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Pomegranate

Lee, Helen Elaine2024

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Summary

Ranita Atwater is wrapping up her four-year sentence for opioid possession at Oak Hills Correctional Center, near Boston. With three years of sobriety, she is determined to stay clean and regain custody of her two children from her aunts who have been raising them. My name is Ranita, and I'm an addict, she has said again and again at [Narcotics Anonymous] meetings. But who else is she? Who might she choose to become? She is gaining her freedom, but she is leaving behind the group of women who have helped to get her through. And she is losing her lover, Maxine, who has inspired her to imagine herself and the world differently. Drawing on Maxine's love, the solace of books, and the curiosity, respect, and wonder imparted by her people, Ranita is determined to confront the weight of the past and discover what might lie beyond mere survival. With her fierce and often funny voice, she reveals how rocky and winding the path to healing is for a Black woman. She must steer clear of the temptation of oblivion. She must weather the resentment and mistrust of her children. She must atone. And she must face her unhealed wounds and honor the body that has seldom felt like it belongs to her. Will she be able to draw on family, memory, faith, and nature to keep choosing life? Will she discover abundance in her pomegranate heart, alongside all the loss? With lyrical and masterful prose, Helen Elaine Lee paints a humane, unflinching, and hopeful por- trait of the devastating and interconnected effects of addiction, incarceration, racism, and misogyny... and of one woman's determination to own and tell her story.