Primeros reseñadoresMaurice Carlos Ruffin

A bold, provocative debut for fans of Get Out and Paul Beatty’s The Sellout, about a father’s obsessive quest to protect his son—even if it means turning him white “An incisive and necessary work of brilliant satire.”—Roxane Gay, author of Bad Feminist “You can be beautiful, even more beautiful than before.” This is the seductive promise of Dr. Nzinga’s clinic, where anyone can get their lips thinned, their skin bleached, and their noses narrowed. A complete demelanization will liberate you from the confines of being born in a black body—if you can afford it. In this near-future Southern city plagued by fenced-in ghettos and police violence, more and more residents are turning to this experimental medical procedure. Like any father, our narrator just wants the best for his son, Nigel, a biracial boy whose black birthmark is getting bigger by the day. The darker Nigel becomes, the more frightened his father feels. But how far will he go to protect his son? And will he destroy his family in the process? This electrifying, hallucinatory novel is at once a keen satire of surviving racism in America and a profoundly moving family story. At its center is a father at war with himself who just wants his son to thrive in a broken world. A writer whose work evokes the crackling prose of Ralph Ellison and the dizzying menace of Franz Kafka, Maurice Carlos Ruffin is a ferociously talented new writer who fearlessly shines a light on the violence we inherit, and on the desperate things we do for the ones we love.

New Orleans' tremendous literary tradition shines bright in this outstanding collection of stories from some of the best writers in American history. Julie Smith has masterfully curated this volume with stories published as early as 1843 and as recently as 2012. Classic reprints from: James Lee Burke, Armand Lanusse, Grace King, Kate Chopin, O. Henry, Eudora Welty, Tennessee Williams, Shirley Ann Grau, John William Corrington, Tom Dent, Ellen Gilchrist, Valerie Martin, O'Neil De Noux, John Biguenet, Poppy Z. Brite, Nevada Barr, Ace Atkins, and Maurice Carlos Ruffin. From the introduction by Julie Smith: "A glittering constellation of writers have passed through New Orleans--including Mark Twain, Sherwood Anderson, O. Henry, even Walt Whitman, to name some of the not-so-usual suspects. Then there are the ones whose sojourns here are better known, the ones on whom we pride ourselves: Tennessee Williams, William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Ellen Gilchrist, James Lee Burke. It was an anthologer's feast--just about everybody who came to New Orleans wrote about it. But there were surprises... If you're from New Orleans, the neighborhood theme resonates like Tibetan temple bells. And yet, surely every city has similar 'hoods, similar behavior patterns, similar travails--and has had them forever. 'Indeed,' wrote Voltaire, 'history is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes.'"