Birthing Pangs takes place in New Orleans in the late 1970s. It sheds light on the distinctive artistic, spiritual, cultural and intellectual life of a New Orleans Ninth Ward society that is seldom revealed. Set in the fertile ground of the African American Civil Rights Movement's aftermath and the shadows of the feminist movement, Birthing Pangs tone is prolific. The main characters include Matia, a Tulanian, young accountant and an aspiring confectionary chef distressed by her difficulties in owning up to her own desires; the man of her dreams, Nile, a philosophical plumber in the midst of his own evolution; Matia's dutiful father, Franklin, a principled and headstrong contractor and businessman; Matia's friend Binta, a meek and talented seamstress who is focused on becoming a wife; and Shallow, friend of Matia and a Xavier University pharmacy intern who is stanchly against marriage. The Beautiful Matia conceives love untold as she grasps for a steady situation whilst caught between the desired love of two men and the volatile positions of her two friends. In Matia's life, each moment gives birth to the very next. In New Orleans, a place that has learned to make music out of the bitter and sweet, a parade of souls giving birth whether feast or famine, life is not just a daily occurrence, but also a spiritual and artistic conception pregnant with purpose. In this novel, we are thrust into the certainty that our world is a miraculous birthing room, in which all of humanity experiences a flood of meaningful birthing pangs.
