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Tracie Church Guzzio
Rhodes, Jewell Parker (1954– )
Novelist, short fiction writer, and essayist Jewell
Parker Rhodes was born in Pittsburgh, where she
lived through grade three before moving to Cali-
fornia. At age 15 Rhodes returned to Pittsburgh,
where she lived with her grandmother, since her
mother had abandoned the family when Rhodes
was very young. Rhodes, who was addicted to
watching television during her youth, dreamed
of becoming an actress. However, after receiving a
bachelor of arts in drama criticism, a master of arts
in English, and a doctor of arts in English (creative
writing) from Carnegie-Mellon University, she
was inspired to become a writer. Although she had
written short stories in her youth, Rhodes was first
influenced to become a writer after reading GAY L
JONES’s first novel, CORREGIDORA. Rhodes’s other
literary influences include ZORA NEALE HURSTON,
TONI MORRISON, and Charles Dickens.
Like Hurston, Morrison, ISHMAEL REED, and
JOHN EDGAR WIDEMAN, Rhodes was inspired
to create and weave into her work her own folk
magic, as is seen in her first historical novel, Vo o -
doo Dreams: A Novel of Marie Laveau (1993). This
novel is based on the life of voodoo priestess Marie
Laveau of 19th-century New Orleans. Rhodes ad-
mits that in the novel Marie Laveau’s quest for
self-rediscovery becomes “a metaphor for a larger
process of rediscovery of lost [African] traditions
and lost vision” that African Americans have expe-
rienced (Mvuyekure, 402). Spiraling outward from
its center, Voodoo Dreams also focuses on such
themes as sexuality and power, voodoo and Ca-
tholicism, South and North, black and white, and
three generations of folk heroes and heroines, in-
cluding Marie and High John de Conqueror. Not-
ing the novel’s “splendid and deft narrative style,”
HOUSTON A. BAKER, JR., asserts that Rhodes “ably
demonstrates that she possesses as much conjur-
ing literary ability as some of the most outstand-
ing (and more frequently reviewed) writers in the
United States” (158).
Rhodes’s Magic City (1997), reminiscent of
Wideman’s PHILADELPHIA FIRE, examines the 1920
Tulsa, Oklahoma, riot that took place after the
National Guard bombed Greenwood, a thriving
black neighborhood, from the air. Though a fic-
titious account, Rhodes’s underlying themes are
woven into an even larger context of themes of
magic, dream, escape, and survival, as she probes
why blacks migrated to Oklahoma and why whites
allowed a black community to establish itself but
disallowed its economic success and empower-
ment (Mvuyekure, 404).
The winner of several awards, including Urban
Spectrum’s #1 Historical Fiction of the Year,
Rhodes’s finest novel to date, Douglass’ Women
(2002), reinvents the lives of one of the greatest
American heroes and orators of the 19th century,
FREDERICK DOUGLASS, and the two women in his
life—his first wife, Anna Douglass, of 44 years, a
free woman of color who bore him five children,
and his mistress, Ottilie Assing, a German-Jewish
intellectual who simultaneously provided Doug-
lass with the mental companionship he needed.
Rhodes resurrects these two extraordinary his-
torical women to imagine the life they led to-
gether under the same roof of the Douglass home.
Throughout the novel, passion, jealousy, and re-
sentment intertwine as the women negotiate their
shared love for this exceptional and powerful
man. Like other historical novels, such as BARBARA
CHASE-RIBOUD’s Sally Hemings (1979), Rhodes’sRhodes, Jewell Parker 435