Song for Almeyda and Song for Anninho
“Jones’s great achievement is to reckon with both history and interiority, and to collapse the boundary between them.”—Anna Wiener, The New Yorker
From the highly acclaimed author of Corregidora and The Healing—two epic poems, the love songs of fugitive slaves, set in 17th-century Brazil; continuing the unforgettable journey told in Gayl Jones’s masterwork, Palmares (2021)
Gayl Jones, the novelist Toni Morrison discovered decades ago and Tayari Jones recently called her favorite writer, offers 2 books in one with this volume of poetry. Jones renders the saga of Palmares, a foundational tale in the annals of colonial terrorism and Black resistance, in verse, told in the voices of the characters in her epic novel Palmares.
In the late 17th century, the fugitive slave enclave…