Gram was then raped by Corregidora and grew to become pregnant with Ursa's mom. Gayl Jones opens the novel within the 1940s, but the temporal landscape of the Corregidora girls begins in nineteenth century Brazil with Great Gram or "Dorita" - the woman with the espresso-bean pores and skin, the "favorite" of Corregidora, the Portuguese slaveholder. "What if being bi means I’
