Sandra Jackson-Opoku is an award-winning poet, fiction writer, screenwriter, and journalist who writes frequently on culture and travel in the African diaspora.
Excerpts from reviews of Sandra Jackson-Opoku's The River Where
Blood Is Born
"Jackson-Opoku displays an intimate knowledge of African and
Caribbean
culture cultures. From African tradition she creates two
powerful
narrators to serve as guides. One, Kwaku Ananse, the spider, will
be
familiar as the antagonist in 'trickster' tales. The other, the
Gatekeeper, welcomes the souls of mothers who cross over from life
to the
Village of the Ancestors. The Gatekeeper mediates between the
ancestral
mothers and the daughters they watch over. . . . In its rivers,
beads,
webs and quilts, the author's story weaving is abundant. . . . The
threads
of each story are as easy to follow as brightly colored stitchery.
. . .
Besides its sheer literary beauty, Jackson-Opoku's story-weaving
will give
readers a new spiritual dimension from which to consider the
meaning of
life."
--Chicago Sun-Times
"This ambitious first novel begins like the voice of an ancient
tribal
storyteller, poetic and mysterious, and we are led through an
intricate
tale involving the lives of several generations of Mother
Africa's
daughters. The novel combines myth and reality as it both strings
the
story beads and weaves ancestral tales of various women such as
Proud
Mary, a captive slave who is savagely punished for her refusal to
give her
daughter up to slavery, and Alma, who is compelled to live out her
destiny
by returning to the place where blood is born."
--Today's Black Woman
"That is the great gift of The River Where Blood Is Born.
Whether
in Ghana or Chicago, Barbados or Nigeria, the resonance of these
voices
rings so true that you think, 'Don't I know you?' And enmeshed in
the web
of their stories we come to a perception of the divine aspect of
these
women's lives, their link to the Queen Mother, The Goddess in
Everywoman."
--Afrique Magazine
"Jackson-Opoku's first novel is an expansive tale that exquisitely
melds
mythical realms together with an historical family saga spanning
centuries
and continents."
--Booklist
First novelist Jackson-Opoku "focuses on strong female characters as they journey through poverty and family conflicts to seek love, fulfillment, justice, and, ultimately, peace" in this part folktale/spiritual/modern romance. (LJ 8/97)
Excerpts from reviews of Sandra Jackson-Opoku's The River Where
Blood Is Born
"Jackson-Opoku displays an intimate knowledge of African and
Caribbean
culture cultures. From African tradition she creates two
powerful
narrators to serve as guides. One, Kwaku Ananse, the spider, will
be
familiar as the antagonist in 'trickster' tales. The other, the
Gatekeeper, welcomes the souls of mothers who cross over from life
to the
Village of the Ancestors. The Gatekeeper mediates between the
ancestral
mothers and the daughters they watch over. . . . In its rivers,
beads,
webs and quilts, the author's story weaving is abundant. . . . The
threads
of each story are as easy to follow as brightly colored stitchery.
. . .
Besides its sheer literary beauty, Jackson-Opoku's story-weaving
will give
readers a new spiritual dimension from which to consider the
meaning of
life."
--Chicago Sun-Times
"This ambitious first novel begins like the voice of an ancient
tribal
storyteller, poetic and mysterious, and we are led through an
intricate
tale involving the lives of several generations of Mother
Africa's
daughters. The novel combines myth and reality as it both strings
the
story beads and weaves ancestral tales of various women such as
Proud
Mary, a captive slave who is savagely punished for her refusal to
give her
daughter up to slavery, and Alma, who is compelled to live out her
destiny
by returning to the place where blood is born."
--Today's Black Woman
"That is the great gift of The River Where Blood Is Born.
Whether
in Ghana or Chicago, Barbados or Nigeria, the resonance of these
voices
rings so true that you think, 'Don't I know you?' And enmeshed in
the web
of their stories we come to a perception of the divine aspect of
these
women's lives, their link to the Queen Mother, The Goddess in
Everywoman."
--Afrique Magazine
"Jackson-Opoku's first novel is an expansive tale that exquisitely
melds
mythical realms together with an historical family saga spanning
centuries
and continents."
--Booklist
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