Word: abeba
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Lion Eat Straw is the story of Abeba, the "African Flower," who is born in rural North Carolina to an absentee father and a resentful mother. That mother soon disappears, bound for Brooklyn. Abeba's first six years pass happily with old Mamma Habblesham, a midwife, in this land of makeshift and make-believe...
...then Abeba's "New York Mamma" comes to get her. Backwater Carolina fades into Brooklyn blur, the shabby streets a "tangle of evening voices" and of men who act tough, talk fast, sing scat. Here Abeba, nicknamed the "Piano Girl" for the black and shiny spinet that her ambitious mother buys her, grows up to the accompaniment of Mozart and Mendelssohn. "We looking for you to make it big," her street-corner admirers tell...
...does. Abeba endures the death of her stepfather, and rape by her Uncle CJ, and her mother's bitter anger when she gives up Juilliard to marry Daniel Torch. She survives the horrors of a mental hospital as Daniel battles his recurring madness. Abeba's monuments are her 15 children with African names and with African pride, to carry on after she dies from cancer. "Time. Was in Azzisa's hair, thick and soft. In Zaria's bright eyes. Queenly walk. Kwame's drumming . . . Something had been recovered from The Middle Passage. After twenty-five...
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