The Women's Review of Books, April 1st, 1998
Paradise starts with a gunshot: "They shoot the white girl
first." It is fired by one of nine men who carry, guns, rope, a palm leaf
cross and handcuffs to stampede or kill four women at the "Convent,"
seventeen miles away from Ruby, Oklahoma. But we do not return to this
gunshot until the novel's final chapter.
The violence that starts the novel is the climax of years of distrust
between the male leaders of the black town of Ruby, who are unable to
"tolerate anybody but themselves." and the four anarchic women who live off
the sale of produce, pies and herbs at the decayed mansion w...
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