It’s the early eighties in a middle-class Atlanta community, and according to family matriarch Annie Eliza, “a killer diller” of a week is about to unfold. There’s the ebullient feeling of a homecoming as cousins, aunts, and uncles welcome back Juneboy, gone more than twenty-five years and now a doctor at Yale. Ambitions, secrets, and unresolved tensions are also in the air. Through Annie Eliza’s sly, experienced eyes and unforgettable voice, Such Was the Season beautifully renders one of those occasions “when we all come together and membered we was family and tried to love each other, even if we didn’t always do it so well.”
Poet, novelist, essayist, anthologist, editor, and lexicographer Clarence Major is one of American literature’s most versatile figures. He is a past finalist for the National Book Award and a contributor to more than one hundred periodicals. His latest book is a memoir, Come by Here: My Mother’s Life. Born in Atlanta, he grew up in Chicago and now teaches modern American literature at the University of California, Davis.
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