I Wish I Had A Red Dress: Summary and book reviews of I Wish I Had A Red Dress by Pearl Cleage, plus links to an excerpt from I Wish I Had A Red Dress and a biography of Pearl Cleage.
I Wish I Had A Red Dress
by Pearl Cleage
Hardcover: Jul 2001,
288 pages.
Paperback: Jul 2002,
336 pages.
Joyce Mitchell was widowed far too young when her beloved husband, Mitch, died in a tragic accident five years ago. Since then she's kept her hands full and her mind and heart occupied by running The Sewing Circus, an all-girl group she founded to provide badly needed services like day care and job counseling to young women, many of whom are single mothers. More important, The Circus is a place for lively, wide-ranging, heart-to-heart discussions that will help members grow into what Joyce likes to call "twenty-first-century free women."
All in all, Joyce has a full and rich life. She has her work, her family, her friends, and her town. But there are some nights when she crawls into bed alone and has to admit that something is missing. What she doesn't have is that red dress she keeps dreaming about or a social life that would accommodate it even if she braved the mall and bought one. To further complicate matters, she may not have The Sewing Circus much longer, as the state legislature has decided not to fund the group's vital but hard to define work with young women who are too often regarded as problems rather than possibilities.
Feeling defeated and pessimistic, Joyce reluctantly agrees to keep a date for dinner at the home of her best friend, Sister -- a reverend like no other-and finds not only a perfect meal but a tall, dark stranger named Nate Anderson. Nate has just joined the administration at the high school and his unexpected presence in Idlewild touches a chord in Joyce that she thought her heart had forgotten how to play. Nate feels the same immediate connection, but both have enough experience with broken hearts to take it real slow. Besides, they've got too much work to do to concentrate on falling in love....
But life moves at its own pace, and as Sister says, "if you want to make God laugh, make plans." Particularly when it comes to matters of the heart. Joyce decides the trick is to stay focused and to remember that nothing is as sexy as the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, especially if you tell it while you're wearing a perfect red dress...
Booklist
Cleage captures the mores, culture, and rhythm of black urban youth and the romantic tensions between mature black adults as she weaves contemporary issues into a love story. She portrays young people often dismissed by broader society unsentimentally but respectfully, revealing the undercurrents of their strivings to find some security.
Library Journal
... three plot lines are successfully carried to a satisfying conclusion. Recommended for public libraries.
Recent Reader Reviews
Rated of 5
by Anna
This book was my second of Ms. Cleage's books and I absolutely loved it. I am so moved by her writing. It has given me some insight into a part of society that I have never experienced, being a caucasian. A must read!
Rated of 5
by Anonymous
I had the pleasure of meeting Miss Cleage here in Atlanta and I ran out and got her book. She is phenomenal and her book is too
Rated of 5
by Sheila
This book was a wonderful drink for my soul. Ms Cleage has the inapt ability to take you on a journey where you feel the characters and begin to care about what happens to them. Her writing is rhythmic, it flows and it’s almost sensual without... Read More
Rated of 5
by Mercede
I loved the first one, thats what led me to this one and i loved it also. The story deals with issuses that might be happining in some young girls life today.
Rated of 5
by Claudia Fulbright
When I began to read this book , the natural flow of the words the rhytym of the thoughts gives you a look into the characters lives. It made me care about them, what they were going through, I wanted them to fight their way out of the situations... Read More
Rated of 5
by The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers
MOVING ON Pearl Clearge's I Wish I Had a Red Dress, was a warm, sensitive story about wanting to live again. Joyce's heart froze some five years ago when her husband fell through the ice and drowned.
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