A portrait of life among poor Black Americans dwelling in the mythical Muskhogean County of northern Georgia explores the world of Baby Sweet, Appalachee Red, Rosiebelle Lee, Sugar Boy, Speck, and other colorful characters

Baby Sweet's

Literature & Fiction

Andrews, Raymond

United States

DOUBLEDAY

Bawdy and sometimes horrifying, hilarious on the way to being tragic, Raymond Andrews's Muskhogean County novels tell of black life in the Deep South from the end of the First World War to the beginning of the 1960s, from the days of mules and white men with bullwhips to the moment when the pendulum began to swing.
Andrews's first novel, Appalachee Red, is one of hard labor in the midday sun and sweet jukebox nights, of howling passion and gunpoint negotiations, of a mean white sheriff and of the enormous red-skinned black man who changed it all.

Appalachee Red

Dial Books

Bawdy and sometimes horrifying, hilarious on the way to being tragic, Raymond Andrews's Muskhogean County novels tell of black life in the Deep South from the end of the First World War to the beginning of the 1960s, from the days of mules and white men with bullwhips to the moment when the pendulum began to swing. Andrews's first novel, Appalachee Red, is one of hard labor in the midday sun and sweet jukebox nights, of howling passion and gunpoint negotiations, of a mean white sheriff and of the enormous red-skinned black man who changed it all.

Appalachee Red: A Novel (Brown Thrasher Books Ser.)

University of Georgia Press

Bawdy and sometimes horrifying, hilarious on the way to being tragic, Raymond Andrews's Muskhogean County novels tell of black life in the Deep South from the end of the First World War to the beginning of the 1960s, from the days of mules and white men with bullwhips to the moment when the pendulum began to swing. This second novel in the trilogy begins in 1906, on the day when a beautiful "acorn-brown" woman arrives in the small North Georgia community of Appalachee asking directions to "the house of the richest white man living in this heah town." Forty years, one hundred acres, four children, numerous grandchildren, and many legends later, Rosiebelle Lee is on her deathbed―and ready to reveal her secrets.

Rosiebelle Lee Wildcat Tennessee: A Novel (Brown Thrasher Books Ser.)

Bawdy and sometimes horrifying, hilarious on the way to being tragic, Raymond Andrews's Muskhogean County novels tell of black life in the Deep South from the end of the First World War to the beginning of the 1960s, from the days of mules and white men with bullwhips to the moment when the pendulum began to swing.This story tells of a venture between John Morgan Jr., the dissolute heir to Appalachee's leading white family, and Baby Sweet Jackson, owner of the once-vibrant Red's Cafe in Dark Town. On Independence Day, 1966, the partners open Muskhogean County's first bordello, with two dark-skinned black women, Lana Lips and Fig, ready for the expected white clientele. Then a mysterious woman, announcing herself as the 'third whore,' arrives―and proclaims that her body will be 'for colored only.'

Baby Sweet's: A Novel (Brown Thrasher Books Ser.)

In this lively memoir, award-winning novelist Raymond Andrews vividly recalls the pleasures and pains of growing up black in rural Georgia in 1930s and 1940s-a time when families gathered together around the radio to listen to mysteries and sports events, when couty fairs and revivals provided riotous relief from the daily routine of country living, and when double features cost a dime. 
With incomparable humor, Andrews describes his preoccupations as a child, such as perfecting the art of running-board jumping, avoiding the local bully, Minnie Pearl Massey, and sneaking peeks into the county jail and the notorious "DeMo's" caf, famous for fried fish, fights, and "sin." Along the way, he also supplies a lost segment of American history, describing the manners, mores, and daily lives of rural blacks-not only the prejudice they encountered but also the sports figures who inspired them, the teachers who educated them, the church that bonded them together, and the local characters who both amused and scandalized them, including guitar-picking, fast-driving, hard-drinking "Tampa Red" and "Old Mrs. Hill," who had been born a slave and inher nineties ran around with a "set of fast girls in their sixties." These and many other intriguing figures people the pages of THE LAST RADIO BABY, an entertaining, informative, and important view of a time and place in our history filtered through the gentle and generous vision of one of its most loveable characters.

The Last Radio Baby

Biographies & Memoirs

Community & Culture

Peachtree Pub Ltd

In these two novellas, Andrews introduces readers to Jessie, a woman so filled with love, lust, and loyalty that she can't see straight, and to Cousin Claire, who can see quite straight--perhaps too straight. Nothing stops these two thoroughly different women who are equally dedicated to getting their way. 10 illustrations.

Jessie and Jesus and Cousin Claire

Humor & Satire

Peachtree

Look out! Here come Jessie Mitchell Blackshear and her equally dangerous double, Cousin Claire. Sexy, smart, and sassy, these powerful African-American women survive and thrive in the male-dominated world of the rural South. Thoroughly different and equally dedicated to getting their way, Jessie and Claire will entertain and amaze you—if they don't swallow you whole! In these two hilarious and hair-raising novellas, Raymond Andrews has painted portraits of two very different black women whose means and modes of manipulation are mirror-opposites of each other, but whose motivations are frighteningly similar. The results—and their impact on those around them—are equally profound.Welcome to the darkly comic world of Jessie &amp; Jesus &amp; Cousin Claire, vividly presented in the rambunctious and rollicking prose of a master storyteller and inspired seer into human nature. Published shortly before Andrews's death in 1991, Jessie &amp; Jesus &amp; Cousin Claire won a 1992 American Book Award.

Jessie & Jesus & Cousin Claire

Comics & Graphic Novels

Graphic Novels

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Books by Andrews, Raymond