Books by Devorah Major

Where River Meets Ocean /  Open Weave: A Novel  / The Other Side of the Postcard  / Secrets Put Inside my Soul

Street Smarts / Who Has Looked in Your Mirror An Anthology / With More Than Tongue

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Brown Glass Windows

a novel by devorah major

Brown Glass Windows  is the story of the Evermans, an African-American family in the Filmore District of San Francisco and the tragic history of their son, Ranger, who returns scarred from his experiences in Vietnam and struggles with drug addiction. Ironically, when he finally conquers his drug habit, he is killed meaninglessly in a drive-by shooting. Ranger’s death causes the family, with its suppressed recriminations and accumulated resentments, to pass through the crisis and come out on the other side of grief stronger and more united.

Brown Glass Windows is a beautifully structured book employing techniques of magical realism—a grittily realistic narrative framed by the spirit world. The novel is narrated by a spirit of a woman 200 years old, who watches over her elderly Black friend, Victoria. Victoria, a wonderfully eccentric character who paints herself white, striving to be invisible, plays an important role in the healing of the Everman family.

The novel is also a kind of elegy to the old Filmore District. As Ranger says, they’ve redeveloped the neighborhood “into a little doorway to hell,” a comment that will resonate deeply with readers not only in San Francisco, but in Hartford, L.A. and other urban centers throughout the country, where people have lost their once closely-knit neighborhoods either through urban decay or gentrification, or both.

--Publisher (Curbstone Press)

Here is a novel for people who continue to walk in the light. Major's voice 'tags' the changes that have taken place in the African American community over the last several years. In this book a young artist must learn to sketch life if he is to understand how to live. Brown Glass Windows is a book filled with many colors. The shadows of war and inner-city violence brings its own hue. devorah major writes the way Billie Holiday sings. There are blues behind those brown glass windows. Just ask the spirits that keep reminding us to listen.

--E. Ethelbert Miller, Director of the African American Resource Center, Howard University

Major has crafted a fine story that illuminates the hard jagged-edged hostility, sticky sweet love and powerful weightlessness of the dreams, wishes and regrets of family... I couldn’t help but be moved. Brown Glass Windows  is a damn good novel.
--Thumper, African American Literary Book Club

Not since Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings or April Sinclair’s Coffee Will Make You Black have I read such a fluid, relaxed interpretation of African-American community. Major has painted an exquisit picture of the truths we’ve all known, without intentionally exploiting the ugliness of their realities.”

--San Francisco Weekly

Her prose is lyrical and vivid. She creates characters we understand and care about. As Sketch struggles towards manhood and reconciliation with his father, Major builds the youth’s graffiti paintings into a powerful symbol of strength, remembrance and healing. Teen-age African-American boys will be especially drawn to the father-son relationship.

--Booklist

This unusual urban tale from poet, essayist and novelist Major (An Open Weave) centers on an African-American family in San Francisco's rapidly changing Fillmore District. Administering a heavy dose of magical realism, the narration alternates between the voice of a 300-year-old ghost of an African slave and a more traditional third-person viewpoint (although the two often seem to merge).

The extended Everman family includes Ranger, a Vietnam vet haunted by incidents during the war and plagued by drug addiction; his son, Jamal, known familiarly as Sketch for his artistic talents, which run deeper than the graffiti he tags on the streets; and Ranger's pregnant sister, Dawa, who recalls the ever-shifting history of their neighborhood. When a random act of violence strikes, their fractured past must be addressed head-on. Young Jamal, in particular, finds a way to better understand his father's place in the world, and thus gains a better sense of himself. Serving as a help line is eccentric neighbor Victoria, an old woman who paints herself white and communes with the spirit-narrator.

Some readers will resist the otherworldly narration and symbolism, which can feel disjointed and heavy-handed; others will be intrigued by the depth and history it lends to modern-day San Francisco, the realities of racial prejudice and, above all, the many-layered truths of families.
--Publisher’s Weekly

This is Major's second novel after An Open Weave, which was awarded the Black Caucus of the American Library Association First Novelist Award. Major has also published two books of poetry and has just been named San Francisco's poet laureate. Highly recommended for all libraries.

--Mary Margaret Benson, Library Journal

The walking wounded are at the heart of devorah major's second novel. Although the story encompasses a large and colorful African American family, the focus is on Sketch, a young graffiti artist, and his Vietnam vet father, Ranger, one of "those who were killed in battle but did not die until years later." The Everman family struggles to cope with Ranger's drug problem and Sketch's frustrated acting out.

Setting her tale in San Francisco's Fillmore district, major employs conventional narrative, poetry, and magical realism--some scenes are narrated by a 300-year-old spirit--to touch on themes of war and violence, racism, and gentrification. Her prose is lyrical and vivid, her point-of-view sometimes flitting from character to character like the camera does in an Altman film.

If some dialogue is too expository, it's a minor matter, as the author creates characters we understand and care about. As Sketch struggles toward manhood and reconciliation with his father, major builds the youth's graffiti paintings into a powerful symbol of strength, remembrance, and healing.

--Keir Graff, BookList

Source:Brown Glass Windows

devorah major is a poet, novelist, and essayist from San Francisco, where she works as an editor and arts administrator. Her first poetry publication, traveling women, a two-poet anthology with Opal Palmer Adisa, was published by Juke Box Press in 1989. Her work has been published in several anthologies and magazines, including The Single Mother’s Companion, Practicing Angels, River Styx, Calalloo and Zyzzyva. Her book of poetry, street smarts, was published by Curbstone Press in 1996 and received a PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Award. Her first novel, An Open Weave, was published by Seal Press and was awarded the First Novelist Award from the American Library Association’s Black Caucus. Her novel An Open Weave (Seal Press, 1995) sold out (4000 copies). Brown Glass Windows is her second novel.The Bay Guardian called her fierce/love audio cassette (with Opal Palmer Adisa) "both passionate and powerful."