Mosquito

"Bury those easy-to-read Black romance books. Mosquito is where African-American literature is heading as we approach the twenty-first century."

-E. Ethelbert Miller, Emerge



"If you're acquainted with the lyrical tug of Alice Walker's The Color Purple, then you'll find something familiar and compelling about the narrative voice in Gayl Jones's newest novel, Mosquito. . . . Mosquito's voice is melodic, direct, and so conversational that it hooks us immediately and makes us surrender fully to the narrative. . . . To be sure, these observations crackle with wit and a joyful, almost child-like candor."

-Quinn Eli, Philadelphia Inquirer



"Gayl Jones is the black writer we all want to be when we grow up . . . Mosquito is Gayl Jones unbound, but certainly not untethered nor without her still prodigious storehouses of language, craft, and storytelling prowess."

-Greg Tate, Voice Literary Supplement



"Mosquito will amuse and confuse and instruct and pique and exhaust you. Sometimes the anecdotes are so good you call up friends to share them. There are a hundred times you want to shout, 'Right on!'"

-Sandra Scofield, Chicago Tribune



"Most apparent and most surprising, is Jones's sense of humor. When she's at her best, her sly, subversive wit echoes Ishmael Reed at his most sarcastic."

-Jabari Asim, Washington Post Book World



"Undoubtedly a literary tour de force."

-James A. Miller, Boston Globe



Gayl Jones was born in Kentucky in 1949. She attended Connecticut College and Brown University; she has taught at Wellesley and the University of Michigan. Her critically acclaimed books include Corregidora, Eva's Man, White Rat, Song for Anninho, Liberating Voices: Oral Tradition in African American Literature, and The Healing, a National Book Award finalist.