim passed a ball over the fence between the Jon home and theirs.

Gayl Jon vised her grandmother there often and benefed om both a formally ted muny and a rich body of fay lore, cludg stori about a great-grandfather who found a settlement after Renstctn bearg his name, Warthumtown. When me to high school, however, Lucille sent Gayl and her brother to be among the handful of Black stunts at Henry Clay High School. There, acrdg to an English teacher, Sue Anne Allen, Gayl was a iendls stunt of exceptnal tellect.

GAYLE N. HIGGS

Her Spanish teacher and mentor, Anna Dodd, alerted the tablished wrer and Lexgton native Elizabeth Hardwick about Gayl. Hardwick turn facilated Gayl’s admissn to the small, ele Connecticut College, where she studied wh the distguished poets William Meredh and Robert Hayn.

This is what I me to know, too, as I pored over fdg aids of multiple librari, lookg for Gayl Jon. I found through the Connecticut College special llectns that Jon rrpond regularly wh Meredh, and found that he, a gay whe Frost scholar, was a part of a Black lerary muny.

GAYLE JON LOUISIANA

” My first enunter wh Gayl Jon was through “Corregidora.

Gayl Jon answered back: Hope won’t get out of the funk of history that we live wh today. ” Gayl Jon was not jt shy, but her shyns ma her difficult his ey.

As Tarana Burke, the founr of #MeToo and thor of the newly released memoir “UnBound, ” said, “Like Ntozake Shange and Maya Angelou, Gayl Jon mak you s the realy of sexual vlence the liv of Black women, not jt the moment but the nflictg emotns, the guilt, the shame, and even the attachment survivors n feel to those who have harmed them. She highlighted what was, her view, the “very real, upsettg acplishment of Gayl Jon this, her send novel: sister misrmatn about women — about women, general, about black women particular, and pecially about young black girls forced to al wh the sexual, moltg vlatns of their mds and bodi by their fathers, their mothers’ boyiends, their s and uncl. Gayl Jon met her partner, Bob Higgs, when she was an assistant profsor at the Universy of Michigan the late 1970s.

OLIVIA GAYLE JON

But they moved to her mother’s hoe after Gayl’s father died. Bob and Gayl red for her. Gayl ntued to wre but ma virtually no public appearanc.

Gayl wrote them as Lucille was dyg of throat ncer.

He and Gayl were outraged that a lol hospal claimed medil guardianship over Lucille. Attuned to the history of medil racism, Gayl and Bob held the hospal rponsible when Lucille died on March 20, 1997, believg that Lucille had been neglected. Gayl was taken to ctody for several days.

HELENE GAYLE, M.D.

I was thrilled and also felt a b of disbelief at havg bee someone who would be asked to pronounce on a new Gayl Jon book.

A versn of this article appears prt on, Page 48 of the Sunday Magaze wh the headle: Searchg for Gayl Jon. 20, 1998, ls than a week after the much-herald publitn of her first novel more than 20 years, Gayl Jon, 48, was handcuffed and removed om her Lexgton, Ky., home by the lol police. Yet beyond the explanatn that Jon was simply another victim of an abive, ntrollg hband was a more plex realy, and the vlence surroundg the uple was fact the culmatn of the legaci that had wedd Gayl and Bob to each other.

23, 1949, to Frankl and Lucille Jon, Gayl grew up a cramped, dilapidated hoe wh no door toilet Speigle Heights, one of Lexgton's more turbulent black neighborhoods. Her father worked late hours as a rtrant ok, while her mother, an aspirg wrer, stayed home wh Gayl and her younger brother, Frankl Jr.

There the grandmother and mother shared old fay tal the oral tradn of ral blacks throughout the mid-60's, the Jon children would have attend the black high school, but Lucille ma sure that Gayl and her brother were among the handful of Ain-Amerins enrollg at Henry Clay, the whe school known for s amic excellence. Pafully shy to the pot of mutens, Gayl seemed almost visible to other stunts, although several teachers took note of her.

Her Spanish teacher, Anna Dodd, who ually kept her distance om stunts, often lent Gayl books and talked to her about her adventur among the Paris expatriat the 20's and 30' as she soaked up her grandmother's and mother's remiscenc, Gayl absorbed Dodd's.