The Stubborn Life of Jesse Ed McKinney

Jesse Ed’s was an ordinary entry into the world, but it felt anything but normal. It would prove to be a momentous occasion for the McKinneys: the birth of the child who promised to hold the family together—no matter what—and not even death would stop him.The Stubborn Life of Jesse Ed McKinney is full of laughter, sensuality, surprises, and satire, but is absent the stench of racism and hopelessness.

Jesse Edwin McKinney, III was born stubborn, his birth attended to by fly-buzzed sweat, by low expectations, and by the hovering burdens of a house too full of accounts too small. Jesse Ed’s difficult birth would prove to be Mama’s ultimate joy, however, as he, the youngest of her 11 children, is the glue that holds her large family together. As the African American McKinney family begins to scatter in the face of poverty, adversity, and tragedy, only their love and Jesse Ed’s stubborn refusal to quit can hold them together. He means to be the glue, and nothing, not even the threat of death, will stop him.

The Stubborn Life of Jesse Ed McKinney is full of laughter, sensuality, surprises, and satire, but it is empty of the stench of racism all too common in historical black fiction. Someone needed to re-write history; Jesse Ed is as good a place as any to start.