What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day

Pearl Cleage’s debut novel, What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day, traces one summer in the life of the protagonist, Ava Johnson. Ava’s once independent and exciting life in Atlanta, Georgia, changes forever when she tests positive for HIV (human immunodeficiency virus), the virus that can lead to AIDS. As a Black woman living in the 1990s, Ava is immediately met with social and cultural stigmas surrounding the virus. Unable to maintain her hair salon, her community, and her sex life in Atlanta because of her condition, Ava moves back home to her small hometown in Idlewild, Michigan.

The move initially feels regressive to Ava but soon proves transformative. Throughout her first months back in Idlewild, Ava reconnects with her older sister, Joyce Mitchell, welcomes a foster baby named Imani into her heart, and falls in love with Joyce’s late husband’s friend, Eddie Jefferson. These relationships change how Ava sees herself and her future. Written from Ava’s first-person point of view, the novel traces Ava’s journey out of the past and into a new life.