"HER VERY OWN REAL AND TERRIBLE AND LONELY AND DARK MEMORY": FIRST EDITION OF GAYL JONES' CORREGIDORA, 1975

JONES, Gayl. Corregidora. New York: Random House, (1975). Octavo, original half brown cloth, original dust jacket. $4800.

First edition of this Black literary classic about oppression and abuse, "a short, baroque novel about love and history in Truman-era Kentucky" (New Yorker).

"Gayl Jones's first novel, Corregidora (1975), was both shocking and ground-breaking in its probing of the psychological legacy of slavery and sexual ownership through the life of a Kentucky blues singer. Published when Jones was 26, it predated Alice Walker's The Color Purple and Toni Morrison's Beloved, revealing an unfinished emancipation and the power of historical memory to shape lives. It also marked a shift in African-American literature that made women, and relationships between black people, central" (Guardian).

Book about-fine, dust jacket near-fine with only mild rubbing and toning to extremities and a couple tiny marks along bottom edge. A lovely copy.