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“I was enthralled from the opening lines of this book. ―Roxane Gay, New York Times bestselling author of Hunger and Ayiti This collection is absolutely unforgettable and Johnson's prose soars to remarkable heights.” The crowning glory of this collection is the title story, a novella about a world that has fallen apart and a small band of people who take refuge in Monticello, among the old ghosts of the former plantation, how they become family, and how they try to make a stand for their lives, for the world the way it once was.
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She dissects the unbearable burdens of such displacement. Her debut collection, My Monticello, is comprised of six stories of astonishing range and each one explores what it means to live in a world that is at once home and not. Jocelyn Nicole Johnson is one such writer. “It is a rare breed of writer who can tell any kind of story and do so with exquisite deftness.
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―Colson Whitehead, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Nickel Boys and Harlem Shuffle “A badass debut by any measure―nimble, knowing, and electrifying.” United by these characters’ relentless struggles against reality and fate, My Monticello is a formidable book that bears witness to this country’s legacies and announces the arrival of a wildly original new voice in American fiction. This discussion guide was shared and sponsored in partnership with Henry Holt. In “Control Negro,” hailed by Roxane Gay as “one hell of story,” a university professor devotes himself to the study of racism and the development of ACMs (average American Caucasian Males) by clinically observing his own son from birth in order to “painstakingly mark the route of this Black child too, one whom I could prove was so strikingly decent and true that America could not find fault in him unless we as a nation had projected it there.” Johnson’s characters all seek out home as a place and an internal state, whether in the form of a Nigerian widower who immigrated to a meager existence in the city of Alexandria, finding himself adrift a young mixed-race woman who adopts a new tongue and name to escape the landscapes of rural Virginia and her family or a single mother who seeks salvation through “Buying a House Ahead of the Apocalypse.” Led by Da’Naisha, a young Black descendant of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, they seek refuge in Jefferson’s historic plantation home in a desperate attempt to outlive the long-foretold racial and environmental unravelling within the nation. Set in the near future, the eponymous novella, “My Monticello,” tells of a diverse group of Charlottesville neighbors fleeing violent white supremacists. In this conversation, Gay discusses her unapologetic and audacious approach to writing and culture and her commitment to opening doors for others along the way.Tough-minded, vulnerable, and brave, Jocelyn Nicole Johnson’s precisely imagined debut explores burdened inheritances and extraordinary pursuits of belonging. Her work in promoting new talent doesn’t stop there – last year she launched her own publishing imprint, Roxane Gay Books, which seeks to publish and support works of fiction, nonfiction and poetry from underrepresented perspectives. Part of the exciting return of international artists to live events with the Wheeler Centre, in March 2022, writer and cultural icon Roxane Gay returned to Australia for an insightful and audacious conversation with commentator and gender equality advocate Jamila Rizvi.įollowing critical acclaim for her bestselling works, including Bad Feminist, Difficult Women and Hunger, Gay is now turning the spotlight on powerful emerging literary talent through her newsletter, The Audacity and the accompanying Audacious Book Club. Because what they’re really saying is that they don’t have the ability to recognise true, interesting perspectives.’ When people say you shouldn’t be taken seriously.