Paperback Edition
ISBN: 9780935312409
Publication Date: 09-01-1985

Afterword by Nellie McKay, Johnnetta B. Cole, and Elizabeth H. Oakes
Other Contributors: Elizabeth Sandberg

First published in 1955 and nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, this novel revolves around a pair of stubborn adolescent girls who refuse to accept the racism and anti-Semitism of their respective communities. Their courage allows them to question and to cross over into the no-man’s land of segregated urban neighborhoods, claimed most recently by Jews, but now, in the early fifties, increasingly by African-Americans. The New York Times praised “the power with which the author reveals the impact of [racial] struggle on the new generation, whose survival lies in their power to love.”

“With flowing narrative art, [Jo Sinclair] has explored one of today's major problems—the integration of different racial and cultural groups. . . The best thing in the novel is the power with which the author reveals the impact of this struggle on the new generation, whose survival lies in their power to love. . . In Judith, the author has created a portrait of a new kind of teen-age gang leader, so imaginatively realized that she transcends mere realism.” —New York Times

"Miss Sinclair offers a yeasty segment of American life. . . There is compassion here and there is deep understanding. Best of all, there is here a book you can take to your heart." —Saturday Review

"This is a novel that does not let anyone off the 'hook,' but which also does not trivialize or simplify the search for solutions. . . The novelist has turned the spotlight of searching inquiry, not on a period of time past, but on time present and time to come." —Nellie McKay, from the Afterword