In this inspiring memoir, the award-winning playwright and
bestselling author of "What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day"
reminisces on the art of juggling marriage, motherhood, and politics
while working to become a successful writer.Â
In addition to being one of the most popular
living playwrights in America, Pearl Cleage is a bestselling
author with an Oprah Book Club pick and multiple awards to her
credit. But there was a time when such stellar success seemed
like a dream. In this revelatory and deeply personal work,
Cleage takes readers back to the 1970s and '80s, retracing her
struggles to hone her craft amidst personal and professional
tumult.Â
Though born and raised in Detroit, it was
in Atlanta that Cleage encountered the forces that would most
shape her experience. Married to Michael Lomax, now head of the
United Negro College Fund, she worked with Maynard Jackson,
Atlanta's first African-American mayor. "Lies, Lessons &
Love Affairs" charts not only the political fights, but also the
pull she began to feel to focus on her own passions, including
writing--a pull that led her away from Lomax as she grappled
with ideas of feminism and self-fulfillment. This fascinating
memoir follows her journey from a columnist for a local weekly
(bought by Larry Flynt) to a playwright and Hollywood script
writer, an artist at the crossroads of culture and politics whose
circle came to include luminaries like Richard Pryor, Avery Brooks,
Phylicia Rashad, Shirley Franklin, and Jesse Jackson. By the time
Oprah Winfrey picked "What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day" as a
favorite, Cleage had long since arrived as a writer of
renown.Â
In the tradition of greats like Susan
Sontag, Joan Didion, and Nora Ephron, Cleage's self-portrait
raises women's confessional writing to the level of great literature.
