Reviews: Dorothy Bryant

The Kin of Ata Are Waiting for You (originally published in 1971 as The Comforter; reissued by Moon Books, Random House: San Francisco, 1971).
Ella Price's Journal.
Miss Giardino.
The Garden of Eros.
Prisoners.
Killing Wonder.
A Day in San Francisco (1983)
Confessions of Madame Psyche (1986)

It's hard to describe The Kin of Ata Are Waiting for You. But here goes: a man (a real jerk) kills a woman, has a car accident, and winds up in "Ata," an island where the people live in an egalitarian fashion and dedicate themselves to discovering the truth, through their dreams. Since black female characters are hard to find in science fiction, I'll go ahead and mention that a black woman, Augustine, has a lead role in this novel. The blurb on the back of my edition (the Moon Books trade paperback edition) says "[The Kin of Ata Are Waiting for You] has been called a love story, science fiction, Jungian myth and utopian allegory." That sums it up pretty neatly, I think. I did feel, after reading it, that I had just woken up from a dream. Recommended. -- lq, 5/4/96.