What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day

praised Playwright, writer, and columnist Pearl Cleage creates a sensation in African American women's writing with her first book, which makes the reader laugh and cry while singing and crackling with life-affirming energy.

Ava Johnson had grown up in Idlewild, Michigan, and had always been told that Atlanta was the place to be if you were young, black, and sensible. She used her intelligence and desire to open one of the trendiest hair salons in the city as soon as she was old enough and capable enough to do it. She was moving quickly with the siblings who had bank accounts, fancy automobiles, gorgeous clothing, and loftier aspirations.

After over ten years of lavish life and exquisite pleasures, Ava has returned home to find her ambitious profession and power ambitions completely destroyed by one terrible reality. Ava Johnson's HIV test results are positive. And she's returning to small Idlewild to spend a tranquil summer with her sister Joyce, who passed away, before going to San Francisco, the most HIV-friendly city she could conceive, to end her life.

Ava can't help but notice that too much is happening in her community, therefore she believes that what she believes to be the end is really only the beginning. Then there's the Sewing Circus—Sister Joyce's tenacious attempt to teach Idlewild's young black women about pregnancy, drugs, sex, and other topics—despite the excellent Reverend Anderson and his most upright "Just say no" wife's meddling. In addition, Joyce needs assistance providing a caring home for Imani, an abandoned crack baby whom she has adopted.

Then there's Wild Eddie, whose reputation for brutality mixed with his Eastern refinement has piqued Ava's curiosity and beyond.