I been in sorrow's kitchen and licked out all the pots: a novel

Susan Straight

Hyperion, Jun 2, 1992 - Fiction - 355 pages

This remarkable novel follows the life of Marietta Cook from her birthplace in the Gullah-speaking Low Country of South Carolina to Charleston, where she struggles to support her family during the turbulent '60s, and, finally, to California--a country woman in the land of freeways and luxury condominiums.

What people are saying

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - m.belljackson - LibraryThing

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 ...

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - mwhel - LibraryThing

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 the author

Novelist and short story writer Susan Straight graduated from Amherst College in 1984. She teaches Creative Writing at the University of California in Riverside. Aquaboogie, her first collection of short stories, won the Milkweed National Fiction Prize and was one of Publishers Weekly's best paperbacks (1990). I Been in Sorrow's Kitchen and Licked Out All the Pots was named one of 1992's best novels by both Publishers Weekly and USA Today. It was also a New York Times Notable Book.

Bibliographic information

• Title: I been in sorrow's kitchen and licked out all the pots: a novel
• Author: Susan Straight
• Publisher: Hyperion, 1992
• Original from: the University of Michigan
• Digitized: Mar 17, 2008
• ISBN: 1562829637, 9781562829636
• Length: 355 pages
• Subjects: African American women; African American women/ Fiction; African Americans; Afro-American women; Fiction / African American / General; Fiction / General; Social Science / Ethnic Studies / African American Studies; South Carolina