A Love Noire: A Novel - Hardcover

Turnipseed, Erica Simone

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060536799 ISBN 13: 9780060536794

Publisher: Amistad, 2003

Synopsis

When Noire, a hip, Afro-wearing Ph.D. student, walks into Brown Betty Books, her righteousness kicks into overdrive amid the self-identified "talented tenth" who wear their double degrees and five-hundred-dollar shoes like badges of honor. And then Innocent walks in, sits down beside her, and turns her on her head. A dashing, well-heeled investment banker originally from Côte d'Ivoire, West Africa, Innocent seems interested in her ... but he's one of them.

Before meeting him, Noire shunned the "bourgie" world of black monied cosmopolitans like Innocent, opting instead for socially conscious -- but economically challenged -- artists and urban intellectuals. Their mutual attraction blossoms into lust and eventually love, but it lives in the shifting sands of personal beliefs and professional ambitions that are often at odds.

Set in present-day New York City with jaunts to Africa, Europe, and the Caribbean, A Love Noire is the story of an unlikely couple that struggles to discover whether their passion will keep them together, or if their differences will tear them apart. Stripped to their barest selves, Innocent and Noire transcend all they've known to learn the redemptive power of love.

A Love Noire offers an insider's look at color and class struggles, urban living, life in Africa, the notoriously unpredictable and heady New York dating scene, and good old-fashioned love. A natural and potent storyteller, Ms. Turnipseed writes of love and family with grace, and A Love Noire, her debut, marks the arrival of a resonant, sparkling voice in contemporary fiction.

About this title

About the Author

Erica Simone Turnipseed's debut, A Love Noire, won the Atlanta Choice Author of the Year Award from the Atlanta Daily World. A philanthropist, Turnipseed founded the Five Years for the House Initiative, a fund-raising drive for the Afro American Cultural Center at Yale. She lives with her husband in Brooklyn, New York.

From Publishers Weekly

Love blossoms for an unlikely couple in this provocative debut, a romance embroidered with outspoken treatment of issues of race and class. Noire Demain is a brilliant and socially conscious Ph.D. student in comparative literature with a tendency to criticize those who may not share her ideals. The last person she expects to fall in love with is Innocent Pokou, an investment banker from Cete d'Ivoire whom she considers part of "the black bourgeoisie." But sparks fly and, as each realizes that the other is more than a mere stereotype, their relationship deepens. Turnipseed's take on star-crossed lovers breaks no molds, but her voice is strong and confident. She sets convincing and complex characters within the disparate neighborhoods of New York's Harlem and SoHo, the "historic locales in and around black Charleston" and the politically unstable climate of Cete d'Ivoire. Turnipseed's other great strength, much like Noire's, is her fearlessness in tackling touchy subject matter, whether it be spicy sex scenes or exploration of identity politics. Turnipseed's earnest treatment of social issues sometimes becomes heavy-handed and slows the narrative momentum. That, and occasional lapses into melodramatic prose ("The subway was a curious place where bodies touched even when lives did not. Was this a metaphor for life?") are the novel's weaknesses. But its many strengths, including frank dialogue and a fierce intelligence, make this a vibrant, engaging debut.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Amistad
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0060536799
• ISBN 13: 9780060536794
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320