"Pomegranate" reading and discussion, with the book's author Helen Elaine Lee
Channel: MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing
Date: 2023-10-04

The acclaimed author of "The Serpent’s Gift", Helen Elaine Lee, returns with this poetic and powerful journey of healing and autonomy.

About the Book
As she wraps up her four-year sentence for opiate possession at Oak Hills Correctional Center, Ranita Atwater is determined to stay clean and regain custody of her two children from the aunts who have been raising them. Leaving behind her lover Maxine, who has helped to awaken and inspire her, she must face a world of temptations, confront the wounds that refuse to stay buried, and honor the body that has seldom felt like it belongs to her.

As novelist Jennifer Haigh has said, “Ranita’s journey out of addiction and incarceration and early trauma, her daily struggle to live a life as large as her spirit, is a remarkable feat of literary conjuration. This is what novels are for.”