Anna In-between

Fiction. African American Studies. ANNA IN-BETWEEN is Elizabeth Nunez's finest literary achievement to date. In spare prose, with laserlike attention to every word and the juxtaposition of words to each other, Nunez returns to themes of emotional alienation, within the context of class and color discrimination, so richly developed in her earlier novels. Anna, the novel's main character who has a successful publishing career in the United States, is the daughter of an upper-class Caribbean family. While on vacation in the island home of her birth she discovers that her mother, Beatrice, has breast cancer. Beatrice categorically rejects all efforts to persuade her to go to the United States for treatment, even though it is, perhaps, her only chance of survival. Anna and her father, who tries to remain respectful of his wife's wishes, must convince her to change her mind.

Elizabeth Nunez is provost at Medgar Evers College, the City University of New York, and an award-winning author of seven novels, including Prospero's Daughter (New York Times Editors' Choice; 2006 Novel of the Year, Black Issues Book Review) and Bruised Hibiscus (American Book Award). She is coeditor with Jennifer Sparrow of the anthology Stories from Blue Latitudes: Caribbean Women Writers at Home and Abroad. Nunez is executive producer of the 2004 NY Emmy-nominated CUNY TV series Black Writers in America. She divides her time between Amityville, New York, and Brooklyn.