FISH TALES

FISH TALES by Nettie Jones is a sometimes shocking story of a young woman's sexual encounters and relationships that range from traumatic to liberating, from the formative to the experimental, blurred by high-rolling parties among the artists of downtown Manhattan and the newly-affluent Black community in Detroit.

FISH TALES by Nettie Jones is a sometimes shocking story of a young woman's sexual encounters and relationships that range from traumatic to liberating, from the formative to the experimental, blurred by high-rolling parties among the artists of downtown Manhattan and the newly-affluent Black community in Detroit. She's a party girl with destructive tendencies, but more than that the book touches on power, erotic desire, pleasure and violence Nettie writes with swagger and bite, and with FISH TALES, she asks the reader to examine what exactly is so provocative about a woman pursuing her own desire. We find the book reminiscent of the early work of Gayl Jones, who is in fact a longtime friend of Nettie's; Oreo by Fran Ross; Rubyfruit Jungle by Ria Mae Brown, Weird Fucks by Lynn Tillman and to some extent, Jane Bowles' Two Serious Ladies. We see it as being for readers of Luster, Big Swiss, or even Nightbitch. Nettie P. Jones (1941-) is an award winning writer and educator who is best known for her novels Fish Tales (1984) and Mischief Makers (1989, 1991). Jones is retired from New York University, where she developed and taught innovative courses at the Gallatin School on subjects such as literature, society and writing for over a decade. She also taught at City University of New York, Wayne State University, Michigan Technological University, Essex County College and Boricua College. Inspired by the Caribbean Sea, Jones spends a great deal of time in Jamaica writing her next novel. Both Fish Tales and Mischief Makers received critical acclaim upon their release. For the historical record, it must be noted Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison was the editor of Fish Tales when Morrison worked as an editor for Random House. Intrigued by the intellect of scholar, writer, cultural historian and poet, Glenda R. Taylor, Jones contributed a Foreword to Taylor 's forthcoming book, Herstory: Unearthing An American past (2015).