Phyllis Quaddan
7077 Hollywood Blvd. #795
LA, CA 90028

November 16, 1998

Dear Phyllis,

I'm delighted to enclose a galley of City of One by Francine Cournos. This is a powerful and beautifully written memoir about growing up without parents, and ultimately about the way the self negotiates in the world. I found it incredibly moving, and hope you'll agree, and feel inclined to offer us a comment for our jacket.

If you should decide to comment, I'll need to hear from you by early December.

Sincerely,

Jane Gialkowsky
Editor

75 years of Independent Publishing
Tel: 212-345-6500 / Fax: 212-879-0823

There's no way we're going back to Naipaul right now. We're much more fascinated by this monster of a woman throwing her books out in the rain. We look her up on the Internet.

Phyllis Quaddan
A native of Ghana, Phyllis Quaddan emigrated to the United States, at the age of six with her family. Her first book, Pillows Weep for Me: A Black Woman's Odyssey Through Depression, was published in 1998 by W.W. Norton & Co. to great acclaim. It was the first book published by an African-American to address the topic of depression. The Washington Post hailed the book as "a vividly textured flower of a memoir that will surely stand as one of the finest to come along in years." As a result of this groundbreaking work, Phyllis Quaddan was featured on The Today Show, Lifetime Television for Women, ABC World News Tonight, and she was the subject of two documentaries on the topic of depression. Phyllis Quaddan was also chosen by the National Mental Health Association to be the national spokesperson for their "Campaign on Clinical Depression," an initiative that specifically targeted African American women and was launch in cooperation with organizations such as the National Council of Negro, the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority and the National Association of Black Social Workers.

Phyllis Quaddan is the editor of the anthology: Turning American: Personal Essays by First Generation Immigrant Women, which is forthcoming from W.W. Norton & Co. in July 2002. Currently, she is completing a creative nonfiction book for Riverhead, which will be published in 2004 and writing a novel for the young adult market. She lives in Los Angeles.

…

Take a random sequence of events, choose a point, use it as an axis around which to mirror the narrative, a stalk to attach the petals of a paper flower, you have an Event Rose.

If there would only be a book with pages opening – first one from left to right, next from down up, next from right to left, then from up downwards and in a cyclical counter-clockwise motion, like loves-me-loves-me-not plucking of a daisy all the way to the bare stalk of the explanation – cold and irritating, implying the way the rest of the piece is supposed to unravel, not questioning the sequence of parts, the anticipation of the reader gets enhanced by knowing in which order new segments will appear. This sharpens the edge of the content, cuts both ways, one can use it to cut or to get cut on – one hands a knife to the other holding it by the blade – it is a custom, Roman or Japanese, Trinidadian or African…

To keep the appearance of consistency the author is at this point forced to give out the ending. A reader can choose whether to read through or skip it and return to it later.

- to be read after reading the rest of the story –

N. & O. will never finish their Naipaul essay. They'll decide it's not worth it. They are unworthy. He's not worth it. The reader is free to choose.

Wet books will eventually get dry. N. & O. will clean the covers with rubbing alcohol. One can never be too cautious about other people's ailments. First one the two of them will start to read will be the Abnormal Psychology. It's a large book with lots of disturbing images, so they'll read it in their bed, before going to sleep, as a bedtime story.

The woman who got rid of her books, the writer (brown, rather than black), N. & O. will see her in the hall, one afternoon, while picking up their mail.

She'll be standing on the top of the stairs. It's only one floor but for a moment they'll think she might be considering throwing herself down. Then they'll notice she's with a man who's kissing her neck, holding one hand on her breast. Phyllis will be smiling and the reader will imagine the rest.

In 2001. V. S. Naipaul will receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. In 1994. he'll write “A Way in the World”, a novel.