I Been in Sorrow's Kitchen and Licked Out All the Pots

Marietta journeys to Charleston from her tree and her home at Pine Gardens, eventually becoming Big Ma to her twin boys.

With a slight fairy tale football ending, her story is fascinating for many reasons, from Gullah and basketmaking to
dealing with poverty and mistakes and on into deep family love and friendship. A keeper to share and read again and again.

The novel of an extremely strong (physically, mentally, psychologically) but humble woman raising two sons in South Carolina around the time of the civil rights demonstrations. Her circumstances were about as dirt-poor as can possibly be imagined. Yet through perseverance and a strong sense of duty she made good for herself and her sons.

The narrative is hard to grasp at first since so much of it is in the first-person colloquial tongue. The reader soon gets into the flow of her language though, and is rewarded by the effort. This is a well-crafted novel that is probably the composite of many real-life similar stories.

A black woman from the Gullah region of South Carolina. Lots of authentic-sounding dialog.

From Publishers Weekly
Set primarily in a tiny Gullah-speaking village in South Carolina, Straight's elegant coming-of-age novel--a BOMC selection in cloth--is as monumental as the tall, taciturn woman whose life it traces. Selected as one of PW 's best books of 1992.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.