Maxine Clair (1939–2025) was born and raised in Kansas City, Kansas. She was the author of the poetry collection Coping with Gravity and the novel The October Suite. On its first publication, in 1994, Rattlebone received both the Literary Award from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize.
As the African American literary canon grows and is defined and refined, a few bright sparks of creativity continue that eternal pattern of being obscured, whether by evolving tastes or by brighter lights. Maxine Clair’s coming-of-age novel in stories, Rattlebone, is one of those books that deserves to be brought out of the shadows of African American literature and back into the spotlight it so rightly deserves.
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A Reconsideration of Maxine Clair’s Rattlebone.
Maxine Clair
“How rare it is to find a book that contains such indelible characters, and such enormity of heart. Welcome back, Rattlebone, may you get all the love and attention you have long deserved.” —Ann Patchett
Too long unavailable, this luminous classic of small-town life in the segregated 1950s has “magic dust sprinkled over each and every page” (Veronica Chambers, New York Times Book Review).