This Child's Gonna Live

Book excerpt: “[An] exploration of the black experience from a woman’s perspective, anticipating fiction by writers like Toni Morrison and Alice Walker.”—The New York Times Originally published in 1969 to broad critical acclaim, This Child’s Gonna Live is an unsurpassed testament to human endurance in the face of poverty, racism, and despair. Set in a fishing village on Maryland’s Eastern Shore in the 1930s, this story has as its main character the unforgettable Mariah Upshur, a hard-working, sensual, resilient woman, full of hope, and determination despite living in a society that conspires to keep her down. In her mind, she carries on a conversation with Jesus, who, like Mariah herself, is passionate and compassionate, at times funny and resolutely resilient to fatalism. Often compared to Zora Neale Hurston for her lyrical and sure-handed use of local dialect, Wright, like Hurston, powerfully depicts the predicament of poor African American women, who confront the multiple oppressions of class, race, and gender. “In every respect, an impressive achievement. The canon of American folk-epic is enriched by this small masterpiece.”—The New York Times Book Review “It has always been my contention that the Black woman in America will write the greatest of the American novels. For it is the Black woman, forced to survive at the bottom rung of American society . . . who is compelled to survey, by the very extremity of her existence, the depths of the American soul. In reading Sarah Wright’s searing novel, I am convinced that my assessment was correct.”—Rosa Guy, author of The Friends