“In an extraordinary fictional debut, Delores Phillips delivers a narrative with the kind of brutal force that renders a reader breathless…. A captivating and emotional tale, The Darkest Child is a narrative as much about hate as it is about love.” —Noir! African-American Book Review
After all the books nominations and over 150 votes cast…Mocha Girls Read February book selection winner is The Darkest Child by Delores Phillips. Take a minute to see what this book and the author are all about.
Synopsis
Rozelle Quinn is so fair-skinned that she can pass for white. Yet everyone in her small Georgia town knows. Rozelle’s ten children (by ten different daddies) are mostly light, too. They sleep on the floor in her drafty, rickety three-room shack and live in fear of her moods and temper. But they are all vital to her. They occupy the only world she rules and controls. They multiply her power in an otherwise cruel and uncaring universe.
Rozelle favors her light-skinned kids, but insists that they all love and obey her unquestioningly. Tangy Mae, thirteen, is her brightest but darkest-complected child. Tangy wants desperately to continue with her education. Shockingly, the highest court in the land has just ruled that Negroes may go to school with whites. Her mother, however, has other plans.
Rozelle wants her daughter to work, cleaning houses for whites, like she does, and accompany her to the “Farmhouse,” where Rozelle earns extra money bedding men. Tangy Mae, she’s decided, is of age.
Author Biography
Delores Phillips was born in Georgia. She is a graduate of Cleveland State University and works as a nurse in a facility for abused women and children in Cleveland. This is her first novel.
OFFICIAL DARKEST CHILD WEBSITE
Congratulations to Mocha Girl Delores for becoming Mocha Girls Read book for the month for February 2012.
Feel free to leave comments and thoughts here as you are reading the book. I’m looking forward to reading this book and hearing what everyone thinks of it.
Keep the pages turning!
♥Mocha Girl Alysia♥
Mocha Girl Alysia
