Ida B.: A Novel [Hardcover]

Karen E. Quinones Miller (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 3, 2004

Ida B. Wells-Barnett Tower. The place held such promise when it was built in the late 1970s. It was Harlem's hope for a new beginning -- an affordable, safe residence for people who couldn't afford to live downtown. But that was more than twenty-five years ago, before the devastating crack scourge hit.

But the residents of Ida B. are resilient. They've built their own community and they look out for one another to the best of their abilities. Neighbors may argue, and even fight, but whenever one of them is in trouble, the whole building rallies around.

Twenty-five-year-old Brenda Carver is a welfare mother of four children who longs to be a writer; Rosa Rivera is an aspiring actress who will let nothing stand in the way of her career; Sharif Goldsby is a political activist determined to change the world, starting with Harlem and the Ida B. There's also Miss Jackie, the middle-aged, back-stabbing gossip; Vincent, the former bank robber turned scam artist; Mrs. Harris, the elderly neighborhood fence; and high school honor student Ricky, who hopes to be one of the scramblers on the corner -- hawking crack to passersby.

When a building resident kills herself and two of her children, the tenants make a collective vow to care for her surviving child.

But that's just the beginning of the tragedies facing the residents of the Ida B. A shocking crime occurs in the building, and everyone becomes a suspect. With accusations flying, the tight community of the Ida B. begins to collapse under the strain. And, to top it all, they learn that their home of more than twenty years is about to be torn down.

As the search for the killer intensifies, unsung heroes step forward -- at great personal risk -- to right the wrongs that have been done. In Karen E. Quinones Miller's world, the people who stand out are the people who survive, and go on, against all odds, to share their wisdom and find their dreams. In a modern take on the classic sentiment, "There's no place like home," Ida B. affirms that home is a place we love, even when it is less than perfect.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Three residents of Harlem's fictitious Ida B. Barrett Wells Tower lead different but intersecting lives in this charming, paint-by-the-numbers novel from Essence bestselling author Miller (Satin Doll). A tightly knit bunch in their 20s, Brenda, Rosa and Sharif grew up in the "Ida B.," both the beloved centerpiece of their community and a "prison" they want to escape. Brenda is a would-be writer and a caring mother of four on welfare; Puerto Rican Rosa is a foul-mouthed aspiring actress; and Sharif is a gay political activist who never even checks a guy out and whose behavior is so constantly ingratiating that he borders on parody. The book has many similar problems in characterization, but its great strength is the spirited banter—the gossip, the teasing, the insulting—that goes down between everyone at Ida B. Whether it's from a young wannabe gangster who secretly excels at science or a grandmother who sells stolen goods out of her apartment, the talk is juicy and fun. A twist-and-turn plot Miller inserts midway through involves a murder and the very fate of the building itself, but the real questions are about the three friends: will Rosa make it as an actress? Will Brenda write her book? Faced with a crucial choice, will Sharif make the right one? This is a spunky, speedy read.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Ida B. Barrett Wells Tower is a residential building for low-income families. When it first opened, four-year-old Brenda Carver and her mother moved to the tenth floor. On moving day, she met Rosa Rivera, who moved onto the twelfth floor, and Sharif Goldsby, who moved in with his grandmother. Twenty years later, all three are still residents. Brenda is a writer and a single welfare mother of four children ranging from 13 down to 2: Bootsy, Shaniqua, Yusef, and Jumah. Rosa is an aspiring actress working in a stage production for the experience and exposure. Sharif is a gay activist who serves as the community peacemaker and do-gooder. A young child who has recently lost his mother comes up missing and is found dead in the building. Bootsy witnesses Ricky, a former resident, serve street justice against the child murderer. In spite of the dangers and the consequences, Sharif, Brenda, and Rosa band together as family to protect and shield Ricky's promising future. This compelling story has an unusual twist but a happy ending. Lillian Lewis
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster (August 3, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743260015
• ISBN-13: 978-0743260015
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,825,080 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Essence best selling and NAACP Literary Award Nominee, Karen E. Quinones Miller was born and raised in Harlem in 1958. Miller dropped out of school during the eighth grade, and spent the majority of her teenage years experiencing street life first-hand. After getting a job as a police attendant in New York City's Midtown North police precinct, Miller became friends with a number of police officers who persuaded her that the life she was living could lead to an early death.

So at age 22, Miller joined the Navy and after spending five years in the Navy, Miller married, had a child and divorced all within a two-year period. At age 29, she got a secretarial job with The Philadelphia Daily News, but after three years complaining about the paper's coverage of people living below the poverty level she quit and started taking journalism classes at Temple University.

After graduation she became a newspaper reporter, and worked for the Associated Press, The Norfolk Virginian Pilot, and lastly for The Philadelphia Inquirer where she was employed for nine years. She also worked as a correspondent for People Magazine from 1996 to 1999.
Miller wrote Satin Doll in 1999, and after many unsuccessful attempts at finding a publisher, decided to publish it herself. She sold 28,000 copies on her own, and Satin Doll wound up on the Essence Bestseller's List for two months. Publishing rights were sold to Simon & Schuster (via auction) for six figures.

Miller went on to write five other Essence Bestselling novels for Simon & Schuster, Warner Books, and Grand Central Books: I'm Telling, Using What You Got (both were main selections for Black Expressions Book Club), Ida B. (which was nominated for an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work - Fiction.), Satin Nights and Passin'.

Best selling author Kwan Foye has often publicly referred to Miller as "The Aretha Franklin of Black Publishing." Miller, who is included in the book Literary Divas: The Top 100+ Most Admired African-American Women In Literature, often gives publishing and self-publishing seminars in her home and Philadelphia, and is the CEO of Oshun Publishing Company. Miller has been often cited for her willingness to help aspiring authors, and Essence best selling authors Daaimah S. Poole, and Miasha are just two of the young writers who consider Miller their mentor.

Miller's new book, An Angry A** Black Woman, will be published by Karen Hunter Books in 2011.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Community Undivided..., July 23, 2004

By 

Flavah Reviewer (Winston Salem, NC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ida B.: A Novel (Hardcover)

Karen E. Quinones Miller's fourth novel, "Ida B." regales readers with the lives of several long-term occupants of a high-rise subsidized tenement known as the Ida B. Barrett Wells Tower located in Harlem, New York. Home to its residents, Brenda, Sharif, Rosa, and several others, for over two decades; these tenants have created an unbreakable bond closer than that of most biological families as each has faced judgment, personal failure, and ridicule from a cast of neighborhood peers.

Brenda Carver, a twenty-five year old, single mother of four is currently receiving assistance from the government to make ends meet. Her four illegitimate children, four "baby daddies", and lack of support is the least of her problems. Brenda's biggest set back lies in her highly dependent nature and her habitual indecisiveness. Her dream of becoming an author is constantly being railroaded, not due to her intelligence, but to her lack of follow through. Everything Brenda tries to accomplish get derailed, including a concrete storyline for her dream novel. As Brenda faces her personal struggles, she must also keep an eye on the future of her oldest son Bootsy, who has witnessed a crime that may cost him his life. With her comfort zone becoming increasingly tattered, Brenda's reality may have to be dealt with sooner, rather than later.

Known as the neighborhood saint, Sharif Goldsby is a man who will stand up and fight for the downtrodden. His labor of love towards others range from creating petitions, organizing marches, and even making personal phone calls to those in decision-making capacities. Sharif is usually the first one notified when trouble occurs. His life has been devoted to making Ida B. a better living community for all, even when faced with horrible accusations regarding his sexual preference. Ultimately Sharif is placed in a position where his personal judgment becomes unsettling causing hurtful situations to resurface and a severe life altering choice to be made.

Karen E. Quinones Miller has transported readers into a small community unbeknownst by many, but respected by all who come in contact. Filled with comedy, drama, heartfelt scenes, and realism, "Ida B." is truly an enjoyable, self-relating, and most of all a unforgettable novel.

-Monique Baldwin-Worrell, founder of Flavah Reviewers

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Whodunit?!, August 30, 2004

By 

Boop "caramelchocolate" (Aiken, South Carolina United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ida B.: A Novel (Hardcover)

This book wasn't what I expected but it was very good, Ms. Miller really came through on this one, with its drama/suspense ingredients.

I grew up in Baisley Park Houses in Jamaica, Queens and all the characters that were in the Ida B. was true to life. You had your nosey neighbors, bad behind kids and some real good people there. Even though some people thought it wasn't much it was home to a lot of people for a lot of years and I loved the way they all pulled together in the mist of a tragedy, a very cruel tragedy.

Only thing I wish Ms. Miller could of focused more on the main character Brenda, but I guess she wasn't trying to single one character out, she was trying to focus on the buidling as a whole.

This book is a very good fast read, with hopes and dreams of people just like you and me.

Later.......

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Social Document and a Eulogy, September 3, 2004

By 

Shane Hayes (Havertown, PA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ida B.: A Novel (Hardcover)

It's hard to imagine a more detailed, vivid, and accurate picture of life in a high-rise low-income housing project in Harlem at the turn of the 21st Century than Karen E. Quinones Miller gives us in "Ida B." Her grasp of the personality types, prevalent mindsets, social manners and mannerisms, moral values (or lack thereof), personal aspirations, and -- most remarkably -- the language of social intercourse, is extraordinary. Her dialogue is superbly, almost gratingly, authentic.

"Ida B." is a social document that professors of sociology would do well to assign in courses on inner-city subculture. No textbook can show it as concretely and dramatically as Miller has. After being immersed in that subculture she rose above its limitations, acquired the language and perceptions of the mainstream, and then drew what no one born to the mainstream could ever draw with such authority and conviction. I think she will always be, emotionally at least, living in two worlds, mediating between them -- interpreting one to the other. Helping us understand them and them understand us, and making us like each other better because of that deepened understanding. This is a valuable aspect of her work.

The ending of "Ida B." is clever, original, and so far as I can remember unique. There are few novels, even among the classics, about which that can be said. Fortunately it's not essential that we novelists astonish the reader with an ending that casts a new light on all that precedes it, if we've written an otherwise strong story. But when we do, we engrave the tale in the reader's mind and help him remember it whole. "Ida B's" ending refers to the beginning, connects with it, and forms a circle that ties the events together like beads on a necklace.

The title takes on added significance too. I sometimes wondered as I read: Who is the protagonist of this novel? I assumed at the outset it would be Brenda, but she never rose to the occasion; never took center stage for any length of time and held it. Rosa was the stronger female figure, but still pallid compared to some of Miller's other heroines, like Regina Harris ("Satin Doll") and Faith Freeman ("I'm Telling"). Sharif was, as I see it, the closest thing to a conventional protagonist, by far the strongest, wisest, most admirable character in the book. But it wasn't his story either. We never got inside his mind, heart, and experience in a really intimate way. As omnipresent as he was, he seemed to be always in a strong supporting role. Supporting whom? Well, everyone. Which is to say, the real protagonist -- Ida B., the high-rise low-income housing project in Harlem, viewed as a social organism.

It is Ida B's story just as the title proclaims. The story of her turbulent life, filled with passion, friendship, humor; conflict, anger, depravity; violence or the always imminent threat of it, drug addiction, tragic death after tragic death (murder, suicide, more murder, then vigilante capital punishment); a deep-rooted suspicion and disdain for the laws of conventional society and its mechanisms of enforcement; and a conviction that loyalty to the tribe -- the clan, the subculture, the brothas and sistas who live in the tower -- is the highest moral good. Higher than truth. Higher than justice. Higher than God. Didn't Sharif proclaim this when he stood before "the makeshift altar he'd set up in memory of his grandmother" and said, "Light, peace, and progress, Gran. Please look out for me, and keep me strong, keep me true." That is the only prayer I can remember in the book. And it is a primal supplication to a revered ancestor, not a prayer to the God of Abraham or even to Allah.

The plea "keep me true" referred to an allegiance beyond truth or the demands of the criminal justice system. Sharif had resolved to lie and even commit perjury if necessary. "But there were some things worth compromising his integrity over, and saving Ricky's ass was one. And he wasn't really compromising his integrity, he mused as he jiggled the ice in his drink. He was being true to his own roots." That is, I think, the core moral pronouncement of the novel. The Ida B. Wells-Barnett Tower, its inhabitants, and their web of life-sustaining -- often life-threatening -- social and familial connections, was a metaphor for "his own roots."

So Ida B. held center stage from the Prologue to her demise at the end of Chapter 21. The novel "Ida B." by the character Brenda Carver -- and of course Miller's novel, which both is and contains it -- is a eulogy to memorialize Ida's extraordinary life and lamented passing. The memories which Brenda "was afraid would become distant, and even surreal, once she moved away" are now captured for her posterity, and Miller's. They are not all good memories. Ida had as many faults as she did virtues; probably more. "Both a prison and a sanctuary," Brenda observed. "A place where everybody was trying to break out, and nobody wanted to leave." I thank Ms. Miller for letting me see from the inside a life I had viewed only from a great distance. I will remember Ida B.