The spirited daughter of an African writer and a British actress emerges from the shadow of poverty and her father's death to survive, until bigotry--her own as well as others'--leads her to make daring but destructive choices

Lady Moses: A Novel

Literature & Fiction

Roy, Lucinda

United States

Harpercollins

The Hotel Alleluia

Two American half-sisters--one white, the other black--endure the violence and horror of an African civil war and return to the U.S., where they will reevaluate the lessons they have learned about race and identity in Africa.

This powerful debut novel is the story of Jacinta Moses, the child of a passionate and courageous love. Jacinta's father is a black African writer, Simon Moses; her mother, Louise, is a white British actress. Her father dies when she is young, sending her mother into a state of madness and depression. Impoverished and alone, Jacinta longs for a better life. As she grows older, however, prejudice--her own as well as others'--leads her to make adventurous but damaging choices. Jacinta flees from London to the American South and marries a white man. When her daughter, Lady, is born with a disability, ruining her hopes for a picture-perfect life, Jacinta travels to Africa to search for answers in her father's homeland. Her experiences there will change her forever. In Africa she is forced to draw on her family's great strengths and weave something brilliant out of their history of pain.
Lady Moses is about being both black and white. It is about passionate characters in extraordinary situations; about how one woman employs her creativity, intelligence, and strength to forge an identity. With its unflinching insight and dazzling prose, Lady Moses marks the entry of a sparkling new voice in African American fiction.

Lady Moses

HarpPeren

Two American half-sisters--one white, the other black--endure the violence and horror of an African civil war and return to the U.S., where they will reevaluate the lessons they have learned about race and identity in Africa. Reprint. 30,000 first printing.

PerfectBound

The world watched in horror in April 2007 when Virginia Tech student Seung-Hui Cho went on a killing rampage that resulted in the deaths of thirty-two students and faculty members before he ended his own life. Former Virginia Tech English department chair and distinguished professor Lucinda Roy saw the tragedy unfold on the TV screen in her home and had a terrible realization. Cho was the student she had struggled to get to know–the loner who found speech torturous. After he had been formally asked to leave a poetry class in which he had shared incendiary work that seemed directed at his classmates and teacher, Roy began the difficult task of working one-on-one with him in a poetry tutorial. During those months, a year and a half before the massacre, Roy came to realize that Cho was more than just a disgruntled young adult experimenting with poetic license; he was, in her opinion, seriously depressed and in urgent need of intervention. But when Roy approached campus counseling as well as others in the university about Cho, she was repeatedly told that they could not intervene unless a student sought counseling voluntarily. Eventually, Roy’s efforts to persuade Cho to seek help worked. Unbelievably, on the three occasions he contacted the counseling center staff, he did not receive a comprehensive evaluation by them–a startling discovery Roy learned about after Cho’s death. More revelations were to follow. After responding to questions from the media and handing over information to law enforcement as instructed by Virginia Tech, Roy was shunned by the administration. Papers documenting Cho’s interactions with campus counseling were lost. The university was suddenly on the defensive. Was the university, in fact, partially responsible for the tragedy because of the bureaucratic red tape involved in obtaining assistance for students with mental illness, or was it just, like many colleges, woefully underfunded and therefore underequipped to respond to such cases? Who was Seung-Hui Cho? Was he fully protected under the constitutional right to freedom of speech, or did his writing and behavior present serious potential threats that should have resulted in immediate intervention? How can we balance students’ individual freedom with the need to protect the community? These are the questions that have haunted Roy since that terrible day. No Right to Remain Silent is one teacher’s cri de coeur–her dire warning that given the same situation today, two years later, the ending would be no less terrifying and no less tragic.

No Right to Remain Silent: The Tragedy at Virginia Tech

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Crown

No Right to Remain Silent: What We've Learned from the Tragedy at Virginia Tech

History

Americas

The fifth winner of the Eighth Mountain Poetry Prize, selected by Lucille Clifton.

The Humming Birds: Poems

Literary

The Eighth Mountain Press

The fifth winner of the Eighth Mountain Poetry Prize, selected by Lucille Clifton.

The Humming Birds

The Freedom Race, Lucinda Roy's explosive first foray into speculative fiction, is a poignant blend of subjugation, resistance, and hope. The second Civil War, the Sequel, came and went in the United States leaving radiation, sickness, and fractures too deep to mend. One faction, the Homestead Territories, dealt with the devastation by recruiting immigrants from Africa and beginning a new slave trade while the other two factions stood by and watched. Ji-ji Lottermule was bred and raised in captivity on one of the plantations in the Homestead Territories of the Disunited States to serve and breed more "muleseeds". There is only one way out--the annual Freedom Race. First prize, freedom. An underground movement has plans to free Ji-ji, who unknowingly holds the key to breaking the grip of the Territories. However, before she can begin to free them all, Ji-ji must unravel the very real voices of the dead. Written by one of today's most committed activists, Lucinda Roy has created a terrifying glimpse of what might be and tempered it with strength and hope. It is a call to justice in the face of an unsettling future.

The Freedom Race (The Dreambird Chronicles, 1)

Tor Books

Lucinda Roy continues the Dreambird Chronicles, her explosive first foray into speculative fiction, with Flying the Coop, the thought-provoking sequel to The Freedom Race Dreams are promises your imagination makes to itself. In the disunited states, no person of color--especially not a girl whose body reimagines flight--is safe. A quest for Freedom has brought former Muleseed Jellybean "Ji-ji" Silapu to D.C., aka Dream City, the site of monuments and memorials--where, long ago, the most famous Dreamer of all time marched for the same cause. As Ji-ji struggles to come to terms with her shocking metamorphosis and her friends, Tiro and Afarra, battle formidable ghosts of their own, the former U.S. capital decides whose dreams it wants to invest in and whose dreams it will defer. The journeys the three friends take to liberate themselves and others will not simply defy the status quo, they will challenge the nature of reality itself. Book Two of the Dreambird Chronicles The Dreambird Chronicles The Freedom Race Flying the Coop

Flying the Coop (The Dreambird Chronicles, 2)

Tor Trade

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Roy, Lucinda. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Roy, Lucinda

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Roy, Lucinda. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Lady Moses: A Novel

The Hotel Alleluia

Lady Moses

The Hotel Alleluia

No Right to Remain Silent: The Tragedy at Virginia Tech

No Right to Remain Silent: What We've Learned from the Tragedy at Virginia Tech

The Humming Birds: Poems

The Humming Birds

The Freedom Race (The Dreambird Chronicles, 1)

Flying the Coop (The Dreambird Chronicles, 2)