Jumbo Hill

Eula’s skin was fair and her looks were beautiful. As a black woman in the 1930’s she hoped it would be enough to carry her from the drudgery of existing as a poor, Southern, colored woman. Upon meeting Badge, a fast speaking city man from Pittsburgh, PA, she believed she’d found everything she’d hoped for, or did she? Soon after marriage, Eula is blind-sighted by unexpected tragedy, the stifling oppression felt from mothering children, joblessness and her husband’s desire for a simple life, all of which lead her on a salacious journey of escape. When Eula Ashby moved with her husband and three small children into the house on Jumbo Hill in the bustling city of Pittsburgh, she was convinced her dream of being an upwardly mobile negro family would be realized, but when her husband loses his job at the steel mill and work in the coal mines is infrequent at best, Eula’s hope for an exciting urban life dwindles. Not only does her city-bred husband reveal his true country nature by turning their cramped backyard into a suburban farm, but he expects his beautiful, ambitious wife to embrace the life she rejected. When this hardship is combined with more children, the death of her mother and subsequent revelation about her paternity, she spirals from the conventionalism of devoted wife and mother and into the careless, lascivious realm of scandal. As Eula abandons traditional norms set for women and selfishly travels down a road laden with alcohol, gambling, men and provocative gratification to numb the agony of her predictable life, her neglected children and husband struggle to hold their crumbling household together and maintain their love for her.