The Fall of Rome
The Fall of Rome tells the story of Jerome Washington, the sole black faculty member at the Chelsea School, an exclusive New England boys’ boarding school. From his perch in the Classics department, Washington lectures about the glories of Roman Civilization. Washington is a rigorous, difficult and lonely man who has spent much of his career trying not to appear too “racial” to his white colleagues.
Into his classroom steps Rashid Bryson, a bright, appealing young African-American who mistakenly assumes that the black teacher will be an ally. In the end, Rashid forces Jerome to examine his own self-hatred, and as a tragic triangle forms between these two men and Jana Hansen, a new white female teacher, the stage is set for a painful confrontation.
A 2002 Discover Great New Writers Selection at  Barnes and Noble.
Purchase the book from Amazon.com.
Winner of a 2003
Alex Award from the American Library Association |
Praise for The Fall of Rome
“Southgate wrestles admirably with a thorny topic”
—Library Journal
“An elegantly written tale…”
—Kirkus Reviews
"It’s hard to think of another novel that has put the varieties of black striving and white piety so relentlessly under the microscope. What we find squirming there is never exactly what we expect: Striving, it turns out, can be a kind of piety, and vice versa. The wonder is that, in Southgate’s hands, the characters who embody these ideas are never hollow constructions but painfully real people grinding toward (or away from) their fate. That they never waste our interest, or deserve less than our full attention, makes each of them—and makes Southgate too, for that matter—a figure to be reckoned with, a voice we had best get to know"
—Jesse Green, author of The Velveteen Father
"This is a deeply thoughtful, literate novel and Southgate's ability to explore the social and emotional elements that unite and divide us establishes her as a serious talent."
—Publishers Weekly
"Quietly accomplished..."
—Lisa Shea, The Oprah Magazine |
