Porgies Are Best

B.J. Ray is on a hilarious journey with
one goal in mind, an interracial marriage. For sixteen
years, she has been planning her escape from the South Bronx
projects. If she ignores the experiences and opportunities,
she may be stuck with project dwelling forever. She
encounters the challenge of having to ingest salt tablets
and collect rocks in one-hundred-degree weather, a
prerequisite for interracial dating. She also attends
Hampton share parties where white folks drink out of paper
cups, not Welch's grape jelly jars, and a share consists of
a cot in the laundry room every fourth weekend. She finds
invited guests to your home demand bottled water, request
organic wines, organic foods, and really can't tell the
difference about most things in life, not to mention water,
foods, and wine. One March night, B.J. Ray attends her
middle sister's birthday party with her younger sister and
they are summoned to pick up the Carvel cake. They don't
return until the wee hours of the morning. B.J. Ray meets a
man and discovers that he is the key to her becoming a
highly successful individual. Porgies Are Best: A
Fishmonger's Daughter is a book of vignettes of a young
African American, Jewish girl from the projects of the South
Bronx, who experiences love, humor, misfortune, compassion,
and accomplishment.