Palmar by Gayl Jon review – an enslaved child’s search for utopia | Fictn | The Guardian

AFTER 22 YEARS, GAYL JON RETURNS

In search of Gayl Jon, whose new novel breaks 22 years of silence. * jones gayl *

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 JON

When her first novels were published, the mid-1970s, Gayl Jon’s talent was hailed by wrers om Jam Baldw to John Updike. Then she disappeared. * jones gayl *

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 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.

GAYL JON

Gayl Jon - Poet, fictn wrer, and cric Gayl Jon was born Lexgton, Kentucky, on November 23, 1949, and raised Speigle Heights, a neighborhood Lexgton. Her father, Frankl, was a rtrant ok, while her mother, Lucille, was a homemaker and aspirg wrer who shared wh Jon and her younger brother, Frankl Jr., stori about their fay ral Kentucky as well as lol oral tradns. Durg an terview wh poet Michael S. Harper, Jon relled that she learned to wre by listeng to people talk. * jones gayl *

There, acrdg to an English teacher, Sue Anne Allen, Gayl was a iendls stunt of exceptnal tellect.

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.

THE BIRDTCHER BY GAYL JON REVIEW – PORTRA OF AN ARTIST

* jones gayl *

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.

” 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.

GAYL JON’S NOVELS OF OPPRSN

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.