Suzan-Lori Parks. (2008). Getting Mother's Body: A Novel. Unabridged Books on Tape.

Suzan-Lori Parks. 2008. Getting Mother's Body: A Novel. Books on Tape.

Suzan-Lori Parks, Getting Mother's Body: A Novel. Books on Tape, 2008.

Suzan-Lori Parks. Getting Mother's Body: A Novel. Unabridged Books on Tape, 2008.

OverDrive Product Record

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Getting Mother's Body

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   • fileAs: Parks, Suzan-Lori
   • bioText: Suzan-Lori Parks is a novelist, playwright, songwriter, and screenwriter. She was the recipient of the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play Topdog/ Underdog, as well as a 2001 MacArthur “genius grant.” Her other plays include Fucking A, In the Blood, The America Play, Venus, and The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World. Her first feature film, Girl 6, was directed by Spike Lee. A graduate of Mount Holyoke College, where she studied with James Baldwin, she has taught creative writing in universities across the country, including at the Yale School of Drama, and she heads the Dramatic Writing Program at CalArts. She is currently writing an adaptation of Toni Morrison’s novel Paradise for Oprah Winfrey, and the musical Hoopz for Disney. She lives in Venice Beach, California, with her husband, blues musician Paul Scher, and their pit bull, Lambchop.
   • name: Suzan-Lori Parks
2. • role: Narrator
   • fileAs: Parks, Suzan-Lori
   • bioText: Suzan-Lori Parks is a novelist, playwright, songwriter, and screenwriter. She was the recipient of the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play Topdog/ Underdog, as well as a 2001 MacArthur “genius grant.” Her other plays include Fucking A, In the Blood, The America Play, Venus, and The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World. Her first feature film, Girl 6, was directed by Spike Lee. A graduate of Mount Holyoke College, where she studied with James Baldwin, she has taught creative writing in universities across the country, including at the Yale School of Drama, and she heads the Dramatic Writing Program at CalArts. She is currently writing an adaptation of Toni Morrison’s novel Paradise for Oprah Winfrey, and the musical Hoopz for Disney. She lives in Venice Beach, California, with her husband, blues musician Paul Scher, and their pit bull, Lambchop.
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2008-01-15T00:00:00-05:00

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title

Getting Mother's Body

fullDescription

Pulitzer Prize winner Suzan-Lori Parks’s wildly original debut novel, Getting Mother’s Body, follows pregnant, unmarried Billy Beede and her down-and-out family in 1960s Texas as they search for the storied jewels buried—or were they?—with Billy’s fast-running, six-years-dead mother, Willa Mae. Getting Mother’s Body is a true spiritual successor to the work of writers such as Zora Neale Hurston and Alice Walker—but when it comes to bringing hard-luck characters to ingenious, uproarious life, Suzan-Lori Parks shares the stage with no one.

reviews

1. • premium: False
   • source: Richard Russo, author of Empire Falls
   • content: "Suzan-Lori Parks is a terrific writer whose characters don't so much talk to us as sing, full-throated, of their joys and miseries."
2. • premium: False
   • source: The New York Times Book Review
   • content: "A cheerful tack across deep Faulknerian waters."
3. • premium: False
   • source: USA Today
   • content: "The kind of story that sneaks up on you and makes you care about the characters and what happens to them."
4. • premium: False
   • source: The Washington Post
   • content: "Even minor characters are vivid and unforgettable. . . . [The] chorus of voices . . . tells the interwoven story of Willa Mae and her daughter with such flair and harmony that I was compelled to keep reading."
5. • premium: False
   • source: Entertainment Weekly
   • content: "Of course Suzan-Lori Parks can write a mean patch of dialogue . . . but the real treat here is watching Parks experiment with setting. . . . [She is] a master of pitch and mood."
6. • premium: False
   • source: Vogue
   • content: "With material steeped in the dark side of American history and a rare gift for the vernacular, [Parks is] the sort of provocateur one might get by crossing William Faulkner with Richard Pryor. . . . Parks's dialogue rings ribald and jazzy."
7. • premium: False
   • source: Book magazine
   • content: "There's jazz and spunk in the writing here, tremendous humor that ultimately yields to tenderness."
8. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content: Suzan-Lori Parks reads her debut novel with the same spunk and personality possessed by each of her unique characters. Parks provides a distinctive and credible voice for each chapter, which is narrated by a different character, as Billy Beede, her aunt and uncle, close friend, and a cousin race to dig out Billy's mother's body and the supposed treasure buried with her. Parks's vocal acrobatics are amazing as these down-and-out characters travel across the Southwest. Most delightful is her reading as Willa Mae, the dead mother, as she sings each of her chapters. (Parks collaborated on this with her jazz musician husband.) Overall, the package is a compelling performance by a gifted writer. H.L.S. (c) AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine
9. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     Starred review from May 19, 2003
     Parks, winner of the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for her play Topdog/Underdog, puts her dramatic skills to good use in this fluid, assured debut novel, the story of a sweaty road trip from Texas to Arizona in July 1963. When stubborn 16-year-old Billy Beede gets knocked up and jilted by her sweet-talking, coffin-salesman lover, she needs money for an abortion. Her wild mother, Willa Mae, died when Billy was 10, and Billy lives with her "childless churchless minister Uncle and one-legged church-hopping Aunt" in a mobile home behind their rural Texas gas station. Billy's only hope for serious cash is to dig up her mother's body from its grave in LaJunta, Ariz., where Willa Mae was buried wearing a diamond ring and a pearl necklace. That, at least, is the story told by Willa Mae's one-time lover, Dill, a six-foot-tall "bulldagger, dyke, lezzy, what-have-you." Billy steals Dill's truck and, together with her aunt and uncle, embarks on a trip to Arizona to find her mother's body, her mother's treasure and her mother's memory. With disgruntled Dill in hot pursuit (chauffeured by Billy's dogged suitor, Laz, misfit son of the local funeral parlor owner), the three travel through the racist Southwest, meeting up with relatives, friends and foes. Parks narrates her brief chapters from the point of view of different characters, giving each a distinctive voice; blues songs are interwoven with the text. Parks's influences are evident—among them Zora Neale Hurston and Faulkner's As I Lay Dying—but the novel's easy grace and infectious rhythms are all her own. Fueled by irresistible, infectious talk and prose that swings like speech, this novel begs (no surprise) to be read aloud. (May)Forecast:Few playwrights enjoy the kind of success Parks has at such a young age (she was born in 1964), and few make such a seamless transition to fiction. Her reputation and the quality of this novel should fuel impressive sales. 8-city author tour.

10. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      November 15, 2003
      Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Parks (Topdog/Underdog) narrates her own fiction debut. Writing in short sections, with shifting points of view, she presents a portrait of black life in the South in 1963: Billy is 16 and pregnant, her mother is dead, her mother's lover was a woman whom she assumed for the first three months was a man, her preacher uncle has lost not only his church but his faith, her aunt has lost her leg, her mother's gravesite is about to be buried under a concrete shopping center, and the story is going around that her mother was buried with all her jewels. This has all the potential for a wonderful tour de force, but midway through the performance the writing becomes predictable and the fascinating premise is never fully developed. Still, Parks's fame as a playwright will probably mean a lot of interest in her presentation here-and it is excellent. For larger collections.-Rochelle Ratner, formerly with "Soho Weekly News," New York

      Copyright 2003 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

11. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      June 2, 2003
      Audio reviews reflect PW's assessment of the audio adaptation of a book and should be quoted only in reference to the audio version. Fiction GETTING MOTHER'S BODY Suzan-Lori Parks, read by the author. Random House Audio, unabridged, six CDs, 7.5 hrs., $31.95 ISBN 0-7393-0297-3 With credentials including the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Drama (Topdog/Underdog) and a feature film directed by Spike Lee (Girl 6), Parks makes an impressive foray into fiction writing. This superbly recorded audio adaptation of her debut, replete with instrumental interludes and blues songs sung by the author (who's also a songwriter), is further enlivened by Parks's own compelling, unabridged reading. Her voice is clearly invested in the book's downtrodden African-American characters, and she portrays their grim realities with indelible humor. Pregnant Texas teenager Billy Beede has been raised for the past six years by her aunt and uncle in a mobile home following the death of her conniving mother, Willa Mae, from a botched abortion. Billy gets the disconcerting news her mom's remains must be moved for construction of a shopping center, and Willa Mae is rumored to have been buried with a fortune in jewels. Billy's just discovered she's inherited her mom's knack for seeing "the hole," or blind spot that lets you get what you want in people, so she sets off for the Arizona grave site. Set in the summer of 1963, and recounted in a slow, Southern drawl befitting the mood, the story unravels from a myriad of viewpoints, including the no-good custom coffin salesman who's fathered Billy's unborn baby, the one-legged neighbor in love with Billy, and her deceased mother's feisty lesbian lover. Simultaneous release with the Random hardcover (Forecasts, May 19).

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Pulitzer Prize winner Suzan-Lori Parks’s wildly original debut novel, Getting Mother’s Body, follows pregnant, unmarried Billy Beede and her down-and-out family in 1960s Texas as they search for the storied jewels buried—or were they?—with Billy’s fast-running, six-years-dead mother, Willa Mae. Getting Mother’s Body is a true spiritual successor to the work of writers such as Zora Neale Hurston and Alice Walker—but when it comes to bringing hard-luck characters to ingenious, uproarious life, Suzan-Lori Parks shares the stage with no one.

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