Liliane: Resurrection of the Daughter

The author of the hit play For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf proves once again her talent for creating complex, provocative black female characters with Liliane: Resurrection of the Daughter. Her ambitious third novel draws a marvelously rich portrait of a volatile young artist struggling for her sanity. The story is told in dramatic dialogues between Liliane and her analyst, interspersed with stream-of-consciousness monologues by Liliane, her friends, and a few of her many lovers. Persistence rewards the reader with clues to Liliane's childhood in an upper-middle-class black family, the family's involvement in the civil rights movement, and the story of her mother's tragic death when Liliane was a child. When another artist, Roxie, is brutally murdered by a violent lover in front of Roxie's child, Liliane begins to resurrect the truth about her own mother. Unfortunately, Shange resolves this story line too hastily, leaving frustrating gaps in an otherwise funny, seductive, and seditious book. B-