Blues Dancing

A modern blues novel, Blues Dancing captures the emotional aesthetic of the blues. Diane McKinney-Whetstone captures the emotional toll of love and relationships through the life of Verdi Mae. In a narrative that jumps between the 1970s and the 1990s, Verdi Mae is entangled in love, drugs, and the lives of two different men. Reverberating with the lyrical blues themes of desire and dependency, McKinney-Whetstone’s novel shifts the narrative from a traditional working class blues to that of a black middle class blues that Verdi Mae finds herself trapped within.  Blues Dancing emphasizes that jazz aesthetics are not simply historical aspects of African American literature, but rather a continuing prose tradition.