Taking After Mudear - Softcover

Tina McElroy Ansa

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0979954312 ISBN 13: 9780979954313

Publisher: DownSouth Press, 2008

Synopsis

Best-Selling author Tina McElroy Ansa returns with her signature ability to tell a good, quirky story and tell it with humor, grace and great respect for the power of the particular (The New York Times Book Review) with her new novel TAKING AFTER MUDEAR. TAKING AFTER MUDEAR, Ansa s fifth novel, is the superbly crafted sequel to her awardwinning best-seller, UGLY WAYS. And it is the book fans have been waiting for. Jill McCorkle calls UGLY WAYS, an absolute beauty...that crackles and sings with life. And although, as TAKING AFTER MUDEAR opens, the matriarch of the Lovejoy family has been dead for months, she and Ansa s newest novel again crackle and sing with life. TAKING AFTER MUDEAR continues to follow the story of the three Lovejoy sisters and their mother Mudear, who is deceased but refuses to die, in the small Georgia town of Mulberry. The baby of the family, Annie Ruth, -- pretty, unmarried and hugely pregnant with the first Lovejoy grandchild -- has moved back to Mulberry and is living with her big sister, Betty, a prosperous businesswoman. The middle girl, Emily, who claims she has taken a leave of absence from her job in Atlanta, has moved in, too, to help out and mostly raise the level of sibling tension and friction. But just as the girls begin to think things have settled down for them, Mudear, their recently deceased, self-centered, self-focused mother, starts to make her presence felt again. And with the birth of Annie Ruth s baby girl, the fragile Lovejoy family situation begins to totter even more. With each piece of evidence that something otherworldly and strange is indeed still hanging around the Lovejoy household, the sisters suspect more and more that they are being haunted by their mother. With various baby s daddies showing up and Lovejoys having signature meltdowns, things soon escalate into a full-flown supernatural Mulberry battle for the very life of the newborn child. Indeed, Mudear has come back for that baby girl!! And the sisters have to discover if they are merely the Lovejoy girls ( Them girls still got some ugly ways about em! Mudear is fond of muttering.) or truly the Lovejoy women!!

About this title

About the Author:

Tina McElroy Ansa  is a novelist, publisher, filmmaker, teacher and journalist. But above all, she is a storyteller.
She calls herself part of a long and honored writing tradition, one of those little Southern girls who always knew she wanted to be a writer.   She grew up in Middle Georgia in the 1950s hearing her grandfather s stories on the porch of her family home and strangers stories downtown in her father s juke joint, which have inspired Mulberry, Georgia, the mythical world of her four novels, Baby of the Family, Ugly Ways, The Hand I Fan With and You Know Better.

In March 2007, Ms. Ansa launched an independent publishing company, DownSouth Press, with its focus on African-American literature -- fiction and nonfiction. Her fifth novel, Taking After Mudear, a sequel to her bestselling Ugly Ways, will be the lead title on DownSouth Press s first list in the spring of 2008. DownSouth Press will publish established as well as emerging literary voices.

Ms. Ansa s first novel, Baby of the Family, was published in 1989 by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich and was named a Notable Book of the Year by The New York Times.  Baby of the Family was also on the African-America Best-seller List for Paperback Fiction. In October 2001, Baby of the Family was chosen by the Georgia Center for the Book as one of the Top 25 books Every Georgian Should Read.   The book was also awarded The American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults in 1990, and won the 1989 Georgia Authors Series Award.

She and her husband, AFI (American Film Institute) Fellow filmmaker JoneĆ© Ansa are currently adapting Baby of the Family for the screen in a feature film starring Alfre Woodard, Loretta Devine, Sheryl Lee Ralph, Vanessa Williams, Todd Bridges, Pam Grier, and Tonea Stewart.  The author is collaborating with her husband on the screenplay for Baby of the Family, which he will direct and shoot in her hometown of Macon, Georgia. Ms. Ansa is executive producer.

Harcourt Brace published Ms. Ansa s second novel, Ugly Ways, in July 1993.  The African-America Blackboard List named the novel Best Fiction in 1994.  Ms. Ansa was nominated for an NAACP Image Award in 1994 for Ugly Ways and the novel was on the African-American Best-sellers/Blackboard List for more than two years. In 2005, the novel was included in the current list of the Top 25 Books Every Georgian Should Read by the Georgia Center for the Book. Award-winning actress Alfre Woodard has entered into a partnership with Ms. Ansa to bring Ugly Ways to the screen. Photo credit: Jonee Ansa
The Hand I Fan With, her third novel, was published in October of 1996. This is the beautifully erotic love story of Lena McPherson and the 100-year old ghost Herman she calls up to love and cherish her. The novel was awarded the Georgia Authors Series Award for 1996.  Ms. Ansa also won this same award for her debut novel, Baby of the Family, and is the only two-time winner of the award.

Tina McElroy Ansa s fourth novel, You Know Better, was published in Spring 2002 by William Morrow Publishers. The novel, told in the voices of three generations of the Pines  women, is the story of LaShawndra Pines, a 19-year-old aspiring hoochie mama who aspires to dance in the background of a music video. It addresses the contemporary issues and ethos of young people and received a Best Fiction award by the American Library Association.

In 2005, Ms. Ansa was awarded the 2005 Stanley W. Lindberg Award for her body and work and for contributions to the literary arts community of Georgia.

About this edition

• Publisher: DownSouth Press
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0979954312
• ISBN 13: 9780979954313
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 284