Displaying 1 of 1 1987 Format: Book Author: Shaik, Fatima, 1952- Title: The mayor of New Orleans : just talking jazz / by Fatima Shaik. Publisher, Date: Berkeley, California : Creative Arts Book Co., [1987] ©1987 Description: 143 pages ; 23 cm Subjects: Louisiana -- Fiction. Other Title: Climbing monkey hill. Before echo. Notes: 449364 ; *449365 Contents: Mayor of New Orleans -- Climbing Monkey Hill -- Before echo. LCCN: 87071147 ISBN: 0887390501 Other Number: 16470989 System Availability: 2 # System items in: 2 # Local items: 2 # Local items in: 2 Current Holds: 0 Place Request Add to My List Expand All | Collapse All Availability Trade Reviews Publishers Weekly ReviewThis collection of three lush and evocative novellas is the first publication in book form by this native of New Orleans, whose keen ear for dialogue and languid style help capture the special ambience of southern Louisiana. In the title story a voluble black trumpet player entertains a lonely New York visitor with an all-night tale of how he, Walter Watson Lameir, a street musician, became Mayor of New Orleans for four frenzied months, only to end up in jail for four unhappy days. In Climbing Monkey Hill a sensitive black girl comes of age in the New Orleans of 1965, a city bitterly divided by court-ordered integration and seething with racial tensions. Levia is yearning to expand her world, yet she wants security; violent confrontation pushes her into adulthood. Joan, a young girl from the Cajun country, searches for her mother, a prostitute working in the French Quarter, in Before Echo. She is 16, the same age her mother was when she fled the bayou, and she realizes that she must decide the future course of her life. Knowledgeable and perceptive, Shaik imbues these stories of people in transition with insight and a deep melancholy. (December 20) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reservedBooklist ReviewThese three novellas by Fatima Shaik reflect the colorful diversity of a great city's people. An old jazz trumpet player boasts and reminisces in the title story. ``Before Echo'' has a secondary character of great interest in the doctor who strolls along and suddenly thinks of ``all the strange places he assisted mothers [to deliver] taxicabs, hospital beds, bedrooms, and bars.'' The most successful story involves a young girl who sees that ``New Orleans ached all over from integration'' during a period of racial tension, and who, when her father asks her to load his gun for him, secretly removes the bullets. Only after he's gone out with the gun does she realize he may rely on the weapon and lose his life. All three stories show a thoughtful and promising talent. PM. 87-70508 Librarian's View Syndetics Unbound Displaying 1 of 1
