The Chinaberry Tree

<p><span style=color: rgba(83 90 98 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>How do the people in our lives and beds</span><em style=color: rgba(83 90 98 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)> really</em><span style=color: rgba(83 90 98 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)> see us? Arnold Giovanni a white professor at a black college in a small Southern town has developed an obsessive fascination for black culture and ... black women. Through The Chinaberry Tree the local bar he has been able to befriend several patrons and to eavesdrop on others. Like a sly modern-day Chaucer he has retrieved revealing stories of their journey through the American experience while expertly being in the [black] world but not necessarily of that world.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=color: rgba(83 90 98 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>On Judgment Day however a heated conversation ensues at The Chinaberry Tree and Arnold freely chirps in as one of the guys. This time Bo Willie the bar's co-owner and a Vietnam vet often plagued by flashbacks stops him in his tracks with a simple question.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=color: rgba(83 90 98 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>Those few words launch the stream of consciousness tirade going on inside Arnold's brain when the novel opens spinning him across time dimensions. It's Prufrock on steroids! The tales that follow replay the intricacies of the several lives colonized by Arnold on his personal quest to delve into an authentic black experience.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=color: rgba(83 90 98 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>While he may have secured some points toward becoming a sanctioned part of the we the day of reckoning has come and Arnold is thoroughly initiated and the Universe has spoken: The real will always be out of reach of the fake. Can he bounce back? Should he even try? It's all an invaluable lesson in the human experience. Oh what a world what a world.</span></p>