Conception: A Novel

Kalisha Buckhanon

Feb 2008 · Sold by St. Martin's Press

About this ebook

In the same vein of Kalisha Buckhanon's critically-acclaimed debut novel Upstate, again she shares an emotionally beautiful story about today's youth that magnifies the unforgettable power of hope and the human spirit.

Buckhanon takes us to Chicago, 1992, and into the life of fifteen-year-old Shivana Montgomery, who believes all Black women wind up the same: single and raising children alone, like her mother. Until the sudden visit of her beautiful and free-spirited Aunt Jewel, Shivana spends her days desperately struggling to understand life and the growing pains of her environment. When she accidentally becomes pregnant by an older man and must decide what to do, she begins a journey towards adulthood with only a mysterious voice inside to guide her. When she falls in love with Rasul, a teenager with problems of his own, together they fight to rise above their circumstances and move toward a more positive future. Through the voice of the unborn child and a narrative sweeping from slavery onward, Buckhanon narrates Shivana's connection to a past history of Black women who found themselves at the mercy of tragic circumstances.

Ratings and reviews

Following her mother footsteps fifteen year old Shaivana get pregnant.. Shaivana is a babysitter for Rasual wife and later Shaivana and Rasual have sex and the wifes home. Shaivana is a teenager that broke her viginatiy at fifteen years old. Later Shaivana mother help remind her that a woman who couldnt keep a house would never keep a am. In this book you would learned that women doesnt need no man to help them and women can do anything they want by themselves.. Continue Reading the book for further details about Shaivana and Rasual.

I loved her first book ''Upstate", and I loved this one as well. She is a very talented writer. The read is worth every minute. I think the book is wrote for entertainment and is meant to catch the readers attention from a standpoint of things that we may hear about in some of these communities or may no about first hand. I don't feel she is promoting any type of harsh behavior of the youth, but being realistic instead. I feel because this young girl did make so many mistakes in this book, some can actually learn from her mistakes if anything. I would recommend this book as a must read.

About the author

KALISHA BUCKHANON's first novel Upstate won an American Library Association Alex Award and was nominated for the Hurston/Wright Foundation Legacy Award in Debut Fiction. Terry McMillan selected her to receive the first Terry McMillan Young Author Award in 2006. A recipient of a 2001 Illinois Arts Council Artist Fellowship and an Andrew Mellon Fellow, Buckhanon frequently teaches writing and speaks throughout the country. She has an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from New School University in New York City, and both a B.A. and an M.A. in English Language and Literature from the University of Chicago. She was born in 1977 in Kankakee, Illinois.