Jenoyne Adams

Author, dancer, literary agent

Jenoyne Adams's first novel—the bestselling Resurrecting Mingus—was acclaimed by critics. A poet, journalist, and actress, Adams was also principal dancer with the West African troupe Abalaye, as well as a literary agent for the New York firm of Levine/Greenberg.

Planned to Become a Lawyer

Jenoyne Adams was born and raised in San Bernardino County, California, the daughter of Bertha Dejan and Virgil Adams. She spent her early years in the black projects of San Bernardino, where she was often hospitalized due to complications from her premature birth. Her parents separated when she was quite young. At the age of 11, Adams went to live full time with her father, a construction foreman. Her father kept her supplied with books. Adams was determined to become a lawyer, like the heroine of her first novel, and she had a high-school internship with a corporation. However she began writing and reciting poetry, sharing her poems only with her sister and a few close friends.

At California State University at Fullerton, Adams majored in political science with an emphasis in African-American studies. She achieved fluency in Spanish at University of Malaga in Malaga, Spain, for which she received a certificate. As a journalist, Adams wrote for the Precinct Reporter, the major black newspaper in San Bernardino County, and the Tri-County Bulletin, an Orange County weekly.

Adams spoke to the Indianapolis Recorder about Resurrecting Mingus in 2001: "This book came to me in a reoccurring dream, though at the time I thought it was a reoccurring nightmare. I had no intentions of becoming a writer. My goal was to become a corporate lawyer. The dream started occurring in such a heavy rotation, it felt like it was drowning out the rest of my life. I became a freelance journalist to pacify it, but that didn't work. One Saturday morning at 5 a.m. I gave in. I figured if I wrote it down it would go away. It didn't and that morning began the rest of my life."

Published Resurrecting Mingus

While she worked on her novel Adams held a full-time job and sang in her church choir. She met Michael Datcher on a blind date after talking to him on the telephone for a month. They had much in common. Like Adams, Datcher was a journalist and poet; he was also an English professor at Loyola Marymount University. He ran a weekly poetry workshop at the World Stage in Leimert Park in South Los Angeles, and he was writing a book. Datcher proposed to Adams in February of 1997 with a seven-page poem delivered at the World Stage. For a wedding gift, he supported her for a year so she could finish her novel. In the end, it took her another 18 months of writing and revising. The novel was rejected numerous times and she revised again. However in the end Datcher's agent sold it to the highest bidder. Dominick Anfuso, vice president and senior editor at the Free Press, told Lynell George of the Los Angeles Times: "She showed signs of real talent. There were just so many powerful themes. A professional black woman who is lost. Plus these sub-issues—biracial identity, alcoholism—it just worked on a variety of levels. Most of us are confused in our skin. I saw an audience for her, and it was broad. And I think she's got a great career ahead of her." Adams and Datcher had their first books published within weeks of each other.

Resurrecting Mingus became a bestseller. The narrator relates the story of Mingus Browning, and her black father and white mother tell their stories in their own voices. Mingus, who has always identified herself as black, finds her loyalties shifting from her father to her mother as her perceptions of the family change. Her father is astonished to find that his wife of 35 years, whom he has left for his secret black family, can go on without him: "maybe I shoulda been happy that she knew how to get along without me. I'da never thought it though. And that's what stole my thunder…All this time I've been knowing that she needed me. How was I supposed to know that I needed her too?…I respected her again. Maybe for the first time. She was standing up for herself. And even though she was standing up against me, it felt all right." When Mingus makes the painful decision to leave her fiancé, he asks her: "What can't you do with me in your life?" Mingus answers: "Love myself. I've never done that. I've always relied on someone else to do it, even if they did it badly. I'd rather be with you than be with me and something's wrong with that." The Chicago Defender called Resurrecting Mingus "a stunning debut novel" by an author who has "the skill and courage to write about some of the most controversial issues today in an absorbing and compulsively readable manner."

Adams had trained as a dancer for many years. While she was finishing Mingus, she was accepted into the West African dance troupe Abalaye. Soon she had become one of their principle dancers. In 2004 she also began studying martial arts.

Wrote Selah's Bed

Adams told Renee Simms of Eur Web: "Whereas Resurrecting Mingus came to me in a series of dreams, similarly, Selah's Bed came to me during a series of day dreams. I just kept thinking about this couple—how they met young and had so much attraction to each other then real life, pregnancy and change pulls them so far apart that they barely recognize their connection and love for each other anymore." Adams wrote Selah's Bed over a two-year period when she was the primary caregiver for her mother who was suffering from a heart attack and adult respiratory distress syndrome. She wrote in the novel's acknowledgments: "I was living pieces of the story as I was writing it."

Selah's Bed is the sexually explicit story of a beautiful middle-aged black woman who has achieved success photographing naked men, but whose marriage to a minister suffers from her unfaithfulness and the demons that haunt her: memories of a rape and an abortion. Selah exudes confidence, which she claims to have learned from her mother, a prostitute whom she barely knew, and she is proud to be a big woman: "Sometimes a big girl with confidence could be too much for some people. They wanted to quiet her down and put her in her place…If anyone stared too hard or too long at her, she'd often go over to them and give them a whisper: ‘Big ain't nev-va got betta then this,’ and walk off bigger then she came." The story also compassionately confronts her grandmother's addiction to prescription drugs and subsequent Alzheimer's disease. Selah's Bed garnered mixed reviews.

At a Glance …

Born Jenoyne Adams in San Bernardino, CA; married Michael Datcher, 1997. Education: California State University, Fullerton, studied political science and African-American studies; University of Malaga, Malaga, Spain, certificate of fluency in Spanish. Religion: Christian.

Career:

Precinct Reporter, San Bernardino County, CA, journalist, 1990s; TriCounty Bulletin, Orange County, CA, journalist, 1990s; Los Angeles, CA, freelance journalist, poet, novelist, actress, dancer, 1990s-; writing workshop leader, 2003(?)-; Levine Greenberg Literary Agency, Inc., Los Angeles, CA, associate agent, 2003(?)-; Voices in Harmony, Los Angeles, CA, writing consultant, 2006-.

Memberships:

World Stage Anansi Writer's Workshop.

Awards:

University of California, Los Angeles, Extension Writing Program Community Access, Scholar; PEN Center USA West Emerging Voices, Fellow, 1998.

Addresses:

Agent—James Levine, Levine/Greenberg Literary Agency, 307 Seventh Avenue, Suite 2407, New York, NY 10001.

Adams's poetry and prose were published in literary journals and anthologies, including books edited by Datcher. Adams was a writing consultant for Voices in Harmony, helping at-risk youth to write and produce socially relevant theater pieces. In 2002 Adams played the title character in Datcher's long one-act play "Silence." Adams and Datcher directed writing workshops together and promoted their books on joint book tours.

In her career as a literary agent, Adams's focused on literary and commercial fiction, narrative nonfiction, and women's issues. Her third book was scheduled for publication by Simon & Schuster in the summer of 2007.

Selected writings

Novels

Resurrecting Mingus: A Novel, Free Press, 2001. Selah's Bed: A Novel, Free Press, 2003.

Poetry

"Out-of-Body Experience," in Catch the Fire: A Cross-Generational Anthology of African-American Literature, edited by Derrick I.M. Gilbert, Riverhead, 1998, p. 109.

"Next Time Take Flesh," in Brown Sugar 2: Great One Night Stands-A Collection of Erotic Black Fiction, edited by Carol Taylor, Washington Square, 2003.

Periodicals

"Black Feminist Redux," Ms., Winter 2004/2005, pp. 87-88.

On-line

"Black Sunshine," Poetry in the Windows, www.arroyoartscollective.org/archive/poetry/poems3/adams.html (January 24, 2007).

Sources

Books

Datcher, Michael, "The Gift," in What Makes A Man: 22 Writers Imagine a Future, edited by Rebecca Walker, Riverhead, 2004, pp. 8-16.

Datcher, Michael, Raising Fences: A Black Man's Love Story, Riverhead, 2001.

Periodicals

Chicago Defender, April 16, 2002, p. 11.

Essence, November 2005, p. 152.

Library Journal, February 15, 2001, p. 198.

Los Angeles Times, February 20, 2001, p. E1.

Recorder (Indianapolis, IN), February 2, 2001, p. C1.

On-line

"Black History Month Author Roundtable," Authors on the Web,www.authorsontheweb.com/features/0302-bhm/bhm-authors.asp (January 24, 2007).

"A Conversation with Writer Jenoyne Adams," Eur Web,www.eurweb.com/printable.cfm?id=9353 (February 21, 2007).

"Interview with Jenoyne Adams," Bill Thompson's Eye on Books,www.eyeonbooks.com/cover.php?ISBn=0684873532 (January 24, 2007).

"Jenoyne Adams," Contemporary Authors Online,www.galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC (December 26, 2006).

                                                                —Margaret Alic