Near to the Wild Heart opens with a scene of the child Joana playing in the garden, making up poems for her father. Joana's wildness and barely suppressed violence, along with her linguistic creativity, are her most notable features. She is frequently compared to animals: over the course of the book Lispector compares her to a bird, a snake, a wildcat, a horse, and a dog. She commits transgressive acts—as a child she throws a book at an old man's head, for example, and as a married woman she leaves her husband, Otávio, and greets the news of his adultery—he has made another woman, his
When Washington Was in Vogue spent studying at the Library of Congress and enjoying the friendships he has made. Although his letters to Bob betray a fixation on Caroline and his relationship with her, Davy does not consider her as a romantic option until just before he is scheduled to depart. When he finally voices his feelings to Caroline, she responds: “I think I loved you from the first day.” They embrace, and the novel ends. "When Washington Was in Vogue" explores the spoken and unspoken rules of color politics within African-American society of the period. Unusually, Williams’s novel has no white characters. Davy is