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Third Girl from the Left
My mother believed in the power of movies and the people in them to change a life, to change her life.” So explains Tamara, daughter of Angela, granddaughter of Mildred—the three women whose lives are portrayed in stunning detail in Martha Southgate’s
accomplished third novel, Third Girl From The Left.
Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1970 is not a place a smart black girl wants to linger in long. For Angela, twenty years old and beautiful, the stifling conformity is unbearable. She heads to L.A. just as blaxploitation movies are pouring money into the studio and lands a few bit parts before an unplanned pregnancy derails her plans for stardom.
For Mildred, movies have always been a blessed diversion in a life marked by the legacy of the 1921 Tulsa race riot. In the Dreamland Theater, she and Angela sat in rare harmony, enthralled by the images on the screen. But when Angela herself appears onscreen, dancing naked, it breaks Mildred’s proper heart, and a rift ensues. It falls to Tamara, a budding documentarian, to help mother and grandmother confront all that has been left unsaid in their lives.
Reviews for Third Girl from the Left
The New York Times Book Review
Here are two things you'll know for certain
after reading "Third
Girl From the Left": Family communication is important, and there's just about
nothing cooler than a soul sister in 1970's Los Angeles. The novel explores
three generations of headstrong, movie-loving women: Tamara, a struggling
young filmmaker; her mother, Angela, a former Playboy Bunny and
blaxploitation-film extra (she was the "third girl from the left" in the
fight scene in "Coffy"); and Angela's mother, Mildred, a survivor of the
1921 Tulsa race riots who finds brief happiness at the local movie house.
Southgate makes these women imperfect enough to be interesting, but gives
them enough heart so they're sympathetic despite their flaws. Delicious
details abound, but the historical flotsam works especially well in
Angela's section, which includes a saucy trip to Wilt Chamberlain's party
palace. (He'd have been pleased with the enthusiastic review.) Southgate's
characters believe in the power of the big screen to change a life, and
she's spliced in plenty of film references to give their movie lust
authority. These include Tamara's capsule review of a movie about another
estranged family: "I loved 'Ordinary People,' even though I didn't quite
understand it. All that repressed aching and those giant, clean rooms."
New York Newsday
Martha Southgate's vivid, spirited novel "Third
Girl From the Left" is largely about families
- not just the ones we're born into, but the
ones we make for ourselves. But it's also about
movies and the hold they can have on us, sometimes
even despite our better judgment.
The book's most magnetic character, the heart-quickeningly
beautiful Angela, leaves her stifling hometown
of Tulsa, Okla., in 1972 for Hollywood, where
she hopes to make it big in the movies. Instead,
she makes it small in the movies, landing bit
parts in assorted blaxploitation pictures -
her credits include roles such as "Murder
Victim #1" and "Junkie in Park" in
movies such as "Blacula" and "Coffy." Read
More...
Praise for Third Girl from the Left
"I loved Martha Southgate's last novel, The
Fall of Rome, and am happy to say that her
new one is just as gutsy and riveting. Third
Girl From The Left will be justifiably praised
as a fine, pull-no-punches portrait of growing
up black and female in "modern" America,
but what amazes me almost more than Southgate's
daring is her versatility: she can write fast
and hot, then lush and tender, then just plain
truthful and burning with heart. This book
is the best kind of page-turner, layered with
so much authentic detail about family, culture,
and history that it feels both intimate and
epic. What a wonderful story."
—Julia
Glass, author of Three
Junes, winner of the
National Book Award
"Third Girl From
The Left tells the other
side of Hollywood in the Seventies—of
what it means to be black, sexy, smart and
full of dreams in a land where “blaxploitation” is
as literal as it sounds. As intense and serious
as it is fun and fabulous, Southgate’s
eye for detail and matchless sense of scope
once again penetrates a hidden world with devastating
accuracy."
— ZZ Packer,
author of Drinking Coffee Elsewhere
"Third Girl From
The Left is a marvelous combination
of the movies that inspired it. It has all
the elegant pathos of a Douglas Sirk melodrama,
with the electric groove of an early-seventies
James Brown soundtrack."
—Ayelet Waldman,
author of Daughter’s
Keeper
"Martha Southgate's novel is a loving
portrait of three generations of
women, as cinematic as any that has been rendered
on the big screen.
Third Girl From The Left is a powerful testament
to mothers and
daughters and how differently we all dream."
— Veronica Chambers,
author of Miss
Black America
And from Kirkus Reviews: "A compelling
saga of love, film and family secrets...a multigenerational
tale of the loves and ambitions of mothers
and daughters...Like the documentary film that
Tamara eventually makes, Southgate's record
cuts and jumps back between the three plotlines,
which the author deftly weaves into a richly
textured whole.”
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