4.0
Francisco
ByPublisher Description
A lost masterpiece of American literature about the creative evolution of a young Black woman in California and her intense relationship with an indie filmmaker
Alison Mills Newman’s innovative, genre-bending novel has long been out of print and impossible to find. A “fluently funky mix of standard and nonstandard English,” as the poet and scholar Harryette Mullen once put it, Francisco is the first-person account of a young actress and musician and her growing disillusionment with her success in Hollywood. Her wildly original and vivid voice chronicles a free-spirited life with her filmmaker lover, visiting friends and family up and down California, as well as her involvement in the 1970s Black Arts Movement. Love and friendship, long, meaningful conversations, parties and dancing—Francisco celebrates, as she improvises in the book, “the workings of a positive alive life that is good value, quality, carin, truth … the gift of art for the survival of the human heart.”Download the free Fable app
Stay organized
Keep track of what you’re reading, what you’ve finished, and what’s next.
Build a better TBR
Swipe, skip, and save with our smart list-building tool
Rate and review
Share your take with other readers with half stars, emojis, and tags
Curate your feed
Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesStay organized
Keep track of what you’re reading, what you’ve finished, and what’s next.Build a better TBR
Swipe, skip, and save with our smart list-building toolRate and review
Share your take with other readers with half stars, emojis, and tagsCurate your feed
Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesFrancisco Reviews
4.0
“I found this book in an article that suggested memoirs based on your favorite modern It Girl. This one was paired with Ayo Edibiri so obviously I ordered it immediately lol. I was even more stoked when I found out the book had actually been out of print for years and has just recently been re-released?? (The new cover is disappointing tbh :/ I feel like they could’ve done something much cooler to reflect the hype that is Alison’s life traveling across SF, LA, and NY with her director boy in the 70s but that’s okay)
For someone that loves the decade’s music, movies, style, etc. so much it’s a shock that this is my first try at 70s It Girl Lit. And it may be my last since Francisco was too perfect? I don’t know if other attempts would live up to this one for me.
Alison Mills Newman is so casually cool, it hurts. Her writing is honest and poetic. The order of events, names of characters, and pieces of dialogue are all jumbled together in a way that should be confusing but isn’t. Even her nicknames for people feel like they urgently need to be underlined and saved forever.
Only thing I could’ve done without was the preachy afterword. Like Newman when she wrote the book, I’m an impulsive twentysomething in LA and I don’t super want to imagine my future self regretting my current life choices. Not a huge deal and definitely not a reason to avoid the book altogether, but you’ll get it if (when”
About Alison Mills Newman
Alison Mills Newman started her career as the first African American teenage actress on a television series (Julia). As a musician and vocalist she has performed with Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, Weather Report, and Taj Mahal. She is an award-winning film director and the author of the novel Maggie 3. Mills Newman is the president of Keep the Faith Film Ministries, a chaplain at Fulton County Jail, and has five beautiful children with the late Francisco Toscono Newman, as well as ten grandchildren.
Other books by Alison Mills Newman
Saidiya Hartman
Saidiya Hartman is the author of Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments, Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route, and Scenes of Subjection. A MacArthur “Genius” Fellow, she is a professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and lives in New York.
Other books by Saidiya Hartman
Start a Book Club
Start a public or private book club with this book on the Fable app today!FAQ
Do I have to buy the ebook to participate in a book club?
Why can’t I buy the ebook on the app?
How is Fable’s reader different from Kindle?
Do you sell physical books too?
Are book clubs free to join on Fable?
How do I start a book club with this book on Fable?
