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You Know Better: A Novel Kindle Edition
As the tiny town of Mulberry, Georgia, celebrates its spring Peach Blossom Festival, things are far from peachy for three generations of Pines women.
Eighteen-year-old LaShawndra, who wants nothing more out of life than to dance in a music video, has messed up again -- but this time she isn't sticking around to hear about it. Not that her mother seems to care: Sandra is too busy working on her career and romancing a local minister to notice. It's LaShawndra’s grandmother Lily Paine Pines who is out scouring the streets at midnight looking for her granddaughter. But Lily discovers she is not alone. A ghost of a well-known Mulberry pioneer is coming out of the shadows.
Over the course of one weekend, these three disparate women, guided by the wisdom of three unexpected spirits, will learn to face the pain of their lives and discover that with reconciliation comes the healing they all desperately seek. You Know Better brilliantly portrays the fissures in modern African American family life to reveal the indestructible soul that bonds us all.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherHarperCollins e-books
- Publication dateOctober 13, 2009
- File size849 KB
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About the Author
Novelist Tina McElroy Ansa calls herself "part of a writing tradition, one of those little Southern girls who always knew she wanted to be a writer." She grew up in Middle Georgia in the 1950s hearing her grandfather's stories on the porch of her family home and strangers' stories downtown in her father's juke joint, which have inspired Mulberry, Georgia, the mythical world of her four novels.
Tina McElroy Ansa was born in Macon, GA, the youngest of five children. In 1971, she graduated from Spelman College, the historically black women's college which is part of the Atlanta University Center in Atlanta, GA. Her first job after college was on the copy desk of The Atlanta Constitution, where she was the first black woman to work on the morning newspaper. During her eight years at The Atlanta Constitution, she worked as copy editor, makeup editor, layout editor, entertainment writer, features editor, and news reporter. She also worked as editor and copy editor for The Charlotte (NC) Observer. Since 1982, she has been a freelance journalist, newspaper columnist and writing workshop instructor at Brunswick College, Emory University and Spelman College.
Tina McElroy Ansa's fourth novel, You Know Better, will be published in Spring 2002 by William Morrow Publishers. The novel addresses the contemporary issues of children today, the tenuous ties we are building with them, and how we can reclaim them.
Ms. Ansa's first novel, Baby of the Family, was published in 1989 by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich and was named a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times. Baby of the Family was also on the African-American Bestseller List for Paperback Fiction. In October 2001, Baby of the Family was chosen by the Georgia Center for the Book as one of the Top 25 Books Every Georgian Should Read. The book also won both the American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults in 1990 Award, and won the 1989 Georgia Authors Series Award. She and her husband, AFI (American Film Institute) Fellow filmmaker Joneé Ansa, are currently adapting Baby of the Family for the screen as a feature film starring Alfre Woodard, Ruby Dee, Loretta Devine, Sheryl Lee Ralph, Cylk Cozart, Vanessa Williams, Todd Bridges, Pam Grier, and Tonea Stewart. The author is collaborating with her husband on the screenplay for Baby of the Family, which he will direct and shoot in summer 2002 in Macon, GA. Ms. Ansa is executive producer. Patrice Rushen is the film's composer.
Harcourt Brace published Ms. Ansa’s second novel, Ugly Ways, in July 1993. The African-American Blackboard List named the novel Best Fiction in 1994. Ms. Ansa was nominated for an NAACP Image Award in 1994 for Ugly Ways and the novel was on the African-American Best-sellers/Blackboard List for more than two years. Award-winning actress Alfre Woodard has entered into a partnership with Ms. Ansa to bring Ugly Ways to the screen.
The Hand I Fan With, her third novel, was published in October of 1996 by Doubleday. This is the beautifully erotic love story of Lena McPherson and the 100-year old ghost -- Herman -- she calls up to love and cherish her. The novel was awarded the Georgia Authors Series Award for 1996. Ms. Ansa also won this same award for her debut novel, Baby in the Family, and is the only two-time winner of the honor.
Tina McElroy Ansa is a regular contributor to the award-winning television series CBS Sunday Morning with her essays, "Postcards from Georgia." She also writes magazine and newspaper articles, Op-Ed pieces and book reviews for the Los Angeles Times, (New York) Newsday, The Atlanta Constitution, and the Florida Times-Union. Her non-fiction work has appeared in Essence Magazine, The Crisis Magazine, MS. Magazine, America Magazine, and Atlanta Magazine.
Tina McElroy Ansa was a Writer-in-Residence at her alma mater Spelman College in Atlanta, GA in the Fall of 1990 where she also taught creative writing. In addition to touring for her books and giving lectures, she has presented her work at the Smithsonian's African-American Center's Author's Series; the Richard Wright/Zora Neale Hurston Foundation; the PEN/Faulkner Reading Series and fundraisers at the Folger Shakespeare Library, the Schomburg Center and the PEN American Center. She is on the Advisory Council for the Georgia Center for the Book and on the host committee for the Flannery O'Connor Awards.
Reflecting her concern with the issue of homelessness in this country, she has participated in fund-raising events including readings at the SOS-sponsored Writers Harvest at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, GA and at the University of Georgia in Athens, GA. She has also volunteered for fundraisers and house-buildings for Habitat for Humanity and has read at Atlanta-based fundraisers for Aid to Children of Imprisoned Mothers.
She and her husband, Joneé Ansa, have lived on St. Simons Island, GA since 1984. Together they produced and directed the 1989 Georgia Sea Island Festival, a 20-year old grassroots festival that seeks to preserve crafts, music, slave chants, games, food and the spirit of the African-American people who lived and worked as slaves on the rice and cotton plantations along the Georgia coast. Ms. Ansa is an avid birder, amateur naturalist, and gardener. She always has collard greens growing in her garden among the black-eyed Susans and moonflowers.
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Product details
- ASIN : B0018ND88Y
- Publisher : HarperCollins e-books; Perennial ed. edition (October 13, 2009)
- Publication date : October 13, 2009
- Language : English
- File size : 849 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Print length : 340 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #314,426 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #255 in Black & African American Literary Fiction
- #2,503 in Contemporary Literary Fiction
- #6,304 in Family Life Fiction (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
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- Reviewed in the United States on January 10, 2015I thought this book was a slow read but this book was so full of wisdom & guidance. It was a spiritual & inspirational read. I recommend to all ladies that hasn't discovered their purpose in life and needs guidance & words of inspiration...
- Reviewed in the United States on January 12, 2025I like this authors connection to the spiritual world and how she weaves their existence into the story. Even if you're living right, this book will inspire you to do better. Go live a great life!
- Reviewed in the United States on June 23, 2021Love her works!
- Reviewed in the United States on July 28, 2013This is my second time reading this book and I love it this time a little better because I was able to read it on my tablet. The book is excellent no matter where you read it.
- Reviewed in the United States on May 26, 2002This is the first novel by Tina McElroy Ansa that I've read and, I suspect--judging from the reviews in the press--that it's not by any means her best. It's hard to compare "You Know Better" to anything else I've read: its technique and style are original (and occasionally brilliant), but the substance of the novel is a bit shallow and, in the end, excessively preachy. The book was good enough, however, to make me want to read another of Ansa's novels.
"You Know Better" relates a day in the life of Lily Paine Pines, her daughter Sandra, and her granddaughter LaShawndra--three women in the Georgia town of Mulberry whose lives are thrown into disarray after LaShawndra commits an unspecified crime. (Ansa tries to lend an aura of mystery and suspense as to the nature of the crime, but the secret, when it is revealed, is a bit of a let-down.) Each woman is visited by a different "ghost of Mulberry past"--three recently departed denizens who resemble the women who are still living and who want to help this troubled family experience the successes and avoid the mistakes they made during their own lives. None of the Pines women realize, however, that their traveling companions are dead.
I nearly gave up on this book after the first 80 pages (although I'm glad I didn't). The author divides the novel into three nearly equal parts, with each woman narrating one section. Although Ansa is extraordinarily adept at distinguishing between the three voices (from the patient schoolmarmish tone of the elder Pines woman to the hip-hop banter of the granddaughter), the grandmother tends to speak in annoying cliches ("third time's the charm," "bless her little heart," "pretty as a picture," "not a pretty picture") and groan-worthy truisms that never deserved to see the light of print ... Yes, it's the way my Texan grandmother speaks as well, but reading 100 pages of it is a bit painful.
The novel gets much better, though. One of the book's accomplishments is the author's ability to keep things interesting even though everything takes place in cars, as the three women are driving around Georgia talking to their ghost companions and reflecting on their family problems. Naturally, the three still-living women make much of the differences between them, but Ansa delights in making obvious how similar they are. And it's that similarity that, in the end, brings them to their salvation.
- Reviewed in the United States on June 21, 2023Book was in excellent condition. I would buy from this book company anytime.
- Reviewed in the United States on May 30, 2015This author is one of my favorites. She has a quick wit and a wonderful way of crafting her characters. The dialogue does not disappoint.
- Reviewed in the United States on January 10, 2014Always a pleasure to read Ms McElroy Ansa' s work. Love the humor and the human of her writing. BIG FAN!