Shaded Canvas Synopsis
Zemi Navies’ father died when she was thirteen, yet his lessons about life stayed with her always. For example, Mr. Navies often said that a woman should get an education as a first back up. Now, at age twenty-three and armed with a Ph.D. from a prestigious university, Zemi searches for a career to advance her skills, her intellect, and her growing social consciousness. The youngest of five siblings, Zemi struggles to overcome her “baby sister” image held by her successful brothers and her sister. The canvas of her own family’s strong values is clouded by changing attitudes toward marriage to persons of other cultures and faiths, abortion, and the angst Zemi undergoes as her own political views evolve. Although Zemi is young, her experiences remind us all that the world continues to confront us: by the time she finally settles on a stance, something arises to make her wonder all anew. Through a surprise meeting with a wealthy, attractive man from the South, Zemi realizes her dream of a platform to pursue her goal to help African American women improve their lives. She finds a growing attraction to this man from a totally different culture and with much less education. But the picture grows uncomfortably darker when the specter of AIDS haunts a number of individuals in and around Zemi's life. Against the background of her own family’s struggles to cope with change, Zemi sounds a clarion call to her African American sisters, advocating ways to improve their roles in life. Though Shaded Canvas is fiction, Isis I deals with what faces Americans right now, including electoral politics and the quest for the Oval Office now underway. She alternates between wielding bold brushstrokes about heady issues and whisking humor- and satire-filled questions about needed social change.
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