Something That Rhymes: Leroy: The Johnson Family Saga - Hardcover
The novel LEROY is the story of a young African American of the same name raised and educated in France. His parents are both African Americans. His mother is an international civil servant with UNESCO and his father is a successful cabaret owner in Paris. The novel opened in the main square of Saint Tropez France where Leroy is convinced that his neighbor, Eric, has just made a homosexual overtures towards his adolescent son. Leroy overcomes reticence to make a scene and a fear that as a black he is helpless to provide protection even for his son. This leads to flashbacks in which Leroy' family life and his education in France are reviewed. Leroy was raised in an upper class neighborhood of Paris and attended schools frequented by privileged children. He acquired refined manners plus a superior cultural education that contrasted with that of his parents. This led to problems of identity that are treated in the novel. Leroy received an excellent higher education and married a beautiful French woman with a similar educational background who come from a family with a left winged political history. With the help of his father, brother, son and wife, he became a successful businessman and mayor of a large French city. Yet he is haunted by the fear that his off springs will be intellectually inferior because of their race. He is greatly influenced by the book; 'The Bell Shaped Curved' and much of the novel are reactions, not necessarily negative, to assertions made in the work. Leroy struggles is not only to succeed but also to belong, to be accepted by society. His feeling of non-acceptance is manifest by his feeling that he does not have a single close friend either among Frenchmen or in the African American community in France. Where his parents felt they suffered pure hatred in the rural Alabama before they arrived in France during the fifties, Leroy feel no hatred but exclusion. The novel ends with Leroy having found a friend and the two of them burning Leroy' copy of the Bell Shaped Curved. The settings of this book are Paris, Saint Tropez, Saint Simon Island and Atlanta Georgia. Many of the characters from a previous novel BOOKER appear in LEROY. The main interest of this series of books is that they treat African Americans in settings that are outside of America. LEROY continues the evolution of this African American family from the cotton fields of Alabama to life in an expensive villa in Saint Tropez and a château in the Tarn valley of France.
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About the Author:
Graduate of the prestigious Morehouse College and the University of Minnesota Graduate School, Tannie Stovall began his life as a research scientist, before veering into Urban Studies and finally literature and dabbling in the stock markets. Born in Atlanta Georgia, he has lived most of his adult life abroad in Nigeria, Spain and France. He now lives in France between Paris and Saint Tropez where he is currently producing documentaries for television.
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- PublisherXlibris Corp
- Publication date2005
- ISBN 10 1413482880
- ISBN 13 9781413482881
- BindingHardcover
- Number of pages380
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