Jade Jones’s debut novel Darlene gives a girl who appears briefly in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye an adulthood of her own. PEOPLE revealed the cover on November 5, offering a first look at a novel that imagines Darlene as a veteran teacher whose career takes an unexpected turn. Farrar, Straus and Giroux is scheduled to publish the book on August 3, 2027.
The cover looks like a green classroom chalkboard, with Darlene’s name written several times in different colors and styles of handwriting. Jones told PEOPLE that she liked how the design invites readers into Darlene’s classroom while hinting that even a beloved, experienced teacher can be unsure how to help her students or herself.
Who is Darlene in The Bluest Eye?
Morrison’s first novel follows Pecola Breedlove, a Black girl who believes blue eyes would make her beautiful and change the way others treat her. Darlene appears in a flashback about Pecola’s father, Cholly, when he is young. Two white men interrupt an intimate encounter between Cholly and Darlene and force him at gunpoint to continue while they watch. The scene follows Cholly’s fear and humiliation, leaving readers with far less access to Darlene’s experience.
Jones’s premise changes whose life readers get to follow. In Morrison, Darlene is a girl readers encounter through a man’s memories. In Jones’s novel, she is the adult in the room, trying to give other girls the chance to describe their lives in their own words. That makes the classroom a particularly fitting place to pick up the thread.
How Jones’s experience as an educator shaped Darlene
Jones is an educator from a family with generations of teachers in Camden, New Jersey. She told PEOPLE that part of what makes a classroom exciting to her is how quickly one person can change the room. Getting a class to work, in her view, means bringing students with different histories together around a shared purpose. As she developed Darlene, Jones grew more certain that teaching was the work this character would choose.
That idea shapes what happens after Darlene LeJay is unfairly fired and finds work at the struggling Seton School for Girls. As Miss Dee, she builds lessons around what her students already know from their own lives and gives them room to tell their stories. Then Darlene’s ailing mother returns to Georgia, bringing old memories back into view. The premise puts Darlene in a difficult position. She is asking her students to speak openly while facing parts of her own past she would rather leave alone.
When does Darlene come out?
Macmillan lists August 3, 2027 as the U.S. publication date. The Farrar, Straus and Giroux hardcover is listed at 384 pages, with ISBN 9780374617158. Preorders are open.
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Related reading
For more Toni Morrison, see our 10 essential books from Brooklyn Public Library’s “250 for 250” list, which includes Beloved.
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