Suspicion spreads across the two campuses, threatening Gen and her friend Fenton, the gay theater director at Baines.
Instead, she’s mourning the break-up of a long-distance relationship with another woman-a romance she has tightly guarded, even from her straight female mentor.ĭanger hits close to home when a nearby men’s college uncovers a “homosexual circle” involving its faculty, staff, and students.
With two strikes against her-she’s a woman in a men’s field, and she’s a race traitor who teaches “Negro history”-Gen has accomplished the near-impossible and should be celebrating. In rural Virginia in 1958, history professor Gen Rider has just secured tenure at Baines College, a private school for white women. Sky is then faced with the choice of finishing what she started with Zenobia years ago, or choosing to fight for the relationship she is building with her new love, Grace. This is amplified by the pressure Sky feels to come out to her family and friends back in Durham.ĭuring these turbulent times, Zenobia comes back into Sky’s life. But there is turmoil between the two which is exacerbated by Sky’s “would be” husband’s stalking and continued obsession with her. An invite to Ola’s party puts Sky in contact with Grace Webster and it is love at first sight.
In the Bronx, Sky runs into a childhood friend, Ola, who had moved to the area after leaving elementary school in Durham. But it is 1986, and Sky is determined to live her own life, so she gathers her courage, leaves the groom at the altar, and moves to New York City, the Bronx, where she has acquired a teaching job and an apartment. When college is completed, Sky returns home to her domineering mother-who has promised her hand in marriage to a rich and arrogant man-her loving but docile father, and to her big brother who is satisfied with keeping the status quo. But their affair is brief and interrupted by Zenobia’s sudden departure from Roger Williams. While attending Roger Williams University, she works not only on her degree, but she also works on shedding many of the things that peg her as a southerner.Īt university, Sky rooms with sexy, vibrant Zenobia whom she ultimately falls head over heels in love with solidifying what she had felt in her heart all along-she loved women. To escape the restraints of her southern upbringing, Sky flees to Rhode Island to attend college. Sky Valentine is a young, African American woman who lives in Durham, North Carolina, and she is tired of being boxed in by small minds and southern expectations.
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