Plum Bun
Jessie Redmon Fauset built her second novel around Angela Murray, a light-skinned Black woman from Philadelphia who moves to New York and decides to live as white, convinced that the color line is the only thing standing between her and the life she wants. She chases art, status, and a wealthy suitor named Roger Fielding, while her darker sister Virginia stays behind and keeps her name. What Angela learns about ambition, love, and the cost of hiding gives the book its quiet force. Fauset borrows her structure from the old nursery rhyme about going to market, and she uses it to question the American promise that the right marriage will buy a woman everything. Free to read as a PDF and EPUB edition.
About the Author
Jessie Redmon Fauset (1882-1961) was an American novelist, poet, and educator who served as literary editor of The Crisis. She championed young Harlem Renaissance writers including Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen, and her own fiction gave rare, dignified attention to educated Black women’s lives.
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