A Woman's Worth

March 8, 2004
After two steamy contemporary romances (Black Coffee
; Chocolate Sangria
), Price-Thompson changes course (slightly), tackling issues of female circumcision, racial identity and cultural difference in this raunchy, provocative novel. Bishop Johnson was born in a brothel in Alabama and grew up surrounded by liquor, gambling and sex. As a teenager, his parents are killed in a gunfight, and he is sent by the state to live with his abusive uncle. Luckily, he meets a kind family that takes him in and offers him a stable home, but when he beats the local white bully in a fair fight, he must leave town in order to protect his newfound family. He joins the Peace Corps and travels to Kenya, where his world is irrevocably changed. Here he meets Abeni, daughter of a powerful chief, who was forced at age five to undergo the painful genital circumcision rites that are believed to keep women pure until marriage. For Abeni, the ritual throws her into a state of agonizing mental confusion. When a family friend "ruins" her purity, she is sent to a sympathetic doctor, whose efforts to help her end in tragedy. Years of rebellious, frantic sex follow, but Abeni finally gives up her pleasureless trysts and meets and marries Bishop. When their own daughter is threatened with the same initiation rites Abeni endured as a child, she and Bishop are forced to confront their cultural differences and make a choice that will affect the future of their daughter, their relationship and their own lives. Price-Thompson gives weighty issues a tabloid-style spin ("When it comes to circumcising little girls, I'm one narrow-minded motherfucker!") and her prose veers from eloquent to purple, but her passion shines through, making this a charged page-turner. 4-city author tour.