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Published Apr 2023
352 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
The acclaimed author of The Serpent's Gift returns with this gripping and powerful novel of healing, redemption, and love, following a queer Black woman who works to stay clean, pull her life together, and heal after being released from prison.
Ranita Atwater is "getting short."
She is almost done with her four-year sentence for opiate possession at Oak Hills Correctional Center. With three years of sobriety, she is determined to stay clean and regain custody of her two children.
My name is Ranita, and I'm an addict, she has said again and again at recovery meetings. But who else is she? Who might she choose to become? As she claims the story housed within her pomegranate-like heart, she is determined to confront the weight of the past and discover what might lie beyond mere survival.
Ranita is regaining her freedom, but she's leaving behind her lover Maxine, who has inspired her to imagine herself and the world differently. Now she must steer clear of the temptations that have pulled her down, while atoning for her missteps and facing old wounds. With a fierce, smart, and sometimes funny voice, Ranita reveals how rocky and winding the path to wellness is for a Black woman, even as she draws on family, memory, faith, and love in order to choose life.
Perfect for fans of Jesmyn Ward and Yaa Gyasi, Pomegranate is a complex portrayal of queer Black womanhood and marginalization in America: a story of loss, healing, redemption, and strength. In lyrical and precise prose, Helen Elaine Lee paints a humane and unflinching portrait of the devastating effects of incarceration and addiction, and of one woman's determination to tell her story.
"With a light, poetic touch, Lee balances the painful details of Ranita's reality with genuine, persistent hope for new beginnings. It's irresistible." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Because it eschews plot twists for emotional reflection, the novel drags at times; but Lee's handling of trauma is deft, and her portrayal of the carceral system's cruelty is unflinching and empathetic. The novel's slower moments are like a pomegranate's dull skin before it breaks to reveal a cache of jewels." —Kirkus Reviews
"Helen Elaine Lee has brought such a deep and beautiful world of people to the page, I found myself already missing them even as I continued to read. In their survival, we find ours and are left grateful, different, better." —Jacqueline Woodson, National Book Award-winning and New York Times bestselling author of Red at the Bone
"Helen Elaine Lee is working at the height of her powers. With empathy, insight, and hope, Pomegranate reveals the hidden heartbreak of the women touched by incarceration. Prepare to be challenged and changed." —Tayari Jones, New York Times bestselling author of An American Marriage
This information about Pomegranate was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Helen Elaine Lee is the director of the women's and gender studies program and professor of fiction writing at MIT. After being educated at Harvard College and Harvard Law School, she published three novels: The Serpent's Gift, Water Marked, and Pomegranate.
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