CYNTHIA BOND has taught writing to homeless and at-risk youth throughout Los Angeles for more than fifteen years. She attended Northwestern University s Medill School of Journalism, then moved to New York and attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. A PEN/Rosenthal Fellow, Bond founded the Blackbird Writing Collective in 2011. At present, Bond teaches therapeutic writing at Paradigm Malibu Adolescent Treatment Center. A native of East Texas, she lives in Los Angeles with her daughter.
“Channeling the lyrical phantasmagoria of early Toni
Morrison and the sexual and racial brutality of the 20th
century east Texas, Cynthia Bond has created a moving and indelible
portrait of a fallen woman... Bond traffics in extremely difficult
subjects with a grace and bigheartedness that makes for an
accomplished, enthralling read.” —Thomas Chatterton
Williams, San Francisco Chronicle
“A beautifully wrought ghost story, a love story, a survival
story...[A] wonderful debut.” —Angela Flournoy, Los
Angeles Review of Books“Hauntingly beautiful… Bond
wrote Ruby to bear witness for the girls who can't escape
the torture. And to encourage the girls who do to believe that even
after such dark experiences, there can be light”—NPR“Compelling and
vital.” —People“Reading Cynthia Bond’s Ruby, you can’t help
but feel that one day this book will be considered a staple of our
literature, a classic. Lush, deep, momentous, much like the people
and landscape it describes, Ruby enchants not just with its
powerful tale of lifelong quests and unrelenting love, but also
with its exquisite language. It is a treasure of a book, one you
won’t soon forget.”—Edwidge Danticat, author of Claire of the
Sea Light
“Pure magic. Every line gleams with vigor and sound and
beauty. Ruby somehow manages to contain the darkness of
racial conflict and cruelty, the persistence of memory, the
physical darkness of the piney woods and strange elemental forces,
and weld it together with bright seams of love, loyalty,
friendship, laced with the petty comedies of small-town lives. Slow
tragedies, sudden light. This stunning debut delivers and delivers
and delivers.”—Janet Fitch, author of White Oleander
“Ruby is a harrowing, hallucinatory novel, a love story and a
ghost story about one woman’s attempt to escape the legacy of
violence in a small southern town. Cynthia Bond writes with a
dazzling poetry that’s part William Faulkner, part Toni Morrison,
yet entirely her own. Ruby is encircled by shadows, but
incandescent with light.”—Anthony Marra, author of A
Constellation of Vital Phenomena
“From the first sentence, Cynthia Bond’s unforgettable debut
novel, Ruby, took hold of me and it hasn’t let go.
Cynthia Bond has written a book everyone should read, about the
power of love to overcome even the darkest of histories.”—Amy
Greene, author of Bloodroot
“Bond proves to be a powerful literary force, a writer whose
unflinching yet lyrical prose is reminiscent of Toni
Morrison’s.” —O, The Oprah Magazine
“In Ruby, Bond has created a heroine worthy of the great
female protagonists of Toni Morrison…and Zora Neale Hurston… Bond’s
style of writing is as magical as an East Texas
sunrise.” —Dallas Morning News
“Evocative, affective and accomplished… Bond tells the story of
Ruby and Ephram’s lives and their relationship with unflinching
honesty and a surreal, haunting quality.” —Texas
Observer
“Gorgeous… Bond is a gifted writer, powerful and nimble… [I]t’s
tempting to call up Toni Morrison or Alice Walker or Ntozake
Shange. It should be done more as compliment than comparison,
though…Bond’s is a robustly original voice.”
—Barnes and Noble Review
“If you love well-written historical fiction and multifaceted
grown-up characters, put Ruby at the top of your beach
bag... Bond delivers multiple goods with this
one.” —Essence
“Cynthia Bond creates a vibrant chorus of voices united by
a common struggle… [T]he prose’s lyricism and Ruby’s
interaction with the dead call to mind Beloved… While Bond’s
characters may sense the inevitability of loss and loneliness, they
are also driven by something else, a timid hopefulness that they
may find serenity and compassion amid the ghosts who haunt
them.” —The Rumpus“A testament to the power of the human
spirit.” —Bustle“Exquisite, juxtaposing horrific imagery with
dreamy evocative lyricism.”
—Lambda Literary
“Literary magic.” —St. Louis American
“Ruby explores the redeeming power of love in the face of
horrific trauma… If the truth shall set us free, Ms. Bond shows us,
in her story of grace, that love is truth.” —Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette
“[A] dark and redemptive beauty... Bond’s prose is evocative of
Alice Walker and Toni Morrison, paying homage to the greats of
Southern gothic literature.”
—Library Journal (starred)
“[A] powerful, explosive novel. Bond immerses readers in a fully
realized world, one scarred by virulent racism and perverted
rituals but also redeemed by love.”
—Booklist (starred)
“An unusual, rare and beautiful novel that is meant to be
experienced as much as read.” —Shelf
Awareness (starred)
“A stunning debut. Ruby is unforgettable.” —John
Rechy, author of City of Night
“Cloaked in authenticity, Ruby is unlike anything else
out there right now.”
—Windy City Times“A fierce and poetic tale.”—The Chronicle Herald
(CA)“Many will compare Ruby to the work of Toni Morrison
or Zora Neale Hurston…It may be most apt to compare Bond to
Gabriel García Márquez. Ruby is woven with magical
realism…Luminous.”—The Guardian (UK)“Impeccably
crafted… Ruby is undoubtedly the early work of a master
storyteller whose literary lyricism is nothing short of pitch
perfect.” —BookPage“[A] daring, lushly written debut…Bond
rightly insists that these stories must be heard. .. Readers can
take heart as they see Ruby and Ephram stand up to brutality and
small-mindedness, finding courage and thus a freedom that can never
be taken from them. In their actions, they capture Bond’s own
heartfelt hope: ‘If there is a message in my book, it’s that we
will always rise.’”—Library Journal“Bracing....Undeniable....The
echoes of Alice Walker and Toni Morrison are clear....A very strong
first novel that blends tough realism with the appealing
strangeness of a fever dream.” —Kirkus
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