White Rat: Short Stories by Gayl Jones [FIRST EDITION]

FIRST EDITION / SECOND PRINTING [1977] RANDOM HOUSE

Hardcover with dust jacket.  DJ has some mild shelf and edge wear, and one tear on front that has been sealed w/ pro. quality adhesive for a clean look.   Book itself has tanning to cover boards; Inside, pages are bright and unmarked, and read beautifully.  

White Rat contains twelve provocative tales that explore the emotional and mental terrain of a diverse cast of characters, from the innocent to the insane.

In each, Jones displays her unflinching ability to dive into the most treacherous of psyches and circumstances: the title story examines the identity and relationship conundrums of a black man who can pass for white, earning him the name White Rat as an infant; The Women follows a girl whose mother brings a line of female lovers to live in their home; Jevataâ details eighteen-year-old Freddys relationship with the fifty-year-old title character; The Coke Factory tracks the thoughts of a mentally handicapped adolescent abandoned by his mother; and Asylum  focuses on a woman having a nervous breakdown, trying to protect her dignity and her private parts as she enters an institution.

In uncompromising prose, and dialect that veers from northern, educated tongues to down-home southern colloquialisms, Jones illuminates lives that society ignores, moving them to center stage.