This re-read from the '90s hit the spot: after living life as a successful, fun lovin' hairstylist in Atlanta, Ava Johnson tests positive for HIV. Word gets out, her clients dwindle, and soon Ava sells her salon with hopes to move to San Francisco, where people with the virus aren't stigmatized.⁣
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On the way, she stops in her hometown of Idlewild, Michigan to visit her recently retired and widowed sister, Joyce. A former social worker, Joyce runs a ministry at her church for young mothers who need support, sisterhood, and guidance. It's a hit for the women and their children, but the new pastor's wife hates it's popularity. ⁣
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Throw in a decaying small town ravaged by drugs, church drama, an abandoned baby, unexpected love, and sisters who support each other no matter what, and you have a heartwarming story that you'll deeply wish was also a Netflix or Lifetime original movie so more could experience it's goodness.⁣
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What Looks Like Crazy on An Ordinary Day felt even better with age. I surely didnt understand the complicated reality in this book, nor did I understand its significance back in high school as I do now. Pearl Cleage packed her debut novel with fierce love for community, loyalty, purposeful living, intentional mentoring, self-care, and a whole lot of Black Girl Magic before we'd given it a name.⁣
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This was an Oprah Book Club selection in 1998. It's sequel, "I Wish I Had a Red Dress", followed in 2001.⁣
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I really, really want this to be a movie. I see Nicole Beharie as Ava, Angela Bassett as Joyce, and Mahershala Ali as family friend, Eddie

What Looks Like Crazy On An Ordinary Day
Plot: Ava had a thriving salon in Atlanta and a busy social life. Everything was going good until she discovered she was HIV positive. Despite trying to do the right thing and write letters to all her lovers informing them of her status, her business goes downhill when a wife turns up at her shop and calls her out. So with the money she makes from selling the land, she decides to move to San Francisco. But before she leaves, she’ll go pay her sister Joyce a visit to their hometown Idlewood, Michigan. Joyce has fallen under back luck too. Her husband died in a freak accident (falling through frozen ice) and her child died when an underaged driver hit them coming home from school. At the airport, Ava is picked up by “Crazy Eddie” (an old friend of Mitch’s). On the way home, they come across a situation involving a young teenage girl and guy. Eddie puts the guy down using a military tactic and takes the girl home. Eddie says he knows the guy from around. He’s bad news. He’s also related to the woman Joyce took to the hospital. Joyca catches Ava up on a lady that she took to the hospital and how she stopped going to her appointments because she was more concerned with her crack addiction. And how she was bluntly informed that she had HIV. Joyce tells Ava about how the Swing Circus and that’s helped direct her thoughts after the suicidal thoughts she had after her husband’s death.

Joyce visits the lady’s (Eartha’s) sister when she gets a call the next day that the baby isn’t HIV positive but is a crack baby. And the mother has taken off. Mattie seems not to care and says just give the baby to someone who can take care of it. It damn sho won’t be her. Joyce tells Ava about the Sewing Circus which is a group of younger women discussing relationships and men that she helped realize their potential by starting a daycare at the church. A new Pastor and his wife have come and would rather put the money toward education. So, Joyce wants to start a center. Joyce signs an agreement with Mattie that she’ll be able to bring the baby to her house and kept it until a more permanent solution can be made. Joyce names the baby Imani. The Pastor’s wife (Gerry) and he are taking care of their teenage grandson (Tyrone) who got sent to live with them. He’s just as bad as (Frank). He disrespects his grandmother by smoking weed around her.

While eating dinner outside one night, Ava and Eddie bond over a memory of Ava’s father teaching them both about the stars. Joyce finds out that the Reverend and his wife are blocking her attempts to educate people on HIV. They’ve rejected her bulletin for Sunday and sent back the pamphlets she wanted to send out. Meanwhile, there’s a series of break-ins going on in Idlewild. Eddie’s house got broken into and a church member. Anyone can see it’s Frank and Tyrone. Ava and Joyce meet with Gerry who says her husband has an idea for a youth group that will prioritize the young men. She also expresses that she believes the best way to these young women is through abstinence. Joyce does a 180 and goes along with what Gerry says, but tells Ava it's all a diversion. Joyce pisses off Gerry by giving her ladies a demonstration on how to put on a condom on a hotdog and she cancels the group. Joyce though isn’t fazed. She’s a woman on a mission.

Ava discovers she’s attracted to Eddie. But a friendship with him will have to be enough. Sex will just complicate everything and she’s moving in a couple of months. Gerry finds out Ava has HIV from the pharmacist and Frank makes a lewd comment. She spends the evening with Eddie who comforts her and tells her the reasons he came back home. When leaving, she almost breaks down and tells him the truth about her but he senses her hesitancy and tells her to tell him another time. While being invited over to watch Menace to Society Eddie confesses that he killed an old lover who was a crack head as well as his supplier (who was with her). This causes Ava some unease and she wonders what to do, but decides again nope not getting involved. Joyce seems to know better. Ava confesses to Eddie she has HIV and this leads to them engaging in some serious foreplay before they make love. There’s another break-in but this time the one’s behind it beat the old man up. The man decides to move to a old folks home and sell his house. Ava surprises Joyce and Eddie when she offers to buy the house for Joyce so the Sewing Circus can have a new place to meet. Eddie says he’ll do the renovations.

One night, while alone Frank, his girlfriend, and Ty stop by Joyce’s house. Frank fucks the girl in the front yard and then gives Ty a turn. He then throws his beer bottle and breaks one of the house’s windows as a parting gift. Eddie wants to “handle it” (kill them) but Joyce settles for going to file a complaint at the station and agreeing to have a meeting with them (so she can see if it’s still something redeemable there). But Frank and his guardian don’t come to the meeting. Gerry however is there. She offers to pay for the window but spreads this tale about how Ava invited “the kids” over for some punch and cookies and when they got there she tried to kiss Ty. Ty says nothing happened tho. When they saw there was no party they just left. Ava doesn’t want to have to go to trial. Neither does Gerry “for Tyrone’s protection” so they drop it. Joyce doesn’t and wants to file charges for her window. She then gets in Gerry’s face and gives her a warning not to spread this story. Ava and Joyce go over to the Reverend’s house to speak with him (or Gerry) but she’s not there and he’s just out of his mind drunk. (Possibly he’s a molester as well as an alcoholic suggested by Ty).

Eddie asks Ava to marry him and it freaks her out. She tells him she needs a minute and is immediately filled with doubts. Mattie and a social worker come to the house. It seems like Mattie’s had a change of mind and wants Imani back. She brings up Frank (getting the cops sicked on him) but then reveals the real reason (the money Joyce is getting). Joyce offers to give her the money she gets. But Gerry has been in Mattie’s ear and told her they aren’t fit (because of Ava) to raise a child. Gerry offers to help raise the baby upright. Joyce threatens to kill Mattie before she lets her leave with Imani but then the social worker tells her they’ll fight for Imani but it won’t work if she does it the wrong way (tries to kidnap her which she also hints at). So she says she’ll give her to Mattie the next day. A trial is arranged but until then Joyce turns the baby over to her relatives. Tho, they take turns sitting outside Mattie’s house. There’s a confrontation, the baby cries, Frank gets pissed, Joyce and Ava try to rush in to save her, Frank demands they leave and waves a gun at them, Ava goes home to get their gun, by the time she gets back there’s an ambulance. Joyce hears Frank and Mattie arguing over Imani’s leg (Frank claims she fell). She goes in through the back, calls the police (and ambulance), Frank notices and points a gun at her, but Mattie convinces him to leave with her before the cops arrive. Imani has surgery on her legs and they get fixed. Ava then finds out from an old church member that the reason the Reverend got sent to her church was because he’d inappropriately tried to touch not only her son but some of the other boys in the youth program. In the end, there’s happy endings all around. Ava confronts Gerry and she and her husband move back to their old church in Chicago. The Reverend kind of loses it. Mattie and Frank are caught. Ty serves two years for the robberies he did with Frank. The cast are taken off Imani’s legs and Joyce gets custody of her. Ava and Eddie get married.


My Thoughts: At first, this was a little flat. I know it's terrible but at first, the only thing that sparked anything in me about the story was the part with Frank and Tyrone going to Ava’s house (as bad as that is). I was about to write it off as just lackluster. A lot of it was Ava lusting over Eddie! These kinds of books never do anything for me. But it did get more interesting toward the end. However, it was SLOW! I summed this up as HIV, BABIES, JUDGEMENTAL CHRISTIANS, and a LOVE STORY. I guess we were supposed to feel something (sympathy?) for Ava because she has HIV. But not to sound like a heartless person because I also have an illness that can cause death at any given time (no it’s not that) Ava slept with a lot of people. Some unprotected. Sooo... If you take those kinds of chances YES! You might just end up either pregnant OR with a sexually transmitted disease. I felt like it was *trying* to educate but trying not to get too preachy. It's a lot more open since this book was written. I see the commercials all the time giving information about medicines and such. She did seem to handle it well. But the thing about Ava is nothing really made her interesting. She just kind of was the *observer* (or in the background) in a story that was supposed to be about HER. She fell in love… okay. Tho I DID like Eddie. He made the story more interesting than any of the others because he was always doing *something* (self-defense, gardening, kicking young thugs' asses, renovating houses) I liked that Eddie was a standup kind of guy that was willing to stick it out. It even did something to me that he wanted to “handle” Frank and Ty. But Eddie (and Mitch) also kind of made me roll my eyes because they just seemed “too good” to be true. Joyce I just thought never should gotten that deeply involved with a kid that wasn’t hers. I’m not a “baby person” so the emotional impact just didn’t hit me. I just kept thinking ok, it might look like everything turned out fine because Mattie and Frank got arrested, but what if they get out? What if one day Eartha has a change of heart and comes looking for HER kid? Joyce had possibly the biggest heart of all the characters, but I just thought she would have been better off If she’d just left that whole situation ALONE! I don’t think Mitch would have wanted her to always have to be watching her back because of Frank. Maybe they all should have moved to San Francisco. When I checked to my old Shelfari reviews to see if I’d already reviewed this, it was missing. I see why it really didn’t make that big an impression on me. Then weirdly it had a weird little tinge of being sexist. Ava mentioned more than once at least she'll get to do more than do hair and cook. Why? I know in other era's these were the choices women had. but this book isn't written in that kind of setting. Then there's this list of things Joyce thinks all women need to do and a few of them are gardening, being a midwife, and taking care of children. WHY? Now I have heard great things about gardening. My own mother got interested in (and did) try her hand at growing vegetables. I myself would try it (as it fits with working with the earth) but something every woman NEEDS to know how to do. And then being a midwife? Uh, we have these things now called HOSPITALS and AMBULANCES and vehicles to get you to someone QUALIFIED to deliver a baby. Then not all women are maternal. So why do we all NEED to know how to take care of children. What if we never plan on having any (or watching anyone else's). That list was just... And a woman wrote this?

Rating: 6 stars The ending saved it slightly. Otherwise it would just be a 5 for average.

This is not typically the kind of book I would pick up. However, it turned out to be excellent. Now, how it ended up on my Kindle is a mystery (I'm guessing my wife bought it at some point) but I ran out of things I wanted to read and happened to see it loaded on there.

I suppose many would disdainfully call a book like this "chick lit", given the giant Oprah sticker on the front, but it was far less vacuous than one might assume. Cleage does a masterful job of weaving together several storylines with some depth, and manages to touch on issues that were serious to Black America in the 1990's: HIV/AIDS, poverty, broken families, the impact of globalization and free trade on good jobs (huh, turns out that might have come to bite us in the ass!), child sexual abuse by religious figures, veterans' PTSD, and so on. This isn't a Ph.D. dissertation, though, so don't expect these topics to be covered in any depth; it is fiction, after all, though none of the dimensions of the story would be out of place in real life.

The only weakness that I found particularly irritating was in the character of Eddie. Sure, I guess Cleage needed a saintly character (a redeemed criminal, in this case) to serve as the foil to the serious topics above, but to position him as an utterly flawless person -- of course he's a tea-drinking, tai chi practicing Buddhist now, after transforming from a murderous drug dealer! -- was just a cliché taken one step too far. I get that Cleage also needed a perfect character for Ava to fall in love with, but even this was a little bit excessive. He does absolutely nothing wrong in the whole book; it's all in his past! It was a little too saccharine for me, even for the genre.

I loved Ava's, Joyce's, and Eddie's spirit. As the story unfolded, revealing the ups and downs of human nature, "the lesson" came up a few times. "...I knew it would be all right, or it *wouldn't* be all right, but it would be part of the same unbroken line we were all walking in, which is, of course, the *real* lesson, ...."

This book was truly amazing the author did such an awesome job with writing this book...The book just felt so real and raw while reading it and I was so entranced that I couldn’t stop reading... Ava was dealing with real life issues and problems that are still prevalent 20 years after this book was written. Ava was HIV positive but while she was running from her illness she found everything that she yearned for.. Family, Love, Patience and Compassion. I loved how Eddie loved and cared for her so gently.. Also I loved the fact that Ava and her sister Joyce were so passionate about helping younger people and giving them a head start to the best possible life they can manage despite their circumstances. Pearl Cleage is definitely a gifted writer and I can’t wait to read the next book in the Idlewild series.

What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day is an example of one of the things a book is good for. The main character, Ava Johnson, is a young black woman from Idlewild, a small town in Michigan. She couldn’t wait to get out as soon as she was old enough to be on her own, moving first to Detroit and then, when that wasn’t exciting enough, to Atlanta where she had her own beauty salon by day and partied happily with whatever men took her fancy by night for ten years or so. Then she was diagnosed as HIV positive. Now she has decided to move to someplace like maybe San Francisco where she expects to encounter less prejudice because of her medical condition. But first, she has decided to come home to Idlewild to visit her sister for a little bit.

I will never, at least in this life, be a young black woman who is HIV positive, but this book allows me a glimpse into what that would be like.

Ava’s sister is a former social worker who quit that occupation when her husband’s unexpected death left her well enough off that she no longer had to work for a while. But Joyce, the sister, has no problem with working; she is driven to try to make a difference. She is just looking for the best way to use her good fortune to benefit others. People in Idlewild know that when there is a problem they can call on her and she will be there doing whatever she can to help.

On the day Ava is due to arrive in Idlewild, Joyce has been called upon to take a younger woman to the hospital to have her baby. Since she can’t meet Ava at the airport she sends an old family friend, Eddie Jefferson, to pick her up instead.

Ava quickly discovers that Idlewild has become a place befitting the ‘wild’ part of its name. All the big city problems she thought she left behind in Atlanta have come to her small town – things like cocaine addiction, out-of-wedlock childbirth, and AIDS – without bringing anything fun to relieve the boredom with them. She hasn’t even made it home before she encounters a case of domestic violence in the parking lot of a liquor store.

But there are some nice things too. Like Joyce. And Eddie Jefferson. When Ava thinks she may be falling for Eddie, she wonders why this had to happen after she became HIV positive.

One of the things Joyce has been involved in recently is trying to set up a support group for young unwed mothers at her church. The group is showing some promise until the preacher’s wife starts to attack it. The preacher and his wife at this church remind me of the preachers plaguing Miss Julia in the Miss Julia series. But it turns out that this preacher is involved in much more sinister activities even than Pastor Ledbetter and Brother Vern. And his wife’s attacks on Joyce, while not physically violent (well not the ones she personally launches anyway; the same can’t be said for other people she stirs up), are truly vicious. What is she trying to prove?

This was quite a departure from my normal reading taste, but it offered a peek into another world and a perspective completely foreign to me, which I appreciated. I found it to be deeply personal and challenging to read at times due to the horrors Ava and her family had to endure. Somehow, even when faced with problems upon devastating problems, there was still a sense of hope in the end. I can’t say it’s a favorite that I will read again and again, but I appreciate the truths it had to share and the resilience of its characters.

This is a book that I found on my own bookshelves. I've been wanting to pare down my volumes and this one was not that long, at 244 pages. It's the story of a young black woman who has lead her life the way she wanted until she was tested HIV positive. So she moves back to her small town in northern Michigan to spend some time with her sister before she moves out west to San Francisco. Instead, all kinds of things are thrown in her path to entice her to stay. It's a very good story, well written, the characters are believable, and fully described, meaning you can picture them. I'm not sure I agree with how they ended it, but, to each his own.

i didn't expect too much of this book, as i haven't heard anything about it before. i found it on scribd.com, to which i subscribe.

and oh my - did i enjoy it - what a lovely story. i definitely want to read the second one too. the writing style is easy to read and i can totally hear and see the characters.

I loved this book and everything Pearl Cleage write

This book has everything a good book should have: it's hilarious, the characters are people you'd want to hang out with for hours upon end, there's romance, and at least one character has devoted her life to making the world a better place. And I don't think it's much of a spoiler to say the plan is working. These characters are making their corner of the world a better place. And the whole book ends in a church, with everyone happy. The book is just perfect.

No sugar coating in this read. It is a real life book which covers several months(June-September) in the life of Ava Johnson. Beware the language is course and material is raw. It is real life in our societies about social issues swept under the carpet(HIV, drugs, alcohol, abuse, our youth, our elderly) and about the decision to be part of the problem or part of a solution. It is about love, how to love and how to be loved.