Read This One: Namwali Serpell on Eva’s Man by Gayl Jones

“Name one black female narrator from a film or a novel or even music whom you did not trust, whom you suspected of willful deception. Black women don’t often get to be just bad.”

Three Songs to Enjoy While Reading Eva’s Man:
Nina Simone, “Pirate Jenny” 
Billie Holiday, “I Must Have That Man”
Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, “I Put a Spell On You“

For this series, I ask writers I admire to recommend a book. I read it, then we talk about it. For this installment, Namwali Serpell recommended Eva’s Man by Gayl Jones.

Namwali Serpell is one of the smartest people I know. Reading her work, talking to her, the force of her intelligence is profound, as is her generosity of spirit. Her debut novel The Old Drift is a massive, 563-page epic that takes place over a century, beginning in 1904 and ending in the near future, 2020s Zambia. The novel blends historical fiction with speculative fiction, fact with magical realism, genre tropes with so-called literary tropes. It eschews any single tradition in favor of a multi-faceted form that reveals to us something about how traditions take shape in the first place. It’s a heartbreaking romp. An epic bit of fun. A book to be read and reread. Oh, and did I mention the story is told by a swarm of mosquitos?

Eva’s Man is brutal, and absolutely mesmerizing. The violence it depicts might not be for everyone, but while it disturbed me, I also found it moving. Frustrating. Heartbreaking. Terrifying. It’s my first experience with Gayl Jones, but it won’t be my last. As a warning, our discussion of this novel touches on difficult subjects, including sexual assault and violence against both men and women, which are also depicted in the book.

—Colin Winnette

THE BELIEVER: What were the exact circumstances that led to your picking this book up for the first time, and what was its initial impact?

NAMWALI SERPELL: I’m glad you said “picking this book up” because it allows me to confess that I owned this book for a long time before I actually read it. I bought it in September 2017, prompted, I believe, by an online listicle of female villains in literature that neglected to mention a single black one. Incensed, I Tweeted a list, and this was one of the novels I included. Then I realized, somewhat sheepishly, that I knew that it was about a black female villain only because of a chapter about “shock” in an academic book, Rita Felski’s Uses of Literature. So I bought Eva’s Man to mitigate...