Discretion (38 page)

Elizabeth Nunez was born in Trinidad and immigrated to the United States after secondary school. She is a CUNY Distinguished Professor of English at Medgar Evers College of the City University of New York. She received her Ph.D. and M.A. degrees in English from New York University, and her B.A. degree in English from Marian College in Wisconsin. She is the author of four novels:
Discretion
, published this year;
Bruised Hibiscus
, which won an American Book Award in 2001;
Beyond the Limbo Silence
, which won a 1999 IPPY Award—Independent Publishers Book Award in the multicultural fiction category; and
When Rocks Dance
. Nunez is coeditor of the collection of essays
Defining Ourselves: Black Writers in the 90s
. Her essays and short stories have appeared in anthologies and magazines. The director of the National Black Writers Conference sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities since 1986, Nunez chairs the PEN American Open Book committee, which focuses on providing access for people of color to various aspects of the publishing industry, and has served as an evaluator for national and local programs in the arts and education. She is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including fellowships at the Yaddo and MacDowell colonies and the Paden Institute; the YWCA Woman of Distinction Award; the Sojourner Truth Award from the National Association of Black Business and Professional Women’s Clubs; and the Carter G. Woodson Outstanding Teacher of the Year Award. Nunez was awarded an honorary doctorate in Humane Letters from her alma mater, Marian College, Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, for her contributions to the arts and education.

The year is 1963. Sara Edgehill, at twenty, leaves the succulent green of Trinidad to take a scholarship at a women’s college in Wisconsin. There, she meets two other girls who are integrating the school: Angela from British Guiana, who has found her own ways of accepting her place among the white girls; and Courtney from St. Lucia, who still lives the Vodoun rituals of her ancestors. Wanting desperately to fit in, Sara begins to understand that in America, the color lines run deeper than they did even in Trinidad. And as her ties with Angela and Courtney grow stronger, Sara is irrevocably pulled into the very center of America’s exploding civil rights movement.

“This powerful illumination of race and culture by the light of
dreams, ritual, and Vodoun will remind many of
Toni Morrison or Alice Walker.”
—Booklist
(starred review)

Published by One World/Ballantine Books.
Available wherever books are sold.