Ansa, Tina McElroy 1949-

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ANSA, Tina McElroy 1949-

PERSONAL: Born November 18, 1949, in Macon, GA; daughter of Walter J. McElroy (in business) and Nellie McElroy (a teacher's assistant; maiden name, Lee); married Jonee Ansa, May 1, 1978; children: Afrika. Education: Spelman College, B.A., 1971. Hobbies and other interests: Gardening, the environment.

ADDRESSES: Office—P.O. Box 20602, St. Simons Island, GA 31522.

CAREER: Copy editor, editor, feature writer, and news reporter for Atlanta Constitution and Charlotte Observer; Clark College, Atlanta, GA, instructor on mass media; Spelman College, Brunswick, GA, writing workshop supervisor; Sea Island Writers Retreats, Sapelo Island, GA, founder, 2004—.

MEMBER: Authors Guild.

AWARDS, HONORS: Georgia Authors Series Award, 1989, for Baby of the Family, and 1996, for The Hand I Fan With; American Library Association award for best literature for young adults, 1990, for Baby of the Family; inductee, International Literary Hall of Fame for Writers of African Descent, Gwendolyn Brooks Center of Chicago State University, 2002; Stanley W. Lindberg Award, 2005, for body of work and contributions to the Georgia literary community.

WRITINGS:

Not Soon Forgotten: Cotton Planters and Plantations of the Golden Isles of Georgia, 1784-1812, Coastal Georgia Historical Society, c. 1987.

Baby of the Family (novel), Harcourt (San Diego, CA), 1989.

Ugly Ways (novel), Harcourt (San Diego, CA), 1993.

The Hand I Fan With, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1996.

You Know Better (novel), Morrow (New York, NY), 2002.

Contributor to newspapers and magazines, including New York Newsday, Essence, Ms., Los Angeles Times Book Review, and Florida Times-Union.

WORK IN PROGRESS: Script for film version of Baby of the Family.

SIDELIGHTS: Georgia native Tina McElroy Ansa is author of the novels Baby of the Family, Ugly Ways, The Hand I Fan With, and You Know Better. Baby of the Family, set in the 1950s, tells of an African-American girl coming of age in a small town in Georgia. The girl, Lena McPherson, is born with a caul on her face, which is believed to be a sign that she possesses special wisdom and the ability to see and talk to ghosts. Lena's mother is too modern to accept her daughter's supposed powers, however, and Lena—who does encounter ghosts—grows up confused and sometimes fearful of her gift. By adolescence, she has generated an aversion toward her special ability, feeling a strong desire to be "normal."

Baby of the Family is about more than Lena's second sight, however, and as Deb Robertson explained in Booklist, the author manages to interject Lena's magic "without distracting from an otherwise affecting and entertaining tale." "Along the way," observed Nina Burleigh in Chicago Tribune Books, "Lena discovers all the things children learn whether they are supposed to or not: lessons about the fleeting nature of girlhood friendships, the pleasures of sex, a mother's broken heart, the insidiousness of racism and the effects of alcohol." Commenting on the style of the work, New York Times Book Review contributor Valerie Sayers found that "the story has a nubby, homespun texture that is unpretentious and engaging" and that "Ms. Ansa's rich descriptive passages are evocative, often poetic, but they are sometimes broken by unnecessary shifts in point of view or by the sudden interruption of exposition in intense emotional scenes." Sayers concluded that the novel "offers dense rich scenes of black Southern life, scenes deeply felt by the characters who act them out. Tina McElroy Ansa tells a good quirky story, and she tells it with humor, grace and great respect for the power of the particular."

In Ugly Ways, the three daughters of Mudear Lovejoy prepare for the funeral of their recently deceased mother, reflecting on their upbringing and how it affected their lives. Reacting to her husband's tyranny, Mudear had abandoned all cooking and cleaning activity when her daughters were young, would only leave her house under the cover of darkness, and spent her time watching television and ordering her children around. Mudear's daughters find that although their mother's behavior may have impaired their ability to love, they have her to thank for their self-reliance and sense of dignity. Describing the work as "jangling, slightly mystical, [and] extremely feminine," Booklist contributor Donna Seaman concluded that Ansa "has once again infused African American family life with a curious sense of magic and destiny."

Ansa returned to the story of Lena McPherson in 1996's The Hand I Fan With. In this novel, Lena is in her mid-forties and has earned the title's sobriquet by having become absolutely essential to the people of her community. She is also the wealthy owner of a real estate agency, a mansion, and fine horses, but she is essentially alone. Her parents have died in a car crash, and her older brothers have perished from heart disease. She seemingly never found the time to find a husband and start a family, and her one good friend, named Sister, is about to leave town on a year's sabbatical. Before she leaves, however, she and Lena engage in a supernatural ritual designed to attract Lena's perfect man—but Lena's perfect man is apparently a one-hundred-year-old ghost named Herman. Granted a body for one year—the term of Sister's sabbatical—Herman uses that year to teach Lena how to take care of her own needs, and that even though her family members have departed, they are still all around her. Natasha A. Tarpley reported in the Washington Post Book World that "Ansa creates an absolutely delicious love story" in The Hand I Fan With, "delicious because Lena and Herman love one another with all of their senses." Tarpley went on to conclude that "in the intersection of the spirit world with the everyday life of the living, Ansa shows us how we are connected to our ancestors; how we are never alone, with the spirits of our families and loved ones standing ever near."

In 2002, Ansa came forth with yet another novel set in Mulberry, You Know Better. This story is told in the personas of three generations of African-American women. LaShawndra is the youngest, a promiscuous eighteen-year-old whose biggest dream is to dance in a music video. Her mother, Sandra, is possibly to blame for her daughter's problems; she is self-absorbed and obsessed with staying young. Sandra's mother, Lily, is concerned about her granddaughter, but according to a Publishers Weekly reviewer, "overplays the religion card." In the judgment of Booklist critic Lillian Lewis, however, with You Know Better, Ansa has once more "done a superb job of weaving the supernatural and natural into an engrossing tale about women and relationships."

Ansa told CA: "I plan to remain in the little fictional middle Georgia town of Mulberry my entire writing career. It is here, in the heart of the South and the heart of Georgia, I explore the African-American family and the African-American community of this decade and earlier ones. It is an infinitely fascinating and rich subject.

"In my novel Ugly Ways, I try to expand the canvas of American literature to include a mother, a black mother, who challenges the 'conventional wisdom,' the accepted line on what 'mother' is and means in African-American culture. To record, examine, and push the parameters of our lives is, I believe, the job and duty of literature."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

books

Contemporary Black Biography, Volume 14, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1997.

Contemporary Southern Writers, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1999.

Notable Black American Women, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 2002.

Oxford Companion to African American Literature, edited by William L. Andrews, Frances Smith Foster, and Trudier Harris, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1997.

periodicals

Belles Lettres, spring, 1995, Lynn Page Whittaker, "Mudear Dearest," p. 93.

Booklist, November 1, 1989, p. 524; July, 1993; March 1, 2002, Lillian Lewis, review of You Know Better, p. 1086.

Essence, March, 1990, p. 48; April, 2000, Deborah Gregory, "Chit-Chat and All That," p. 86; April, 2001, "First Person Singular," p. 82; April, 2002, "First Person Singular," p. 64.

Kirkus Reviews, September 1, 1989, p. 1265.

Library Journal, January 1, 2001, Nancy Pearl, "Waiting for Terry: African American Novels," p. 200.

New York Times Book Review, November 26, 1989, p. 6.

Publishers Weekly, September 8, 1989, p. 56; March 11, 2002, review of You Know Better, pp. 52-53.

Tribune Books (Chicago, IL), December 24, 1989, Nina Burleigh, "A Girl's Bittersweet Coming of Age in a Small Georgia Town," p. 5.

Voice Literary Supplement, May, 1990, pp. 26-29.

Washington Post Book World, December 1, 1996, Natasha A. Tarpley, "Love among the Spirits," p. 1.