![]() ![]() In comparison, Eleanor’s challenges seem less pressing. She has one shot at a scholarship that will pave the road out. Ruby dreams of becoming an ophthalmologist so that she can help people like Nene and break the cycle of low-paying cleaning jobs that chain the women in her family. ![]() Her stability comes from Nene, the grandmother who raised her but is now blind, and Marie, the no-nonsense aunt who takes Ruby in whenever Inez throws her out. Ruby is an excellent student and talented painter who’s being held back by poverty, family obligations, and Inez, her cold, angry mother. Opening in 1948, Eve’s chapters alternate between telling the story of Ruby, a high school student growing up poor in Philadelphia, and Eleanor, a lower-middle-class girl from Ohio attending Howard University in Washington, DC. In many ways, Eve is a spiritual sequel to Wife, underlining the racism, classism, and gaping opportunity gaps that have spilled from slavery and leached like a vast oil slick across centuries, contaminating all in its path. At the same time, the connection highlights how the 100-plus years separating the two tales is not nearly long enough to repair the generational trauma of chattel slavery. For her fans, there’s the delicious frisson that comes from understanding the reference. There’s a moment near the end of Sadeqa Johnson’s latest novel, The House of Eve, that makes direct reference to characters in her previous novel, Yellow Wife, thus linking the two stories. ![]()
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