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Leaving Cecil Street |
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Diane McKinney-Whetstone ISBN: 0060722894
Format: Paperback, 320pp
Pub. Date: March 2005
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
BBP Sales Rank: 211,615
List Price: $12.95
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. . . though the block had long ago made the transition from white to colored
to Negro to Black Is Beautiful, the city still provided street cleaning . . .
when the children took to the outside and there was the familiar smack, smack
of the double-Dutch rope. The sound was a predictable comfort. Like the sounds
of the Corner Boys, a mildly delinquent lot consumed with pilfering Kool
cigarettes or the feel of a virgin girl's behind. . . .
As she did in her previous novels Tumbling and Blues Dancing, Diane
McKinney-Whetstone once again masterfully renders time and place, character and
emotional intensities. It is 1969 and Cecil Street is "feeling some kind of
way," so the residents decide to have two block parties this year. These
energetic, sensual street celebrations serve as backdrops to the stories of the
people on the block. Joe, a long-ago sax player, has turned his eye across the
street to a newly arrived young southern beauty even as he is suddenly haunted
by memories of his horn-playing nights and his affection for a shy, soft hooker
from years ago. Joe's wife, Louise, a licensed practical nurse, is losing her
teeth to gum disease and her joy to sensing that Joe's attention has wandered.
Their teenage daughter, Shay, is consumed with helping her best friend and
next-door neighbor Neet, who has gotten pregnant by a Corner Boy. Neet's
mother, Alberta, is shunned by the block because of her immersion in a religion
that has no name. As the novel opens, the first block party has ended and a
naked woman has secretly taken up residence in Joe and Louise's cellar.
McKinney-Whetstone's superb gift for language and storytelling,for crafting
scenes that leave the reader breathless, for distilling complex human emotion
in a well-turned phrase, is on full display here. She portrays the community
and the times with precision and compassion in an unforgettable story that gets
under the skin. As the novel builds to the second block party, the past becomes
as immediate as the present, condemnable acts become righteous, and what is
tragic is also filled with hope. |
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Diane grew up in Philadelphia, the city she
returns to as the setting for Leaving Cecil Street. Her work has appeared in
Philadelphia Magazine; Essence; the Sunday Philadelphia Inquirer Magazine; and
the anthologies Bluelight Corner, and Mending the World.
She has received numerous awards, including a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts
grant, the Zora Neale Hurston Society award for creative contribution to
literature, a citation from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania for her portrayal
of urban life as presented in Tumbling, Author of the Year award from the Go On
Girl Book Club, and more.
She presently teaches fiction writing at her alma mater, the University of
Pennsylvania. She lives in Philadelphia with her husband Greg, and sometimes
her college-age twins, Taiwo, her daughter, and Kehinde, her son. |
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