Payback by Penny Mickelbury

Description World War II ended less than 10 years ago, and the Korean War less than one. But no one has recovered from wartime privations, especially the Colored soldiers who fought a ruthless enemy on foreign lands, expecting to return home with all the rights and privileges of American citizenship. But those rights and privileges remain few and far between, and Mickelbury’s cast of characters find themselves reflecting on the Harlem they call home: they are educated and unschooled; wealthy and desperately poor; committed to improving circumstances for Negroes and abjectly hopeless. They create a family of and for themselves—women, men, children, gays, and the proudly self-named. They commit themselves to helping create a world to benefit their people based on hard work, artistic expression, and faith in their community. They have learned to live in the larger world by the guiding principles: Each One Teaches One, and Harm to One is Harm to All—because in this neighborhood, payback will always be swift and painful. “The combination of Mickelbury’s skilled storytelling and complex characters makes Payback a rich, fast-moving, feminist adventure.” —Judith Katz, Sinister Wisdom “Original, skillfully crafted, memorably entertaining, Payback by Penny Mickelbury is an extraordinary novel that while a work of fiction, accurately presents a very particular segment of 20th Century African-American history—Americans of color who served at their peril in America’s wars and still were subject to racism and discrimination upon their return home. One of those novels that will linger in the mind and memory long after the book is finished and set back upon the shelf.” —Midwest Book Review PENNY MICKELBURY is a trailblazing author and an award-winning playwright. She is a two-time Lambda Literary Award finalist, was a writer in residence at Hedgebrook Women Writers Retreat, and is a recipient of the Audre Lorde Estate Grant. In 2001 she was awarded the Gold Pen Award for Best Mystery/Thriller from the Black Writers Alliance, and the Prix du Roman d’Adventures from Les Éditions du Masque. In 2017, she was commissioned by the Jo Howarth Noonan Foundation for the Performing Arts to write a ten-minute play in celebration of “women of a certain age”. Before focusing on literary pursuits, Penny was a pioneering newspaper, radio, and television reporter, based primarily in Washington, D.C., wrote journalistic non-fiction, and was a frequent contributor to such publications as Black Issues Book Review, Africana.com, and the Washington Blade.