Word: jaboti
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...narrative voice is Jones's great accomplishment in The Healing. The stylistic design optimally supports the narrative's broad theme of constructing a personal identity in a world bent on its destruction. At one point, Jones encapsulates this quest for self by retelling the biography of Grandmother Jaboti, Harlan's ancestral precursor in the art of identity building. Jaboti began her life not as a human but as a turtle-woman in a traveling carnival freak show, kept on display between the bearded lady and the unicorn girl. She might have lived as a convinced turtle-woman forever...
Whenever Grandma Jaboti tells this story to Harlan, her mother tempers the narrative by explaining that Grandmother Jaboti wasn't really a turtle, but had simply been put in a fake turtle shell by evil carnival managers that had convinced Jaboti of her turtlehood when she was too young to know the truth. Despite her attempts to provide a rational explanation of Jaboti's surreal biography, though, Harlan's mother cannot help but be nervous about the influence of this story, worrying that such fantasy might render Harlan unable "to tell the truth from the truth...